Like any boater with a pulse, I love rain.  I love the anticipation the sound of rain brings.  What will we run tomorrow?  We’re talking Garbage’s ‘I’m Only Happy When it Rains’ level of enthusiasm for liquid precipitation.  So what I’m about to say might seem strange, or even blasphemous.

I really hate January rain.

At least here in New Hampshire.  It’s awesome to see so many friends getting out in the South east or North West in recent weeks, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit jealous.  But more so than that, January rain (and February rain for that matter) is just a giant pain in the (body part of your choice).  And it’s amplified by the weather rollercoaster we’ve been on the past week.  A foot of snow, followed by a brutal cold snap, followed by warm rain, and then cold again.  The rain wreaks havoc on our snowpack- not only was this going to be the year that I was finally going to take up skiing seriously, but much more importantly, it also means we don’t have as much water in the bank for spring snowmelt paddling.

This time of year, snow tends to build up in front of the Blackfly shop.  I don’t use the overhead doors much in winter, so just enough snow builds up, storm after storm, so that when we do get rain, instead of running away from the shop, it seeps under the doors.  With the roads covered with ice and the kiddo home from school yesterday, I didn’t go into the shop until mid-afternoon, only to discover about a quarter to half inch of water over most of the floor.  It doesn’t do any damage, but it’s a pain to clean up.  I spent the rest of the afternoon chipping, chopping, shoveling and slopping ice and snow and slush to make a channel to drain the shop.  Fans and dehumidifiers going and soon it should be back to normal.

Of course, with temperatures dropping over night, all that packed, wet snow turned into a skating rink, so I spent the first part of the morning spreading 19 five gallon buckets of sand on the driveway.

But now that the chores are done, I think I’m going head to river to enjoy a little bit of high water.