Yes, what I mean is that it is raining like the bejezuz-bells out there. "Monsoon-like" would also be a good way to describe the rather humid conditions out of doors these days. Click here to see what I mean! Almost makes one miss the bland, but ever present, "dry haze" of Los Angeles (no, the sky is not blue there). Almost... It was one of the things that people in Los Angeles always said to me when they heard that I was leaving for Vancouver. "But, what about the rain? Like, dude, what are you going to do?" As if the mere thought of occasionally getting wet (outside the context of surfing, that is) was tantamount to torture.
I grew up on the west coast of Canada, in a lovely little piece of "fake England" called Victoria (I could swear, now that I have seen the real thing, that somebody had the idea of picking up Bournemouth, and relocating it to the southern tip of Vancouver Island!). And although positively balmy by Canadian standards in winter, and downright Mediterranean by summer, Victoria got its fair share of "northern weather." Even if we played ice hockey inside a rink the stinging pain of frozen feet and hands following the soccer match as they warmed in a hot shower is an all too common memory for many of my friends and I.
Endurance through the onslaught of winter in the north is a Canadian identifier and bonding experience across cultural barriers. Once you've "lived through" a few years of near zero degree pounding rain on the West or East coasts, or a sub - insert ludicrous number here - degree snow blown landscape in the rest of Canada, you can safely say you have bonded with the rest of the nation. There is something so endearing, to me at least, about being "out in the weather." It makes you harder somehow, more quietly confident. Enjoying what the out of doors has to offer "in spite of it all" is just something that seems to make sense to me... perhaps it is something that makes me "Canadian?"
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