Summer, gone

I guess we should have expected that a summer that was ushered in by endless buckets of rain, and which had even more endless buckets of rain in the middle, would come to a sudden, wet end with a cold, dreary August and an early monsoon season. We had a couple of broiling weeks, and a couple of weeks of absolute perfection, but it seems like it’s all over and we’ve moved into late September about a month early. Highs in the 60s and constant, constant rain. Colors are already changing.

It turned into a less than stellar summer for biking and boating, and I just learned to let go of my obsession. While I don’t object to the discomfort of biking in the rain, I do object to the danger and so I just haven’t gotten in the miles I would normally be aching for. I haven’t been the good boy of the last few years who goes to bed early and gets up earlier in order to get in an early run or ride, and bike commuting didn’t work with our schedules, and for a change I’m pretty okay with it. I wish there’d been more miles, but it just didn’t work out that way.

The boats have been out more than in some years, though, and while it’ll still be a while before we can really get into serious out-of-range canoe camping, the girls both got their kayak handling chops, to the point where both of them were good enough to take other kids out on their own (on the world’s quietest, safest lake).

Went up to a friend’s camp over the weekend, but it was cold and pouring rain. It meant the kids were under our feet, but it was still great to catch up over warming cups of coffee, looking out on the lake under dark, glowering skies. Nice, you know?