Weather
Flashback time...
The other night, I was walking home in this misty, cold November rain (ack! I just totally made an unintentional Guns and Roses reference! That's so wrong!) Sorry, got sidetracked there. So, I was in this rain, getting colder and wetter every minute, and I just had this sensory flashback to a moment last year in Ecuador.
Ecuador's got two seasons: dry (and relatively cool) and rainy (and very hot and humid). They depend on coastal currents so the exact start date varies a bit from year to year. There's this period between dry and rainy where it just steadily gets hotter and hotter, and every day it looks like it's going to rain, but it doesn't. And it feels like everyone and everything is just waiting for that first rain to fall, but it seems like it never will. Because the transition date is so unpredictable, thsi time can last weeks with no idea when the rains will finally start.
So, this past year, we were in that weird transition time. One night, I was coming home from visiting my goddaughter. I could either take 2 buses and get dropped off at my door, or take one and walk about 12 blocks. I felt like walking. Almost immediately after getting off the bus, the sky opened up. It started to POUR. Within minutes, the water was ankle deep in the streets. No thunder, no lightning, no wind, but walking down the street, it was like someone just kept pouring buckets and buckets of water over my head. Wiithin a block, I realized that there was no way to escape it: no buses passed on this street, there were no open stores to duck in, I was just going to be completely and utterly soaked.
At that moment, I just started to laugh. The rains were here! It was so hot, and I'd been so sticky and sweaty that the rain felt really good. I was headed home to dry clothes, with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be that night. So I just enjoyed it. Splashed through the puddles like a kindergartener. Exchanged smiles with other dripping pedestrians as we waded across streets turned into streams. It's hard to explain, but that rain was something we'd been waiting for for so long, and was this delicious cool break from the heat, and it seemed like folks were just so glad...por fin, la lluvia...and so accepting of the fact that we were just going to get drenched, that no one seemed to mind.
Rain isn't nearly as exciting when it's 40 degrees as when it's 85. But walking home the other night mid-flashback, I had the same silly grin on my face.
The other night, I was walking home in this misty, cold November rain (ack! I just totally made an unintentional Guns and Roses reference! That's so wrong!) Sorry, got sidetracked there. So, I was in this rain, getting colder and wetter every minute, and I just had this sensory flashback to a moment last year in Ecuador.
Ecuador's got two seasons: dry (and relatively cool) and rainy (and very hot and humid). They depend on coastal currents so the exact start date varies a bit from year to year. There's this period between dry and rainy where it just steadily gets hotter and hotter, and every day it looks like it's going to rain, but it doesn't. And it feels like everyone and everything is just waiting for that first rain to fall, but it seems like it never will. Because the transition date is so unpredictable, thsi time can last weeks with no idea when the rains will finally start.
So, this past year, we were in that weird transition time. One night, I was coming home from visiting my goddaughter. I could either take 2 buses and get dropped off at my door, or take one and walk about 12 blocks. I felt like walking. Almost immediately after getting off the bus, the sky opened up. It started to POUR. Within minutes, the water was ankle deep in the streets. No thunder, no lightning, no wind, but walking down the street, it was like someone just kept pouring buckets and buckets of water over my head. Wiithin a block, I realized that there was no way to escape it: no buses passed on this street, there were no open stores to duck in, I was just going to be completely and utterly soaked.
At that moment, I just started to laugh. The rains were here! It was so hot, and I'd been so sticky and sweaty that the rain felt really good. I was headed home to dry clothes, with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be that night. So I just enjoyed it. Splashed through the puddles like a kindergartener. Exchanged smiles with other dripping pedestrians as we waded across streets turned into streams. It's hard to explain, but that rain was something we'd been waiting for for so long, and was this delicious cool break from the heat, and it seemed like folks were just so glad...por fin, la lluvia...and so accepting of the fact that we were just going to get drenched, that no one seemed to mind.
Rain isn't nearly as exciting when it's 40 degrees as when it's 85. But walking home the other night mid-flashback, I had the same silly grin on my face.