7 June 98: This will come as no surprise to all of you who've swum in an ocean, but hey, that water is damn salty! I had my first taste, so to speak, of swimming in salt water this weekend and I didn't like it one bit. I had fun letting the waves a Coogee Beach knock me around, but that awful taste brought a quick end to my swim. Do people get used to that salty taste, is there something you can take to neutralize it, or are my taste buds just over-sensitive and you're all out there wondering what the heck my problem is?

Today, I was supposed to take a surfing lesson at Bondi Beach, but no one but me showed up to the alleged meeting place at the appropriate time. Needless to say, I was a little pissed. About the only thing I wanted to do on this trip was surf and it hasn't happened, yet. Grr. The day wasn't a complete loss, though. I stumbled upon "What Burger?" a mostly-vegan fast food restaurant. It's no "Orean's Health Express," a vegan drive-thru in Pasadena, but it was pretty good. The menu is pretty limited (burger, fries, shakes, soft drinks) but McDonalds started out pretty simply, and look where they are today. (If you're short on time, maybe you should look where McDonald's isn't.) They have eight different sauces, ranging from mild (mayo and ketchup) to "spicy" (salsa and curry.) I put the "spicy" in quotes because this country ain't exactly the hot food capital of the world. I am dying for some remotely passable salsa. Last night I ate a "Mother Chu's" an awesome vegan chinese restaurant in downtown Sydney and got their "really spicy" soy bean roll with triple hot chili sauce and was warned of its heat, but I felt nothing; the Sze Chuan (hot and sour) soup had a nice kick to it, though. What I was most stoked about, however, was the crowd of people eating at this completely vegetarian place. Awesome! After wolfing down a What Burger with salsa and curry, some baked fries (or chips as they say here) and a sundae, I rented some 'blades and skated on the boardwalk. Anyone who tells you that doing tricks on in-line skates is just as hard as as doing them on a skateboard is completely full of shit. In less than an hour, I could jump two feet and do a 180. I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to ollie on my board, but it was longer than five minutes, and I couldn't pull an olllie-180 if my year-end bonus depended on it.

There is a god. I've been in Sydney for eight days, and I haven't seen more than 15 seconds of baseball, and I'm beginning to suffer from withdrawal. I've been tempted to go to some swanky restaurant that has violinists and tipping them to play the theme music from Baseball Tonight, but decided that would be a bit extreme. (And I'm pretty sure they wouldn't know what it was.) Tonight, there is baseball, sort of, on ESPN. It's the college world series, so there's that annoying ping of the aluminum bat, but I'm really in no position to complain, even though this game is cheap hit central.