It’s raining again
Part 4 and final of the Away Again series (missed the others? Start here).
Wet and dreary. Not a day for beaches and bikes.
It’s raining. It rained quite heavily overnight, enough to wake me from time to time. But while there were small respites then, the rain has now settled in, along with a dreary melancholy and a chill in the air.
I am alone in my cabin, my skin brown from a few long days in the sun, but now covered and cold. My fading navy-blue cotton fisherman’s jumper gives me some comfort, but my shorts and bare feet remain in a dogged resistance to the inclemency. ‘I am away!’ they scream in late-Spring defiance. It is not a time for shoes, socks, jeans, and layers.
The usually wide-open windows and door are now closed against the incessant rain and wind. It is a small cabin, typical of any ‘o-nite cabin’ that adorn faceless van parks up and down the coast; cabins that bring their own melancholy of lost dreams and broken hearts, but flicker with delicate new life and dwindling hope as they teeter on the edge of renewal and despair.
The cold adds to the bleakness within and without. But as the morning crawls towards midday, I hope the cabin heats up. If not, I will concede and dress more appropriately. As a last resort, I will switch on the small column heater I found in the cupboard yesterday.
Travelling on a motorbike restricts me. In a car, I could escape the rain and go watch a movie or sit in a café, or park by the ocean and watch the rain on the water. But on a motorcycle, I would only get soaked through and be miserable. And, as I have found out too many times on a bike, once you’re wet, you’re wet – and Kevlar jeans and a thick leather motorcycle jacket can take days to dry out.
But I am on a bike, which is what I want. Today simply reveals the reality of riding – and it is a good reality: one that forces you to slow down, to have your decisions governed by the weather, to expand the range between high and low which today means being uncomfortable, bored, and cold.
‘Our cossetted, over-heated way of life may have robbed us of a natural ability, evident in most mammals, to enjoy both extremes of the spectrum of warm and cold,’ wrote environmentalist and writer, Roger Deakin.
The cold continues, and the rain shows no desire of abating. So today will be quiet: it will be a day for reading and writing, and for playing solitaire; of being alone with my thoughts and my own dwindling hope of clearing skies for tomorrow’s ride home.
Postscript: I turned on the heater.
* Deakin, Roger (2000) Waterlog