entirely safe and fun

The rainy season has finally gotten started in earnest here in California. Punam and I took a jaunt down the coast to Santa Cruz yesterday and were surprised at the fact that there were just a few people in the Burrell School tasting room, and no one at all on the wharf, in any of the restaurants. A small party of local teens rolled up to pick up some clam chowder, and that was it. We ate crabs in the cold rain, with no human presence other than two guys behind the counter, and Madden and Michaels on a tiny TV in the crab stand. M&M were describing the Doom That Came Upon Philadelphia. My fantasy team has Philadelphia as a defense, and I had carelessly left the victorious Colt’s Joseph Addai on my virtual bench as he had his best game to date, so the Doom was not pleasant company. But Punam is cute, the crab guys were nice enough, and the crab was fresh and tasty.

Despite the fact that it’s crab season, we had those tasty decapods entirely to ourselves because our neighbors couldn’t risk getting wet. Now, I will concede that rainy California is not as nice as sunny California. But an inch of rain and 60°F is hardly like the Yukon blizzard of “The Fatal Glass of Beer” (”It ain’t a fit night out, for man or beast! [blast of snow to face]“). Only one conclusion is available to this investigator: Californians are highly soluble.

I leave the investigation of their paradoxical, constant immersion in pools, hot tubs, and the Pacific to my collaborators.