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Princeton University Athletics
Women's Lacrosse Team Diary #2
December 16, 2004 | Women's Lacrosse
Dec. 16, 2004
SYDNEY, Australia - [Editor's Note]: Sydney is 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. This diary entry was received at approximately 11 p.m. EST Thursday, or 1 p.m. Friday afternoon in Sydney...
"How you goin'?," as they say over here.
We have just finished up our time in Cairns (pronounced "cans"), and what a tremendous time it was. After a flight that turned a bit rowdy due to the remarkable music selection on Qantas Airlines, we left the airport to find ourselves in 90-degree heat, plus humidity.
Those conditions didn't seem to faze [assistant coaches] Ali (Fisher) and Michele (DeJuliis) as they told us to prepare for our run and workout along the Cairns Esplanade. This "fun with bodies," as Michele had entitled it, turned out to be more than we bargained for--some three days later our abs still ache. The intensity of that workout was offset by the hilarity of the looks the casual boardwalk strollers gave us as they watched us lunge, run and sweat! That night, we enjoyed some free time to explore the nightlife in Cairns. Who would have thought that the highlight of the night would be the chance to watch toad racing?
Wakeup time the next morning was rather early, 6 a.m., but we knew it was would be worth the exhaustion as we boarded our bus for the Quicksilver ferry that would take us out the Great Barrier Reef. Some three hours, miles of beautiful coastline and many applications of sunblock later, we had arrived. In order to protect ourselves from the allegedly deadly and invisible jellyfish, all of us zipped into blue, full-body spandex jumpsuits.
Those who had signed up for the snorkel adventure headed out with a biologist to the "drop-off" point, where they saw sea turtles, swam with tropical fish and literally "found Nemo." Others, somewhat more adventurously and in defiance of recent shark attacks, donned oxygen tanks and attempted to descend below the surface. Despite initial fears and needs to hold the guides' hand, all found themselves in a real-life National Geographic photo as they knelt on the ocean floor, looking deep into the eyes of curious fish. Others remained above water, viewing the reef through glass-bottom boats or even by helicopter.
By the end of the day, we were exhausted. After another night in Cairns, we headed to bed early in preparation for the next early morning.
6:45 in the morning, this time, we headed off for a whitewater rafting trip down the Tully River, known as one of the world's best day trips for whitewater rafting. Our overzealous guides led us in four rafts down the Grade 4 rapids (Grade 6 being the highest, most dangerous rating that is considered, in the rafting world to be "suicidal!" Think Niagara Falls ...)
Among the obstacles we encountered were a four-and-a-half meter rock called The Jabber, off of which we all had to jump. We also rafted under a huge waterfall with water pressure so hard that it even put the Princeton locker room showers to shame. As we stroked our way to the bottom of the river, Chris (Sailer) insisted that this teamwork and communication practice would serve us well for our on-the-field communication in lacrosse. In any case, it was one of the trip highlights.
After our second exhausting day in a row, we prepared ourselves for a some exciting and unfamiliar cuisine at Dundee's. After a standard, carb-loading first course of pasta, we were then served an array of meats - kangaroo, crocodile, emu, buffalo, barramundi - the basics, as far as Australians are concerned. The general consensus ruled crocodile as the tastiest.
We also sang to Jeremy (Meccage, a volunteer assistant baseball coach at Princeton), our tour guide from Zag Sports, on his 29th birthday, embarrassing him in front of the entire restaurant full of Aussies and tourists. However, a certain individual who will remain nameless was the most embarrassed when she fell out of her chair as the restaurant owner jokingly brought a real (but dead) stuffed crocodile way too close for comfort.
Now we have flown from Cairns to Sydney again and are awaiting our flight to Adelaide, the site of our tournament against the Australian national and club teams. Wish us luck! Cheers from Down Under!
Leigh (Slonaker), Caitlin (Reimers) and the rest of the Tigers