First big rainstorm of the season, and Northern California lost it’s collective, freaking mind. Off the hook crazy hype. Not just stockpiling toilet paper and bullets for the upcoming deluge, but sandbagging regular homes.

On the local news, a man who had been in some reportedly hour-long line for his share of government-issued heavy plastic bags of clean sand explained his need. Last year, the rain came and some water created pools, puddles I think are the technical term, on the floor of his garage. This year, he wasn’t going to relive the devastation, he was preparing for the worst. Bags would be dropped in a line along the crack of his garage door.

Foolishly, M. and I took our chances with no protection. My only plan, if puddles were to form in our garage, was to hope for drying and evaporation once the storm had passed.

Work was somewhat subdued and empty, as the word had gone out to take caution. Truth be told, it is dangerous here when the winds blow and the water falls from the sky. Dangerous, because Californians are collectively fucking morons and pussies in the rain.

Highway driving involves a lot of high speed braking in low visibility. The news and safety officials are smart to discuss the dangers of hydroplaning, because stupid shits jamming two-footed on their brakes, as opposed to say, reducing speed gradually, do have a tendency to glide over the skies’ fallen water. Sharply turning your wheel while braking also helps, along with switching lanes for no, ungodly reason.

After I braved the highway and made it to work, I couldn’t avoid the hysteria. A native Californian was scheduled to board a commercial flight, in the rain. By god the rain, people, the rain. The mere thought of being hurtled through space while there was precipitation in the atmosphere. Unimaginable.

i was a lone voice of sanity in the wilderness. Actually, I wasn’t a lone voice. Everyone around who has ever lived in another geographical area with actual weather was mocking the hype. The Californians, well the susceptible, gullible ones, succumbed to fear. Unfortunately for me, I was directly in the path of a quaking, quivering native.

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