Watershed

There is a moment in "Caddyshack" when Carl, the assistant greens keeper, tells the bishop for whom he is caddying during a torrential rainstorm, "I don't think the heavy stuff is gonna come down for a while yet." This is massive understatement. This is comedy. I laughed.
Today I wasn't laughing. When I stepped off my front porch to go for a quick run before dinner, I guessed that I would have a few sprinkles to contend with, but there had been a downpour just an hour before, so the timing seemed right. As I made my way up the street, the Murphy's law corollary that controls weather events kicked in. The rain picked up, and I heard a little voice inside my head saying, "Three blocks isn't much of a cardiovascular workout." So I kept running.
At the top of the hill, it was coming down in sheets. I told myself that this wave would push on through and leave me a little damp, but I congratulated myself on the foresight of wearing my snazzy rain jacket instead of my usual highly absorbent sweat shirt. My dog remained game, so I pressed on.
It was in my second mile that the hail began. To be fair, "freezing rain" might be the more appropriate term, since there was no residual ice left on the ground, but I could feel the wind kicking up as the little pellets whipped against the back of my neck. Both my dog and I were now having second thoughts. Sadly, I was at least a mile from home at this point no matter how I cut back through the neighborhood, and the protective layer of gortex that had given me comfort just a few moments ago had started to become a limp weight around my shoulders.
Coming back to the house, I had to turn into the wind, and the chill went right through me. My dog stopped to do her business, partly out of necessity and partly out of spite. I looked at my fingers. They were becoming white and pruny.
The rain stopped for the last quarter mile. It was almost like an invitation to take one more turn and go that extra few blocks. No thanks. We squished as we walked up the stairs. I toweled off the dog and peeled off my workout clothes. I smelled like a big, wet gymnasium.
Later, in the shower, as feeling returned to my extremities, I remembered one of the last times I went running as a resident of Colorado. There was ice and snow on all the streets and sidewalks. The footing was treacherous. The temperature was well below zero, and yet I felt compelled to "get my workout in." After four miles in the deep freeze, I returned to my apartment where I realized that my moustache had become caked with a quarter inch of ice from the vapor of my breath. It took five minutes just to defrost my upper lip.
I made a promise that day to remember what "cold" was, for future reference. Today I am making another mental note: Wet.