Sunday, December 14, 2008

Rain

I've mentioned in previous posts that I've been on the road a lot lately. I will be gone more time in December than I am home. Or maybe now it will be about equal, as I am deferring one of my trips until mid-January (or so they think - but more on that in a week or so).

As always, most of the time has been in DC. And for the kerjillions of times I have traveled there for work, I had only encountered rain (or bad weather) twice. Once was last summer where I was treated to a cool-ass thunderstorm on one of the hottest days of the year.

The second time was this last week. It was the Morton's salt tagline: when it rains it pours. At times it seemed frickin' biblical.

I love getting to DC in Winter (yes, technically I know it is not yet winter!) and it's 65. It was last January too, and everyone was bundled in their hats, gloves and scarves. I laughed at them aloud. They had it coming.

So anyhoo, it was 65 when I arrived on Wednesday. Grey, but still....... It had been in the 20s when I left Cleveburgh. I'll deal with grey.

Thursday however, not so pretty. The temps from Ohio started to follow me, but DC is south enough where that precipitation that hit New England was rain and not snow or ice. And it was a lot o'rain. They were expecting as much in one day as they'd normally get in a month.

I'm a good business traveler. Even with all the good weather travel I have, an umbrella (ella-ella-ella) resides in my suitcase. I've just never used it. Until the other day, that is. It made it around DC and up to Silver Spring, before it died. The thing just collapsed with no hope of resuscitating it. It was D.O.A. FRICK!

5:30 p.m. in Silver Spring on a dark and rainy night is no time to go searching for an umbrella. At first I thought I could make it to the Metro, but it was a deluge. So I walked towards shopping the opposite direction. It was a deluge. My suit was soaked.

Many a store later, I finally found a little Totes in a DSW. The last black one. The rest were pink and red and some other girly colour (hush all of you!). DSW sells their rain cover gear in the women's section of the store, I guess because real men don't mind getting wet.

But I am a delicate flower. Spun sugar, even. I melt in the rain.

Closer to reality - I'm the Wicked Witch of the West. An evil crone.....and yet I still melt in the rain.

The temps had also dropped. As I walked yet again in the direction of the red line, my hands were freezing and it seemed not long before the water turned to ice. But it never crossed that threshold.

I got back to my hotel (this time, with no straight folks bumping uglies in the room) just to warm up and take off my suit and hope it dried before I had to pack it. Either way, it's going to the dry cleaner. I just kept looking out the window into the dark, catching rain hitting puddles near the glow of street lights.

I ordered room service. I wasn't going out in that. The food was as room service normally is: bad. I should have ventured out into the cold and wet and just found some hole in the wall place to grab some chow.

The next morning, while New England had lost most of its power, DC was dry. No rain. Cold, but no rain. And when I say cold, they were DC cold, not NE Ohio cold.

And I was home for a little more than a day - and today I am off to Miami. Don't get too excited - it is all work. Maybe a few hours to myself. I could not find a plane to get me there before my three hour meeting, so I get to spend the night! Whoo-----hooo?



Song by: Patty Griffin

3 comments:

tornwordo said...

You need a raincoat and a plastic bonnet. Umbrellas are no good for real storms. I'm already sick of the snow and it's not even winter yet.

Anonymous said...

Wicked Witch of the MID-west!

I like the suggestion above. I'd pay 20 bucks to see a photo of you in your plastic bonnet...

A Lewis said...

Come on out to the Pacific Northwest...I'll show you some rain...most any day of the year.