It's raining! It's pouring! My daughter kicked me out of bed at 3:30 this morning, which gave my wife respite from my snoring.
I generally don't mind the rain. Growing up in the Northwest, it rained consistently enough that "riding in the rain" meant riding anytime between October and April. It involved putting on a rain slicker (this was before the days of ubiquitous fancy gear) and heading out, only to take off the slicker 20 minutes in because the aforementioned rain had turned to a light mist or dissipated entirely, only to have said rain restart just in time to deliver a good drenching before the previously removed rain slicker could be recommissioned. It was rare, though, to have significant rainfall amounts. Daily totals were on the 1/4-1/2" scale. Moving East of the Rockies basically crushed that: rather than brief swaps between periods with and without drizzly rain, on this side of the Divide the rain builds up, letting you have days or weeks of sun (and, subsequently, built-up heat), only to be shattered by a diluvial event. We saw earlier this year what that kind of persistent rain can do to hillside stability in the Northwest. On the Eastern seaboard, these isolated events are instead hurricanes that take on multi-state importance. And in the Midwest, "flooding" refers not to oceans rising and rivers building up at their mouths, but to vast swaths whose apparent siccity is belied by the insane water depths that sweep across them once every 100 (or maybe 10) years. It was with only mild sadness, then, that I failed to ride outside this morning, thanks to a classically large Eastern rain cell depositing several inches over a half dozen hours. (A more pedestrian drizzle now falls, and I expect we'll be back to the sun side of the sun/rain detent tomorrow.) But what disappointed me most was the much-anticipated ride to drop my daughter off for the first time at kindergarten. She's ridden the bus 15 or so times already this year, and last weekend she asked if I could ride her over today. Unfortunately, due to the school's "allowed drop-off time" being so late, that can only happen on Thursday; even more unfortunately, this morning was clearly not going to work out for that. I will be seeking new opportunities to initiate her into biking to school, though, in hopes that in the not-too-distant future she'll be able to make the trek more regularly and/or on her own. Maybe we can even convince her local friends to join her.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorA beer-swilling cyclist. Archives
June 2015
Categories |