One of life's lessons...

So I work for a contractor company that works for a gas company and I was doing a patrol through some woods on a hiking trail looking for an exposed pipeline. It was a nice day, the sun was shining and the only clouds that were visible were a few white puffy clouds here and there. So when I was told by my maps that I would have to get out and walk 1.5 miles back to where my coordinates were taking me, I didn’t think about bringing my umbrella. I didn’t look like it was going to rain anytime soon and since it was pretty warm, I decided to leave my sweatshirt in the car as well.

After getting the coordinates in my phone and making sure that I was stretched out for the 3 mile hike ahead of me (1.5 miles there and 1.5 miles back) I started my journey through the woods feeling pretty good and thankful that I had a job that is paying me to go hiking. I was enjoying the sites and had walked 1 mile already when I noticed that the wind had picked up and seemed to be moving pretty quick towards me, or at least I thought it was wind, but when I looked up and was trying to figure out where the wind was coming from, I noticed this curtain moving through the trees….It was rain!! And not just a sprinkle of rain either, It was a downpour! I was already a mile into my hike and only had half a mile left to get to where the coordinates were sending me so I decided to just buck up and keep walking. I put my phone in my pants pocket to try and keep it dry and just kept walking. I figured that this rain couldn’t last that long. Yeah, famous last words by the way. I walked that entire time with a drizzle happening through the trees.

The funny thing about it was that if it hadn’t been fall, and the leaves were all still on the trees like in the late spring or even a few weeks before this day, I wouldn’t have been that soaked. But just as my luck is horrible, the trees are losing their leaves which made it easier for the rain to reach me and by the time I had reached my destination, I was completely soaked. So after doing what I needed to do, I turned around and walked back to my car. At this point the rain had died down to just a sprinkle and the sun was coming back out again. While I was walking, I started to notice that towards the end of the walk, there was no moisture at all on the ground. In fact, when I got back to my car, it was completely DRY!! It hadn’t rained at my car at all!! So I looked like I had hiked to a creek or stream and just jumped right in. There were people just starting the hike looking at me like I was crazy or something as I was walking back to my car soaked while everything else was dry.

So moral of the story guys is that even though it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain, and you know that rain is in the forecast for that day, don’t forget your umbrella. I know sometimes it can be a hassle to carry one around all the time and even though it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain, You just never know when something might pop up and then you will get stuck out in the rain getting soaked. So don’t forget your umbrella!