Not exactly dog days of August

For the record, this is The Summer That Never Was. Our hottest day of the year was in April and right now I doubt we’ll ever get that warm again. Though it’s nice to have the cool nights for sleeping, a little bit of sunshine is good for the soul, and we’ve had just about none of it. July was the second wettest month ever – 9.91 inches of rain. (The wettest month was September 1999, at 11.06 inches.) The weather predictions have primarily been waffling, indecipherable, or wrong, so when we get a day like yesterday, when the forecasters are saying there won’t be any rain but the skies are gloomy, I just can’t believe I’m going to be able to go out without getting hailed on. And hail hurts, even through a protective layer of spandex.

Even so, it’s been an adventurous summer for riding, discovering new roads all over the place, making forays into Albany and Saratoga counties and even giving in to the tyranny that is the State Office Campus ring road, a 3.25k oval with little traffic in the evenings that is used by many athletes with a need to go around a flat circuit. And that’s done wonders for my efforts on the flats. We’ve had the boats out more than last summer, which is saying just about nothing, but still. A couple of nice little road trips but I don’t quite have the nerve to go for one more camping trip; it took a week to dry everything from the last one. Perhaps I’ll change my mind.

Discovering a bunch of new music, by which I mean old music, of course. Continuing my love affair with the ranginess of the Rolling Stones in a mess of numbers I’d never heard before (YouTube is a treasure trove of culture and copyright violations), the “so classic I can’t believe I’ve never heard it” Skeletons’ version of “Waiting for My Gin To Hit Me,” and, in increasing desperation a fair amount of good classical music. Not that I don’t love classical, but it is generally unsuited for listening in the car. I’ve even got new vinyl (I mean, New Vinyl!!!) from The Church.

Reading is all over the map. I’m back into the War of 1812, because someone’s gotta be. Loved Christopher Moore’s new one, “Fool,” a wickedly funny retelling of the tragedy of King Lear with non-stop shagging beginning to end. Just finished T.C. Boyle’s “Talk Talk,” which was pretty good, and then I reached back to 7th grade, reading S.E. Hinton’s “That Was Then, This Is Now.” Some of this reading is being done in a hammock, while ignoring the tall grass underneath me, so the summer cannot be said to have been a complete waste.