All Wet

A few years after I visited Europe for the first time, I realized that my impression of its beauty may have largely been a product of its precipitation. Having grown up in the desert and rarely traveling outside of Arizona, save for occasional drives through more desert to the beaches of Southern California, I’d rarely traveled where luscious green plants and trees are the norm. My appreciation of the French, German, and Dutch countryside may have largely been an appreciation of not being in a vast, dry wasteland (no offense, Phoenix). In the long run, I’m quite grateful for this outlook; it allows me to marvel at something that non-desert natives may view as commonplace.

Naturally, the lack of desert vegetation goes hand-in-hand with a lack of precipitation. The rains were always a special event in Phoenix and Albuquerque – a break from the norm during the 1 in 100 overcast, drizzly days in the fall, winter, or spring, or a daylong buildup of thunderheads ending in a thrilling twenty minute crescendo of winds, dust, lightening and thunder during the summer monsoons.

So the steady rainfall that started on Tuesday around 7pm was quite charming at first. I got under my blanket in bed and read a book with a glass of wine. It continued through the night, and it didn’t bother me much on my bike ride into work on Wednesday. It was light enough on Wednesday afternoon to simply flutter in small circles in the wind. It came down heavier in its 24th hour on Wednesday evening. By Thursday, it was falling quickly enough that it soaked me during my 7:00am bike ride to my chiropractic appointment, and the wind blew strongly enough to break my umbrella.

The charm evaporated completely by Thursday afternoon, when the rain started pouring heavily horizontally outside of my office window. I waited until after 6pm to ride home, hoping that it would stop. It didn’t, so I got on my bike and headed home. My pants were soaked through five minutes into the 25 minute ride – it was like I’d just jumped into a swimming pool with my clothes on.

So it only took three days of rain – and a half year’s amount in Phoenix – to make me as much of an anti-rain curmudgeon as any other person living in Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, I haven’t taken many nice pictures this week.

But I have been trying some cool beers: