All Wet

It was a baptism, of sorts. It was my first ride of the school year in the rain. I had prepared for one a week ago, with all the gear and extra preparations, but the initial blast of El Nino never appeared. Monday morning, it was there, filling my morning commute with little drops of sunshine that felt oddly like rain. Because they were.
It was also the first time I had a chance to try out the new bike in less-than-ideal conditions. Somehow I had imagined that I might have a harder time going up or down hills, or that the chain might just fly off and get stuck in some wet bush, causing me to have to stand there on the curb, shivering in the cold and waiting anxiously for the assistance of my roadside crew. None of these things happened. It was the usual, dull side streets. It was the trip that I had been making for decades. The same one I have made in the wind and the rain and the sun and by the light of the moon. It made me hearken back to the words my wife spoke to me from her warm bed, "Don't you just love riding in the rain?"
Well, no. I don't hate it. But I don't love it.
Then she asked if I still liked riding my bike to school.
I don't hate it.
It's part of my day. It is as inevitable as the sun coming up and the sun going down, which often coincides directly with the times I find myself making this little trip. Sometimes it's in the rain. For the past year or two, that hasn't been the case. Thanks to an extended drought here in California, the number of times that I have arrived at work damp from an additional shower from Mother Nature has been limited in the extreme. I don't love that. If pressed, I would say that riding my bike to work in the rain would mean that there was rain and therefore I was happy. Or happier. Which seems somewhat contradictory, since I have already said that I am not in love with riding to work in the rain.
Sometimes it's confusing to be me. Mostly when I have to explain it.