A dark and stormy day

I generally tell two kinds of stories: camping stories and Japan stories. Here's a pair of them about rain (inspired by the pounding rain outside)

We usually had pretty good weather on our trips... there were only a few times that it was storming or raining so hard we had to pull off. Once, during a particularly rainy day when we were lake-hopping in Ontario, it finally got too bad so we paddled over to the shore, anchored ourselves, and then huddled under one of those big blue tarps. You might think this would be cozy and nice, but it wasn't - with hands icy but everything else sweaty under the rain gear, we were fairly glum. Finally it let up a little and we threw off the tarp, and beheld a Kool-Aid pink sky. It was so real that I immediately wondered what type of meteorological phenomena would cause this. But alas, the eerie pink sky was only a phenomena of another kind, created by the prolonged exposure to blue light. How real it seemed.

My commute in Japan consisted of a five minute bike ride, followed by two bus rides. Days when it rained always presented a problem. I could wear my rain jacket, backpack underneath, enhancing my foreign freakishness, or I could do what every other Japanese person did - bike while holding an umbrella. Gamely, I set off one rainy morn with the umbrella, winding through the neighborhood and over the small bridges. As I rounded a corner, I saw a motorbike headed my way, and at the same time realized that I had lost control. In that terrible slow motion, I attempted to gain control, but instead progressed steadily at the bike. He saw the panic in my eyes and slowed down, but collision was inevitable. Greatly embarrassed and having failed at the equivalent of patting my head and rubbing my tummy, I resigned myself to the unsightly hunchback jacket for the rest of my time there. [Other lessons about umbrellas learned in Japan include the equation: 2 people + 1 umbrella = 2 people who are 1/2 wet.]