Adam Turtle, Freelance Web Design in Belfast, Northern Ireland

Adam Turtle

Since1986

My Tuesday

I can’t remember if I mentioned it before, but I only get one day off a week. If it were Saturday, or Sunday, that would be fine and I could enjoy it. Last week it was Tuesday, and this week – the same.

Last week I knew I’d be bored as my friends are either working or at school every day, so I went on my company’s wine country tour. It was fine, a good way to waste a day. Yesterday I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but instead I decided to go to Yosemite National Park…again.

This time wasn’t so bad though. It was a small group so there was plenty of room on the van. Plus Valerie went with me – she skipped class for a day telling her teacher she had a gynecologist appointment…(it’s a common thing in France, apparently) . She’d never been so she blended in well with the rest of the tourists. It’s a long, long day – pickup at 6.20am and back again at 8pm. Our driver for the day was Charles, one of our newer guides. I never seem to get Gavin or Roman, they seem to be the most popular.

Anyway, I took some photos. I don’t have them online yet but I’ll add them to my Flickr. Those more observant will have noticed the little Flickr plugin I added to the sidebar on this here blog, hi (oops, slipped into a little Ballymena talk there). This seems a lot handier than uploading to my blog. I’ll still add the better pictures to the posts, but when theres a whole set I’ll stick them on there and you can click through if you’re interested. RSS is a wonderful thing.

At Yosemite, Bridalveil Falls was closed. Disappointing. The guy sitting in front of me was frustratingly unimpressed by almost everything and he spent the entire day sitting in silence in the van. He didn’t even make the effort to walk to the giant sequoias. Guarantee he leaves bad feedback on the customer survey.

At lunchtime I decided that I would go for a swim, just like I did the last time I took the tour. The sun was out, it wasn’t particularly warm but I at least figured the water would be pleasant. In summer, the water was pretty baltic was after a few minutes it was bearable. This time was much different. I waded in about 50 yards up the Merced River from where I left my stuff. Pain shot through my feet after 5 seconds and I lost all feeling in my toes. Valerie got in and almost immediately freaked out. It’s the coldest water I’ve ever been in (except Portstewart Strand, obviously). It took a couple of minutes of mental preparation but eventually we both went right in and swam down the little stretch of river. It never heated up, my body was in complete shock the whole time and my breathing was erratic. Fair play to the French bird, she did it too. We didn’t stay much more than 3 minutes in the water, it was just too cold so we got out. My body was totally red all over. It burned for a while afterwards but eventually everything went back to normal. My advice: don’t go swimming in Yosemite around winter time. It’s not big and it’s not clever.

The rest of the tour went ok, we got back a little earlier than expected at 7.30pm. I got an invitation to go out to the Salsa club we go to every Tuesday but I was shattered so I gave it a miss and was in bed at 10:30 for the first time since I was about 14. Slept right through to 10:30am and felt worse than the day before. Sleep is a difficult thing to control.

Oh, on a totally random and off-topic note, I saw the trailer for the Veggie Tales movie at the movies the other night. I had no idea they were making this, it looks pretty good. Check out the trailer on YouTube.

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