Sympathy for Arkansas, or Why You Should Never Trust a Weather Forecaster

The reading is still going on fast and furiously, though I didn't read quite so many books this week. That's because the last one was one of Tom Clancy's books (Executive Orders), written after he became too important to edit. I really feel like I ought to get triple credit for it-- at over 900 pages, it was like reading three ordinary books. (Note I found it readable enough, if rather meandering. However it does contain a rather tiresome amount of 'how everything would be better if we would all listen to Tom's political theories', which you have to be willing to overlook.) Anyway, it would have been a much better book if it had been edited down to half the length. And lost the danged cement mixer. It had nothing to do with anything else.

In traveling news, I spent the weekend covering ground, one way or another. Saturday morning my husband and I set out on our 'probably ten mile hike'. It was overcast and sticky, but the weather forecast had said that it wouldn't rain until late afternoon. (Ha!) So, we set off on a mildly ambitious hike, up Long Mountain in the Holyoke Range. As we got out of the car, I looked at our umbrellas, and said, "Nah, not supposed to rain. And if we get a sprinkle or two, I won't melt." And after all, we'd carried umbrellas all day in Newport the week before and hardly seen a drop of rain. (Ha, again!)

So we set off from the trailhead, wisely opted to circumnavigate Mount Norwottuck (rather than adding going up and down a second peak to our route). We climbed over the shoulder of the mountain, though, and then down into the valley between Norwottuck and Long Mountain. We did not take the swamp trail (think mosquitos the size of hummingbirds). And then we started the ascent of Long Mountain. The air was incredibly wet, and the woods looked very lush and green around us. The clouds were even lower than they'd been when we started out. It started to sprinkle. "Guess we're going to get a little damp after all," I said, regretting the absent umbrella. But we were too determined to let a little water stop us, so we continued on. The sprinkle turned into light rain, pattering through the leaves and dripping on us. We slowed to a stop and looked around uneasily (about time!). "This doesn't look like it's slowing down," I said slowly.

"No," my husband agreed. "Maybe it would be sensible to turn back."

"That's what I was thinking."

The light rain continued, as we walked back down into the valley between the two peaks. "I'm starting to be pretty wet," I remarked.

"We've been wetter." Jonathan had to remind me of the occasion, we'd been walking around Washington some years back and had been caught in a sudden downpour.

"Okay," I admitted. "We aren't as wet as we were then." We hit the top of the shoulder, and started back down to the trailhead. The rain continued to get heavier and heavier. The rain dripped on our glasses and they fogged up. (You'd think they'd do one or the other, but no- both.) We kept walking. By now, the rain was running down the trail in little streamlets and the trail was turning into a morass of mud. I was soaked to the skin, my hair dripping down my back. I pulled out the tail of my T-shirt and wrung it, getting a stream of water. "Now, I'm as wet as I was in Washington!" I announced, and we both laughed.

In the fullness of time, we arrived back at the car, and the rain tapered off to a drizzle (of course!). We were utterly drenched and splashed with mud to the knees. We beat a hasty retreat back to my mother-in-law's place (our staging point for the hike) and cleaned up and changed.

Fortunately the rest of the plan for the day involved hanging out with friends indoors. I took a little break from the socks and cast on some mittens:
.

And that was Saturday...and it's past my bedtime, so I'll have to tell you about Sunday later!