Wet

In Seattle, if you don’t ride your bike in the rain, you won’t be riding your bike very much—at least, (if things are typical) in late November and all through December, not to mention most of January through July.

Last night, I went out to hear some music—the band Head Like a Kite, who were more like a clever performance art ensemble than the funky groovemeisters I expected them to be—and I almost didn’t, given how steadily it was pissing down from just after dark all night long and well into the morning through the time I went out for my usual sunrise coffee and pastry and beyond.

The standard for wetness is achieved for me when I have to don my shoe covers: lots of time, the damp can be managed with just wool, which is pretty ideal for the misty drizzle that typifies the season in our part of the Northwest. If it’s coming down a little harder, I go to my Gore-Tex rain jacket; if it’s still worse, out come the nylon pants; finally, then it’s the overshoes, whose dorkiness is so manifest, I prefer to hold them out as a last resort.

But fashion succumbs to practicality fairly quickly when the heavens open wide, and so I set aside most qualms about bagging myself all up from head to toe before I set sail last night. Consequently, I arrived at the club reasonably dry on the inside, even though everything I was wearing on the outside was sopping.

In fact, I got wetter taking all my stuff off and stowing it than I did while I was riding, which really made me think that—as a public service—nightclubs should be forced to have coat checks. As it was, you had all these people ranging around the show in their puffy coats and ski caps—which probably put something of a damper on the dancing, too.

Damper, hah! That’s funny.