Or:
Help. It never rains any more these days!
I have now been going from Ottobrunn to Unterhaching by bike for quite a few years. And if all goes well, there will be another three to four years ahead of me. During the last ten years, my raincoat was a reliable accessory I always carried with me. Being an obsessive person, I always have it in my bag. After all, I do not want to get wet.
Lately, something strikes me as rather strange: I only seem to need my raincoat very rarely these days. It spends week after week folded into the red saddle-bag (Ortlieb) and is never taken out. So today, I asked myself:
When was the last time you wore your raincoat?
The answer was:
“A long time ago!”
Now, in my opinion, there might be several explanations for this phenomenon:
🙂
- I suffer from the first stage of dementia and cannot remember having worn the raincoat, for example, yesterday,
- I no longer notice the rain, because I go by bike all the time, anyway,
- I drive so fast that the raindrops cannot reach me any more, or
- there is really less rain than there used to be.
Well, I do remember getting really annoyed about constantly getting wet from the rain when I was younger. Somehow or other, answer number four seems to be the right one.
Incidentally, the raincoat has been sitting in the saddlebag for months on end now. To be sure, this year we had more snow than during the last few years, but somehow or other all the snow seems to have been more on the ground than in the air.
In the autumn, the weather was sometimes bad, and we had some occasional rains. However, the rain mostly lasted just a short time, so I could easily wait for it to stop and then ride home nice and dry. It has been a long time since I last experienced a real country rain without interruptions.
I guess a biker is more aware of the weather than someone who drives a car. Consequently, I also notice that there is more lightning than there used to be. And I also get the impression that the wind blows harder more often. Those are the times when there is really hard rain. But you do not have to wait long before those deluges are over.
Basically, this development is good news for bikers. On the other hand, the reason might be the climate catastrophe, and that would not be good news at all.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
On the picture, you see me as I arrive at InterFace in Unterhaching on a rainy day. The picture was taken by Doris Kling.
🙂 However, this was quite some time ago. These days, I do not have to wear all these layers of protection against rain. Now I hope that I will not be punished for writing this article by several weeks of country rain.
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