Catch-up time

Almost 2 months since I last wrote something. One would think that I must have been terribly busy to have taken so long to send an update...

Well, I have been busy, kind of. I'm not sure what exactly has kept me so occupied for 2 months, but I haven't really been sitting in front of the computer at home anytime recently.

Now that I finally have sat down to do this, I hope I have something interesting to say.
I've waited 2 months to talk about going white-water rafting.
The week after my last post - 25th,26th June (I don't remember if it was Saturday or Sunday, [Although reading my previous post I see that it was Sunday since I did the running on Saturday]), we went rafting.
I believe the name of the river was Merced, up right near Yosemite national park [which Kyle and I still haven't managed to go and visit]
The section of the river that we were on was supposedly a Grade 4 (it only goes up to 5 I think) but it wasn't as exciting as I had hoped for. A Grade 4 river meant that there were two or three 'Grade 4' rapids, and then the others (which were a few, but not a lot) were lower grades. For a grade 4 river we didn't feel that we were in that much danger of falling out - although Jons somehow did manage to fall out once, and whacked his side on a rock; he had a nice bruise for a while in the following days. I jumped out later in a much calmer section of the river and eventually we all jumped in the river and floated down on our backs through a 'safe' rapid. We were wearing lifejackets and wetsuits so it wasn't difficult to stay afloat.

We had a guide in our boat telling us when to paddle (and doing most of the steering from the back) and the six of us each had a paddle (which is the most important thing on the boat you must never let go of it ), although the concept of paddling was a little too difficult for Kyle. He seemed to enjoy mimicing paddling without actually putting most, if any, of the paddle in the water. This might have been because I was on his side of the boat and I kept commenting on the fact that he wasn't doing anything, or flicking water at him, but I think it is also because he is lazy.

We were out on the water for a few hours, with a stop for lunch in the middle, so it was definitely a full day trip - especially once you add in the 3 hour drive each way and the getting up at around 5am (or 6am, something like that).

I'm not sure if it is worth the $150, but it was enjoyable and I wouldn't mind doing it again.