Ok, so we flew to the Gold Coast around 2pm…about 1 hour’s flight north of Sydney, to the Surfers paradise district, which is a cross between Venice Beach and Miami…and could easily be mistaken for GIRLS GONE WILD Australia…we checked into our hotel around 5pm and then Chapple and I went walking around for like 3 hours before we decided to get some Chinese food. today was good Friday so, not only were alot of the booze places closed, but there were so silly, quite suspect puritan liquor laws in effect; we could only get booze if we ate, and we couldn’t take anything off the premises. So had to sneak the beers back to our hotel… Then we found a tax free Wine emporium, but we needed our passport and flight tix…so we went back to the hotel, where we bumped into Rusty and Daddyo…Rusty had his stuff with him and that saved us a trip to the 14th floor…so we all walked over and bought 2 bottels of Australian Merlot…then came the catch….the woman who sold it to us, a very attractive Japanese woman, said the law says that we cannot open the wine until we leave the country. we said, “sure”…wink wink, nudge nudge, right? Well, she made rusty sign some paperwork SWEARING he wouldn’t open the bottles, took down his personal info and all that stuff! here’s sample of the paper: Wine Paradise shop 4, 3171 Gold Coast Highway Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland QLD 4217 (07) 5538 8622 IF I DO NOT TAKE THE GOODS OUT OF AUSTRALIA IN 30 DAYS, I WILL CONTACT WINE PARADISE BY NOON THE NEXT WORKING DAY THAT THE GOOD WERE NOT EXPORTED. I WILL NOT INTERFERE WITH OR BREAK THE SEAL ON THE WINE UNTIL THE RECIET HAS BEEN CHECKED OUTSIDE THE COUNTRY. I AM AWARE THAT THE TAXATION ADMINISTARATION ACT MAY PENALIZE ME $5000 AND/OR IMPRISONMENT FOR UP TO 12 MONTHS FOR MAKING A FALSE DECLARATION TO MISUSE THIS PRODUCT. I DECLARE ALL THIS INFORMATION I GAVE TO WINE PARADISE TO BE CORRECT AND I WILL COMPLY WITH THE CONDITIONS OF THIS DECLARATIONS. SIGN HERE:______________________________

We went straight to the hotel, opened both bottles and got terribly inebriated. After that, Chapple and I went back to our hotel room and caught the whole movie, PRETTY IN PINK, which was fun cause I hadn’t seen it in ages. Then, around 2am, we went out (Chapple and I) and found a pub that was still open and drank some Cascade pints. And this morning (saturday), we found a small cafe and had a great bacon eggs and toast breakfast. I was so hungry and the food wasn’t half bad..I swear, after a week of british food (2 weeks ago), this was like eating Wolfgang Puck’s food. And the bacon was REAL bacon, not that MANICALLY SALTED ham that England passes for bacon! And the eggs weren’t super greasy and the taost was thick and WARM! Nice…well, gonna go for a swim now (it’s 11am saturday)…we drive 1 1/2 hours to Byron Bay at 4pm and play the festival tonight at 7pm, right after G Love and Special sauce and right before Jimmy Vaughn. Thy pool (and thy blody mary) calleth….cheers…from Surfers Paradise…

Mike Randle