Day Seven

We have flat white coffees at the local bakery, and I indulge in a slice of apple streusel. It’s about 9 inches long, almost three inches wide, and about two and a half inches high. It’s stuffed with a delicious mixture of mostly apples and a few sultanas (Auzzie for “raisin”). I eat the whole thing and grin.

We take the bus to the race site. The race site is very nice, sheltered water almost like a pool, with tents erected along the raceway to shelter racers. More than 70 teams are registered, with about 20 paddlers on most teams.
Team SOAR has three races today.

Miriam’s first race is very close and they take second place.
Her team wins her second two races, the third handily. That's them in the white uniforms.


Teams will be placed in three different divisions the next day, based on total time in all three races on the first day. We think her team has done well, but no hard information is available.

We take the bus back and go with a bunch of paddlers to “Aussie World.” It has rides, music, carnival games and food. Dragonboaters have rented the whole thing, and most things are free. We are greeted with a packaged snack and a small bottle of sparkling rose, appropriately packaged in dragonboating pink. We much and slurp it down, sitting in a nice, covered area and listening to a singer with a guitar and a computer that plays her backup. She rarely touches her guitar and sounds like a whole band.

Miriam starts to move to the music so I ask her to dance. We are the first, and initially the only, dancers. I’d be too self-conscious to do this at home, but hey, I’m on sabbatical and in Australia. It’s really fun to dance together, and a number of people join us.

Then we do bumper cars and wait in line for the roller coaster. Waiting reminds Miriam that rides like that make her sick, so we go queue up for food. The buses are scheduled to leave at 9:00 pm to take us back, but Miriam’s team is in training so we leave at 8:00 pm, go home, and fall asleep.

Later we learn that a woman from another team was so inspired by our dancing that she started dancing herself, fell, broke her hip, and was awaiting hip replacement surgery in Australia.