San Fransisco and too many goodbyes

The past month, I experienced lots of, as how we say it in Dutch: highs and lows. So a quick summary for the lazy reader: the peak refers to my climb to the top of Yosemite Valley and the low refers to the many goodbyes and my body breaking down.

So to start with the good news! I went to San Francisco! After almost missing the bus and a quick sprint to the drop off place we were “exactly on time” for the bus ride to Seattle. That exactly on time would be the theme of the rest of the holiday was not on our minds yet, but it only took a few other experiences to discover that. Seattle at night is not the most amazing place to visit, in comparison to Vancouver, a young and relatively safe city, Seattle is more of an American style city with a lot of homeless and drunk people on the streets. This was different from the experience we had during the day, when the market was open and the streets were crowded with people. We spend the day walking the market and the city, lead by our guide. We went to one of the highest buildings in town for a coffee and ate some delicious food at the market. We went to the airport and took the plane to San Francisco. Arriving there, we immediately enjoyed the nice flower smell and the Californian heat and sunshine. We took the BART to San Jose where we were welcomed by Renea in her lovely apartment. She made us a wonderful curry which was almost as good as the 'Dutch' banana pancakes which we got served in the morning. We were dropped off at the airport where we went on a hunt for the cheapest rental service for under aged (meaning 25) drivers. We found a company that had cars that fitted our needs and we went on the road to find a Walmart. In the Walmart we bought the cheapest tent we could find and filled the car with canned food, energy bars and apples. It was a 4 hour drive to Yosemite National Park, which already was a beautiful ride by itself. In the park, we obtained a camping spot close to Buck Meadows and we went on a hike to find the famous Sequoia trees, this hike was supposed to take about 20 minutes, but after hiking for 2 hours we discovered that we were probably on the wrong trail (gheghe). This wasn’t the worst discovery of the day. Wouter-Jan’s pocket had a hole. And this doesn’t sound that bad when you just read it like this, however, knowing that the car keys should have been in that pocket, makes the story a bit worse. We had to hike all the way back and tried our hardest to find the keys, which of course, we didn’t find. We were doomed.

But, we were lucky (or just stupid), after a long hike back, we eventually found the keys to be in the car. A lovely couple spend an hour on the phone calling the car rental company and road assistance to help us. We built a fire and heated up the cans of food, while a typical American dude opened the car for us, and got our keys back.
The next morning we woke up at 6 and drove to Yosemite valley, to stand in line for Camp 4, a first come first go camping ground. However, we were not just in time, as the people before us got the last places on the site. We went to another queue and decided to book a campsite out of the Valley. We did a hike to Mirror Lake which was beautiful, you could walk through the ice cold water and enjoy the view on the mountain and rocks. In the afternoon we did a hike to Verna Falls and Nevada Falls. This hike was quite intense as the sun was shining, temperatures rose to 30 degrees and the top of the falls was only reached by a 700m climb. It was wonderful to see a really clear rainbow in the water drops of the waterfall. The night fell and we drove to the campsite (of which we didn’t know the name of the location), it was a nice surprise that the campsite actually had a jacuzzi and swimming pool.

The night was cold and the next morning we woke up early and drove to the park again. We took the whole day to hike to the top of Yosimete Falls, a 4hr hike up, and 3hr hike down. We relaxed at the top of the falls and got burned falling asleep next to the river. After three days of hiking we rewarded ourselves with a burger and fries and lots of “free” lemonade. At night we joined a night hike, which wasn’t that special but it was pretty cool to be out in the park at night. We also spend some time at the waterfall and saw a moonbow (rainbow caused by moonlight) in the Lower Yosemite Falls. We drove to the campsite in the dark and finally went to bed at 12.

The next day we drove to the Mariposa Grove to see a forest filled with 2000 year old Sequoia trees. That was quite amazing, they were huge! And it looked like trees growing out of these fire resistant mega creatures. We had a nice lunch on top of Glacier Point from which we could see the whole park. We were really impressed by Glacier Point, the highest point in the park which is a famous hiking spot. We started our way back, and at a crossing, the big camper in front of us decided to park his vehicle in the front of our car. The whole bumper and lamp were crushed and we were a bit in shock of the whole event. We called the car rental company and road assistance (luckily we were fully covered and Wouter-Jan was driving (he was insured)!) but they told us it would took 6 hours to get a new car to the park, which was not really an option for us. Then, the people of the camper van suggested to put the car back together using duck tape and tie wraps. This was a funny sight, the whole front of the car was just put back together using this stuff! Amazing! After a slow start in the beginning, we could make the ride back to the airport. There, we took the last bus and the last train, helped by a nice dude, to Oakland. There, the walk to 7th Avenue should only take 20 minutes, however, after walking for an hour in the most dodgy streets of the city, we ended up at the harbour. Shit! What went wrong? We were a bit desperate after the 4 days of hiking, short cold nights and the car accident of that day, but just on time, a car drove by looking at us with a face like what the hell do those people here. Tim, the guy in the car, told us we had mistaken 7th street for 7th avenue and that we actually had to be on the other end of town! “lucky” us! The guy was so nice to take us to the place and scared us with a few crazy stories about the dangerous stuff happening at the streets we were just walking in. We were so happy to finally have a bed to sleep on (even tough by the end of the night all the air was out and we had to sleep on the couch). The next day, we went seeing San Francisco. This city is so nice, you have all different neighbourhoods which all have their own identity. We had fun exploring the docks. At night we saw a baseball match of the Giants for free.
The 5th of May was my birthday, but tired of all the adventures we experienced the last days, we took an easy day and walked trough China town, Lombard street and the Golden Gate Bridge. We ate some amazing burritos in Mission, the Mexican district. Which was super crowded because it was also cinco de mayo, the Mexican independence day.
The next morning we were lucky that the bus still drove so we could take the plane at 8 back to Vancouver.

So that was a lot of fun, now I can tell some sad stories.
The semester of UBC ended in the last week of April and almost all my international friends went home. :(

Also, my body decided that it didn’t like alcohol, coffee and sour/hot stuff anymore so after a night and full day of puking the people in the hospital could tell me I have a bad stomach infection so now I have to take medication for that.

Also, I am really good in doing tests and filtering data so I did that wrong a couple of times so that I could do again.
And again.
And again.
And it feels like I am still not finished with analyzing the GSR data.
However, due to the magical mystery called statistics, I now found a solution to account for all the variance I have in the data using a technique calles MultiLevel Mixed modelling. I am not an expert on the topic yet but it seems that this type of analysis could help me in doing all the analysis.

Also, last weekend I had a lot of fun trying paddleboarding. We went to Deep Cove and had a really great time hiking, falling in the water and getting tanned!


That was it for today story telling is over mummy goes to bed now.

Cheers!