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Ain’t no mountain biker
June 27, 2006
This week’s weather conditions have been less than ideal. It hasn’t stopped raining for the last four days.
Actually, that’s a lie. Occasionally, and lasting for less than three minutes, the black storm clouds will grab lunch and the sun will make a small and extremely hot appearance to hold down the sky. You know how sometimes, while swimming, you’ll hit an especially warm patch of water? It’s like that. In the air.
We haven’t seen the worst of it in my area (probably due to the infinite grassy fields), but from what I hear, the rain has flooded the nearby Wal-Mart and sent the cars parked outside afloat. Makes perfect sense, right? Let’s chance the weather and ruin our $22,000 vehicles for $3.29 toilet paper.
My main job here, besides instructing lacrosse, is to be directly responsible for a group of seven 14-year-old girls. That job description generally entails that 1.) I sleep well enough that I have enough energy to make 30+ kids enthusiastic about a sport that, frankly, I’m tiring of, and 2.) I sleep lightly enough to be able to catch seven 14-year-old girls before they can sneak out of bed to the beach and fondle seven 14-year-old boys.
Yesterday however, luckily for me, both mountain bike instructors happened to accidentally have off on the same day and they needed me to fill in. Do they call off the day’s sports because of torrential downpours? Nope. Are the kids who take the mountain bike courses generally pretty good bikers? Absolutely.
I was on the tail end of a group of kids for around four hours, during which time we biked about a mile into the woods, over and down muddy hills, and into several insect nests. My entire body was so completely caked in mud that by the time I finally made it to a shower, I stood there for fifteen minutes, too exhausted to peel the soaking clothes from my skin. The two rather large German boys who instruct this class will do well never to let this happen to me again.
I’m so sick of being wet that the novelty of living on the waterfront has somewhat lost its draw.
Categories: Daily, Jobs, Traveling
June 28th, 2006 at 1:57 am
Ugh, I can’t wait for this weather to end!
June 28th, 2006 at 8:08 am
Sounds tough. I like rainy weather only when I’m safe in my home, and its the perfect weather to sleep in. But not when I’m outside. I can’t believe that you could tolerate not washing off the mud for fifteen minutes. You must have been totally wiped to not be able to even take off your clothes. I hope the weather clears up soon!
June 28th, 2006 at 11:40 am
Ugh, I think I would get sick of wet weather, too if it poured constantly. Well, I hope the sun shines soon =)
June 28th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
I remember working at a summer camp. There was no WAY you would have gotten any of those kids to do anything in the rain. Especially not the 13-year-old girls (the camp only went up to age 13).