I'm not freezing any more, and I hate it.
I got back to Washington State on October 4, bought a car, and began living in it. According to plan.
According to hope, but not hopefully, I caught a spell of fair weather, which is like free bags of gold dust handed out on street corners in western Washington in November. Rare. Unheard of.
Usually the rain doesn't start until the third week of October, sometimes earlier. But November is dead set on rain. It's always there, no avoiding it.
Except for 2002, when blue skies, sun, and calm air prevailed pretty much through the whole month of November, when I made one of the greatest day hikes of my life up the west slope of Mt St Helens. And except for 2019, which is now.
First, I got back here. Then I got the car. Then the rains began and I went nuts.
The bad part of buying a car is that you have to wait for the registration and the title and the plates, which takes about six weeks. You can't avoid that.
So there I was, here I was, in the rain, and looking at another five-and-a-half-weeks-of-it, so I bugged out for eastern Washington and got away from it for four or five days. And by then?
Well, by then a high pressure zone floated in and western Washington also got clear and sunny. And cold. Very cold some nights. Hard cold. Hand-freezing cold.
I managed.
It hurt, but it was only pain. Pain isn't always bad, because this was clean weather. Dry weather. Cold weather. Almost a month of it in total, combining eastern and western Washington locations.
If you're cold, you warm up, by going inside somewhere, by putting on more insulation, or by exercising. That's it. Wet does not work that way.
Get wet, and you stay wet, sometimes for days, even indoors. It used to take two full days for my bicycling clothing to dry after I washed it in winter, in the cool air and the humid air inside my apartment.
Cold isn't like that.
If you're cold and you do something about it, you get instant results. Period.
Cold is predictable. It cooperates. Fight it and it yields, not lingering forever, not hanging around inside your shoes, making your skin feel slimy. Cold really is clean. I like it, a lot better than wet, but now things are wet again, and I've been having troubles with the dealer where I bought my car. Things are slow. Dragging on and on.
Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. I should finally have my plates, and then I can leave, can take back control of my life and tour. I want to head south to see the deserts and the desert winter sunshine. I can hardly wait.
Maybe in a day or two. Maybe I'll be free by then.
Meanwhile, I'm wet. I hate being wet. Time for sun.
Ruffle my fur, see what happens. I dare you.
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