Up at 0715. I could use more sleep. Worked to recover from the window replacement and related events. Instead of “write once, run anywhere” it should be “wet once, water everywhere.” But I get ahead of myself. Stripped the factory decals from the windows. Cleaned the grease from the windows. Some grease smears on the outside. Need to clean the lower balcony and vacuum around the base of the stairs and the big window. Put away yesterday’s drenched garments. My shoes are like water filled sponges.

Avant Moi, Le Deluge

This was the day of the big drench. After the window replacement, I left the house and dropped off surplus clothing at the St Vincent de Paul location on Wellington West. When I left the house, the heavy rain warning had ended. The sky was spitting but it was nothing serious. On the middle of the Champlain bridge, I encountered a terrific gale of rain driven sideways, blowing in from the east. By the time I reached Wellington West, the storm had built to a biblical deluge.

At St Vincent de Paul, I dropped off the clothes donation and went inside. On a rack near the entrance, I found a Sun Microsystems backpack made of heavy gauge waterproof vinyl. Best of all, the price was right – $5. After I purchased the bag, I went out to the street, found an unoccupied patio umbrella, stripped off the wet rain gear, and swapped it with the dry reserve held in the fanny pack. The entire dripping wet wad was then dumped into Sun Microsystems and I headed for home.

Hard Rain Gonna Fall

Being out in a storm is a very positive experience. First, there is minimal traffic on the bike paths. Only the truly crazed venture out in such inclement weather. But the best part comes from the smiles and knowing glances exchanged between each pair of half dissolved human beings. A cyclist on the Champlain had a plastic shopping bag over his head. It looked like Ebeneezer Scrooge’s night-sock but was stretched out to the west in the wind. I doubt I looked any better. We laughed at our shared wet-happy experience.

Then, at Carleton Junction, a woman cycled by. The same sparkle in her eyes, the same knowing smile: “The rest of them may think us crazy, but this is fun, fun, fun. I’m surviving while Noah is busy herding the animals into the Ark two by two.”

Gale force wind driven rain was encountered on the second Champlain crossing. Arrived home pleased with myself. I was totally soaked but had encountered no real problems. I remained warm, there was no danger of hypothermia, no muscle cramps, no chafe of wet skin against wet canvas. Stripped off for a warm shower. Felt very positive until I dumped a basin full of water all over the bathroom floor. Have no idea how I achieved this outcome. Each time I experience some positive engagement with the world, the world responds and informs me that I am not as alert and proficient as I would like to think.

Whole Lotta History Going On

The positive outcome – I own a piece of history which reminds me of my abortive efforts to learn Java. I found Java very difficult despite prior skills in PL1, x86 Assembler, and vanilla ANSI C. Plus various dialects of Basic, Turtle, Turbo Pascal, and a range of Lotus and Borland product macro languages. But Java? Write once, debug everywhere. Solaris was great, MySQL fantastic, NFS way cool, Wabi neato, network appliances, StarOffice, the first SaaS and cloud offerings, huge support for open source. The list goes on and on. It’s a lot of history. It’s in the bag.

—————————————

St Vincent de Paul had a laptop bag for one of Gargantua’s endless line of interchangeable products. It was $15. It had a slogan. It had a Gargantua logo. It was devoid of history. Not a bargain.