swimming to work

A post about rain. I don’t want to do a post about rain.

Recently Darren Barefoot’s blog had an anniversary [db], he listed off a bunch of blogs and their ‘first posts’ to the world. Looking back, mine is about rain and silly ideas [604], although I’m not sure that was my first post – I think that actually got lost somewhere in the Blogger shuffle hm.

I’ve noticed that leaves in Vancouver are not dealt with. When I lived in Boston every leaf, at various intervals throughout the day was picked up, blown, or raked off of sidewalks and gutters. Bagged and tossed on the curb so that no one would slip, no one would sue and no drains would clog.

In Vancouver we’ve got a pretty efficient drainage system in the city, since well we’re used to a lot of rain. But with leafs slogging up the streets and heavy downpours in short time frames, who knows how we’ll hold up. There’s also the growing risk of mudslides on the North Shore and if you’re headed into Surrey off the Patullo you just KNOW Scott Road will be flooded down by British Motors.

On my way to work this morning I was observing umbrellas again. I noted previously [604] that there are a lot of golf umbrellas out on the town (what’s next, patio-sized?), it’s strange to see umbrella’s held tightly over someone’s head while they’re walking under cover. I don’t just mean leaky scaffolding, I mean under the side of a building that lasts for a block. What do you do in those cases? Put your umbrella to the side? Take it down? Or just continue walking under the shelter with your umbrella protecting your head as you go?

One quick note about driving in the rain. I told John to expect a power outage this weekend, if not for the wind but for the numerous people who drive like maniacs right into power poles and take out the electricity for dozens of city blocks. Twice this weekend cars did not stop while we were crossing an intersection with the walk signal. Once, someone was turning right (they had a red light) and just cruised through to the corner. They didn’t notice me and I ended up on the hood of the car, not too much fun – but luckily he was going slow enough. The second time John and I were walking across the street while a car was making a left turn, he didn’t stop, he just slowed down (about 2 feet away from us). I know pedestrians in this city are crazy, I know I’ll jaywalk sometimes. But when everyone has a specific WALK signal or RED light AND it’s RAINY and DARK? Come on people – pay a little more attention.

On Friday (on a whim, because I’m just geeky like that) I was looking up average annual precipitation for various Canadian cities. Vancouver has by far the most (about 1,110mm/year) with Henderson Lake in BC being the rainiest place in Canada, almost 7,000mm/year. Yeowsa! After us, there’s Quebec city and a couple more places on the East Coast.

Locals know we’re into the rainy season now, it’ll be like this until May (on and off). Remember those 28 straight days of rain last year? Fun. Although I think John prefers this weather to the feet upon feet of snow he would be getting mid-winter in his hometown. And like he always says, in his lovely optimistic way, it may rain all night and morning but in the afternoon you can always look forward to a break in the clouds.

Rain makes me write long rambling blog posts…