Saturday, 23 April 2011
With that section of the trip out of the way, the big game plan was to take a break in Southport over the Easter-Anzac Day long weekend and head off on stage two of the road trip once things had quietened down on Wednesday morning.
Taking a break, however, didn't necessarily mean an extended spell of inactivity, at least, not at first.
Given a need to eat and the knowledge that we'd be eating out for most of the next week and a half it was going to be necessary to lay in supplies, and when it came to grocery shopping, while the supermarkets might be handy the holiday scenario meant we were going to have a limited window of opportunity, and it was better to get the groceries out of the way first and proceed from there.
Lurking in the background was the possibility of an in to Bluesfest at Byron, not that I was holding my breath as far as Saturday was concerned, given the fact that any goodies forthcoming on the Little Feat Front would have to be organised in the midst of flying from Sydney to wherever (Gold Coast or Ballina) and getting ready for a 2:30 gig.
There wouldn't, I suspected, be much of anything coming through, but I kept the mobile handy, just in case, remembering that there was also the possibility of a call from The Accountant, a school friend I hadn't seen for forty-something years, and possibly Foxy, should something have torpedoed his boating plans for the weekend.
With the groceries got, Madam's script called for a visit to Harbour Town to buy Hughesy a new pair of joggers, give her a chance to go looking for a replacement for That Jacket Sitting At Home, and a few other odds and ends.
Given uncertainty about what has happened to old acquaintances over forty years, I'd figured out a scenario involving a bus to the rendezvous on Chevron Island, and another on the return journey, leaving around three so we could prepare for an evening with Ex-House Sitter and Footy Bloke, which was going to be a fluid affair, so I wasn't in the market for a big afternoon.
Just before lunchtime on Easter Saturday probably isn't the best time to be heading towards Harbour Town, and the Gold Coast Highway and Brisbane Road probably isn't the best route to get there.
The act that a substantial subset of every man and his dog had already made the journey meant, once we'd turned off Brisbane Road and made our way into the car park, it was a good twenty minutes before we found a park, and when we did we were looking at a compass and a cut lunch when it came to getting to the actual shopping precinct.
Buying the joggers was a fairly straightforward exercise, but the whole scenario meant that the 1:06 Number Five bus to Chevron Island was a decidedly dodgy proposition, and though we didn't spend long investigating other matters (lengthy queues waiting to enter or make purchases at a number of establishments tends to consign matters to the too hard basket) it was well after one when we headed back towards the car, with Madam offering to come and collect me from the rendezvous when I was ready to go.
Personally, I liked the bus scenario, since it gave me an excuse to escape at a given point in time, but since that was now impossible....
Once I'd arrived and Reunion Mode had been entered, the announcement that I was drinking Cascade Light didn't go down well with the locals, but the scoffing was diverted by mentioning that I had a subsequent appointment with a Geelong Supporter, and it was likely to involve a lengthy sledge match, so I needed to keep my wits about me.