Charlton Heston

So, famous Hollywood star Charlton Heston died a little over a week ago. Of course it got a mention in all the newspapers, but this one from the Onion had me in fits of laughter. You can tell they’ve been sitting on that headline for years.

Joe Satriani

I also took this short video of Joe Satriani from Guitar Center a few weeks ago. The quality is poor, but you can’t expect much from a tiny camera. This video is the last bit of Satch Boogie. Listen at around 1:00 minute into the video he does one of his trademark squealing divebombs!

Great America

Getting onto the real subject of the post, at the weekend I went to Great America, a theme park close to Santa Clara. It’s not very far from San Francisco - about 30 miles or so - but we had to take public transit as we don’t have a car. That involves taking the Caltrain to Mountain View (where Google is), and then the VTA to the park. In total it’s a little under two hours travel.

At Mountain View, there was a little fresh food market right beside the station, so while we waited on the VTA to come, we indulged in some awesome strawberries. This would prove to be a mistake to a certain person later on in the day…

At Great America, I was expecting long queues for each ride, as last time I went each ride was approx. 30-45 minutes wait. Looks like we picked a good day as the lines were super short; I think the longest we waited was about 10 minutes and most of the big coasters had essentially no queue at all.

The weather was really sweltering, I’m sure it was close to 100ºF. I slapped on the suncream though and managed to survive the day with minimal burning. I really think I’m adjusting to the warmer climate.

There’s a big Nickelodeon theme at the park, so I got my photo with Spongebob Squarepants. I also have a rather attractive Patrick hat photo.

Valerie screamed with genuine terror on most of the rollercoasters, but in the end admitted that she enjoyed them. However, the Survivor ride was a little more than she could handle and she made a quick exit to deposit the aforementioned strawberries. It wasn’t the greatest ride, to be fair. It basically just spins you around and around. Maybe it’s called Survivor to see if you can avoid spewing at the end. Who knows.

I think we pretty much visited every ride in the park, except the water maze in the kids area. I was absolutely roasting and really wanted to run through all the water fountains, but they have a stupid rule that adults can only go on it if accompanied by a little one. They must suspect that everyone over 4 feet tall is a pervert.

I’ll upload all the photos to Flickr later. Check them out if you so choose.

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