A Perfect Storm?

June 8th...

Chaleur is over. No more sleeping with the fan on full blast. No more sweating through the day and night. No more trudging through the heat down the street to our local bar to sit out on the breezy second story with an ice cold drink (though that’s still a good idea any time, regardless of the weather). La saison, they say, est fini. It has been replaced, though, with la saison des pluies. The rainy season. And it came with a vengeance.


We have actually been saying for weeks now that the long, hot, dry season was coming to a close. The days have cooled off and become a little more humid. Clouds have been dotting the skies. Some rain has come down here and there. But not like today.


We were fortunate and blessed to come here from San Diego, which sees more than 300 days of sunshine each year. Rain was always an enigma to me. Sometimes when it rained in San Diego, I would just curl up on the couch and watch out the window as the rain would be illuminated as it came down through the glow of the streetlight. For part of our honeymoon in Miami we were entranced as South Beach flooded so massively that patio furniture outside the hotel began floating down the street. A lone biker slowly made his way down the street, his feet submerged completely under the water as he cranked the pedal downwards. That was me today.


I went to my girls’ soccer practice at 4pm at our local school, and saw some dark, ominous clouds on the horizon and coming my way, but didn’t think anything of them, even though they brought with them thunder and lightning. In my naivety, I thought it would pass. It didn’t. I decided to call an early end to practice, and as we were on our way out of the school, Heather called.


“Craig, are you coming home soon?”


“Yeah, we’re finishing up and on our way out.”


“It’s going to pour!”


As soon as she hung up, it started pouring at our house, about a mile away to the east. Less than a minute after that it would get to me and I had to ride into the storm. I was just at the front of the school when I was smacked in the face by a blinding, sideways rain. I literally could not see more than 20 yards ahead of me. The dirt road I was riding down was a river a few inches deep and I was pedaling against it. For some strange reason, some people were still outside! I pedaled past men pushing rickshaws full of wood as well as quite a few children whose parents had sent them outside to get water, balancing the full bassines on their heads while waiting for someone to open the door to their concession so they could enter. Our concession was under a few inches of water when I arrived. Our welcome mat was not, in fact, welcoming. Electricity was out (though it came on soon thereafter). Heather was taking a video of our concession as I tramped in, soaking wet.


I watched the video later. I looked like a wet dog. My hair was matted and my clothes stuck to me as I trudged through the concession, high-stepping through a few inches of water with my bike in tow, trying to keep my sandals from sliding off of my feet.


The storm kept up for a solid two hours. By nightfall the storm was on its way out. Over the next few days, we discovered that some trees in a rare pretty shaded area had fallen over, their exposed, gnarled trunks shredded from the high winds; roofs had been ripped off houses; some dirt roads will need to be re-graded from the rivers that ran down them just a few days before.


The rainy season is here, and I learned an important lesson this time: Whenever I go out, in addition to bringing a book, always pack a poncho. At least until chaleur rears its ugly head again.