A Good Rain Poncho

"I'm not going to miss this,

so I bought a poncho. 

I'm not leaving."

-- Giants fan James Olson, 

"Poncho Party: Giants Fans Unruffled by Rain," 

SFGate.com

Happy yellow bendy man in a rain poncho 11-1-14

"Make it rain you need a poncho pronto."

-- D-WHY, "Bugatti Problems"

Leo's football team played their conference championship game last night.

The weather was shitty as hell -- hard constant rain, gusty wind, dropping temperatures.

On the sidelines, the players wore ponchos over their shoulder pads.

The band wore ponchos over their uniforms.

The woodwinds had plastic little condom-like ponchos over their instruments. (In the interest of practicing "safe sax." Bah-dum-pum.)

And while our boys fought it out on the soggy, slippery field under the lights, we fans fought behind them in the cold wet bleachers under our rain ponchos.

And raincoats. And umbrellas. And boots. And hats. And blankets. And anything else warm and waterproof we could layer on to keep the elements the fuck out. One guy even wore a rubber Halloween mask. At least his face was dry.

Sitting outside in nasty weather cheering and rooting for our team did something good to us fans -- it knit us up in a "we're all in this together" kind of unity. We all snuggled close like those Emperor Penguins in Antarctica who huddle together to protect each other, and their eggs, from exposure to the elements.

Most of the home fans across the field bailed after the halftime show.

Pussies.

Not us.

On the visitors side we stuck it out. We hung in there to the bitter end. We did not give up on our boys, because our boys never gave up on the game.

And our boys won, in overtime, and were crowned conference champions. Leo played great. Nobody got hurt.

Even though it was rainy and blustery and cold and miserable, I barely felt it. I was too busy cheering to care about the weather.  Under my trusty poncho and about six other layers of rain gear, I barely felt a thing.

Except pride and joy.

Changing Seasons

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."

-- L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Oak leaf 9-30-14

"Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons."

-- Jim Bishop

Meadow 9-30-14

"I cannot endure to waste anything 

so precious as autumnal sunshine 

by staying in the house."

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks

Bench 9-30-14

I bitch a lot about the weather.

Winter is too cold, and too long.

Summer is never hot enough, or long enough.

Spring never comes soon enough.

Blah, blah, blah-de-blah.

But Autumn? You'll never hear me bitch about Autumn.

Autumn's arrival is glorious. Her stay is an ever-changing landscape of moving color. Even her departure is rather holy, cloaked in the sacred hush of Winter's first snowfall.

I took an impromptu walk in the woods yesterday. I was on a motorcycle ride, with the camera in my saddlebag. So I decided to stop and have a look-around.

Autumn in Ohio is just taking tentative, early baby steps.

Monarch 9-30-14

The late afternoon sunlight was streaming through the trees, spotlighting her first blush of colorful beauty.


A "V" of noisy geese shared space in the sky with a quiet crescent moon.

A ragged Monarch with tattered wings was loading up on last minute flower juice before making the big trip to Mexico.

As much as I love a good view of Autumn's grandeur through the visor on my motorcycle helmet, I have to say, it was equally lovely off the bike, up close through the camera lens.

It's a good thing I stopped.

Meadow grass 9-30-14

Blowin' In The Wind

"The wind shows us how close to the edge we are."

-- Joan Didion

Paper cocktail umbrella 9-11-14

"No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,

Watches beside me in this windy place."

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Night is My Sister"

"Everyone knows it's Windy."

-- The Association, "Windy"

I ride my bicycle primarily around farmland. Right now, the corn is high and the full fields provide lovely protection against the headwinds and cross-winds that typically whip and blow across the flat openness.

Except that now is the time of year when the farmer's start harvesting the crops. And as the combines gobble all of the corn and soybeans, they are also gobbling all of my good windbreaks.

The weather is particularly windy at the moment. Like, tornado watch windy.

Winds like these make it pretty tough sledding for a solo cyclist.

Unless that breeze is at my back, it's nothing but a bitch.

And so, while they still stand, I will appreciate and enjoy each day that the towering stands of corn line my route, like sentinel soldiers, watching out for me. Protecting me from the enemy.

Pretty soon the fields will be stripped shockingly bare and that cruel taskmaster, wind, will have its way, eventually driving me indoors until Spring comes 'round again.

Sometimes you don't know how good you've got it 'til it's gone.

Letting The Outside In

"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day."

-- Edith Wharton, 

Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses

Toy window 8-14-14

"How does light enter a house? If the windows are open.

How does light enter a human? If the door of love is open."

-- Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

Every summer a war rages in my house.

The guys like it cool.

I like it hot.

As soon as the furnace is turned off in spring, they turn the AC on.

On any given summer day, it's not unusual to hear one of them complaining, shirtless, about how "stinkin' hot it is in here," while I'm shivering in a sweater and jeans under a fuzzy blanket.

If it was up to me, I'd have the windows and doors open all summer long, except maybe during the most heinous heat waves. 

But the guys like to batten down the hatches, lock everything up and seal us in tight day after day after day after day -- like lizards in a terrarium. 

Maybe it's my claustrophobia, but I can't stand being shut in like that.  It's stifling. I can't breathe.

I like to let the outside in so I can feel the breeze, smell the air, hear the rain and the birds and the children and the lawn mowers.

Don't tell the guys, but sometimes, when I'm home alone, I leave the AC on and open the windows anyway. (In the winter, I do the reverse -- open the windows and jack up the heat. I do the same thing in my car.)

But then there are days -- days when the natural atmosphere outside matches the climate-controlled atmosphere inside -- when the temperature settles in at a perfect 70-something and a lazy breeze chases away the dampness and humidity -- when I can throw up the sashes and let the air out there mingle with the air in here.

We're in a stretch of days like that, and I have the place wide open.

These are the days when there's no need to battle and we can call a truce in the window war. 

Plus, I'm home alone and there's nobody here to tell me that I can't.