Byron wasn't just about surfing, so a few little things of note. First, some of the friends from the hostel who dared not enter the water with us (wise?), but willingly celebrated with us after were Tomas (Swe, whose father passed away while he stayed at the hostel), Marielle (Ned), Nonda (Ned), Tony (Ire), Ashley (Ire), and Andreas (Ger, who made us a nice curry dinner one night). Of special note are Elvis and Jesper, two guys from Denmark. Elvis isn't gay, he just likes pink pants (his own admission), and Jesper likes hats. They are also musos, Jesper playing violin and Elvis guitar. They are both into Celtic music, so we sat around jamming a few nights until the hostel folk shut us down by blasting Soundgarden. One night, they were trying to persuade a difficult doorman to let Jesper into the bar, with Dave exclaiming, "He's not drunk, he's Danish!" Of course, Jesper took this opportunity to drop his wallet, full of Aussie coins, and in the process of picking them knocked over the queue rope, so the ploy was up.

A particular place of notoriety was Cheeky Monkey's, located right across the street from the hostel, and home to such fine pursuits as pokies, wet T-shirt contests, "throw the ball through the hoop", cheap draft, and any other delights that get drunk guys to spend money. A couple of nights here is usually all it takes to want to look elsewhere, but admittedly it is convenient.

On October 11th, I was feeling kinda itchy to do some playing, so I grabbed my horn, and launched myself on the town. The first stop was The Rails, where I played a few tunes with an acoustic guitar duo. I was then off to the Great Northern, where it turned out the Conservatorium was having another showcase. After a bit of asking around, I ended up playing with the final act of the night, a funk band whose name I can't remember, but everyone was really good and the band was toit like a toitle. I was actually pretty happy with how everything went, and I found out later that these folk were actually the instructors at the Conservatorium, which would explain the musicianship. I ended up talking to this guy Liam after the show. He'd played in the band before I went on, a funky reggae thing with three back up singers, and invited me to a jam the upcoming Saturday. I was stoked, and accepted.

When Saturday came around, I drove out into the country again, down winding single lane (for BOTH directions) roads and yet a speed limit of 80. After a few mistakes (Liams directions were all landmark-based, and I embarked from the wrong starting point. Eventually figured it out, there aren't that many roads. Finally got to his place, actually that of his girlfriend, a wooded lot with three homes built on it. His girlfriend had been living out here since she was born. We hung out a bit, had a bit of food, and watched Bela Fleck and Cat Empire DVDs (the first time I'd actually heard them, that guy is a sick horn player, and the live shows seem pretty energetic, though kinda catering towards the ladies, I think). We then got our instruments out and wandered over to the other house, where Liam's friend and bass player Ado lived. It was this point I think my metronome fell out of my trumpet case, another 30 bucks gone. As for the jam, it never really materialized, and I learned that the funky reggae band wasn't his full time thing. Instead, they sound like shades of Evanescence, loud-soft-angsty stuff, not really my scene, but it's about the adventure, right? It was more of casual affair, and a nice group of folk, all of whom are accomplished multi-instrumentalists, but the objective of the night was more about drinkin'. (Note, I'd sensed this a bit earlier on, and thus laid off the sauce in order to make my escape). I ended up getting cornered by the girlfriend who must have been trained in circular breathing, because she talked so incessantly that I wasn't even able to get the odd grunt or "Uh-hunh" in. After giving me the complete history of her immediate family, she went on to talk about how her grandfather was the head of a Satanic cult and used to sacrifice babies in front of her uncle and father. And THEN, she went to talk about what she was looking forward to in Grade 12..... Whoa. I knew at that point it was time to start my goodbyes. When I got back to Byron, no one was at the hostel (as they were out being denied at the bar for being Danish), so I hit the sack.

And in case you were wondering, after the epic 5-man session, we wandered down to a beachfront Food Fair, where they had a trapeze set up, and for ten bucks they let you have a go.

Eventually the familiar faces began to leave. Many were part of the Oz Experience, a hop-on-hop-off tour that has some mandatory stops as well as several optional ones. Seeing as people's trips and accomodations often overlap, people on this tour get to know each other due to their mutual itineraries. A fun idea, at times I wish I'd done something of the sort, and I'm thinking of looking into whether something similiar exists for my future destinations. The people I knew were thinning out slowly, I'd sadly handed in the keys to the boat (after a vigourous scrub to get rid of the sand, surfwax, and dust from Broken Head), and certain hostel employees were getting under my skin, so I knew it was time to get movin' on myself. A new round of goodbyes made me feel a bit heavy, but there was one last stop I had to make before leaving Byron.....