Biking to Church in the Rain

This morning Rick looked out the window and reported that it was a Minnesota all day rain. If you live together for 47 years and have moved as often as we have, you have a definite framework from which to communicate. I knew what he meant. It was a soaking rain that was moderately heavy. As opposed to the dribbles that we usually get in Beijing which count as rain in what is a very arid climate most of the year. (Although July is when it is humid and most of the rain for the year falls, so it is moving into damper weather here.) Or as opposed to an “embarrassing” rain as we experienced for half an hour almost every afternoon in Panama. “Embarrassing” because even if you had an umbrella you were so soaked that you could see your underwear through your clothes. Usually it is nice to have some rain in Beijing, however it is Sunday morning, which means we have a two mile bike rain in the rain. Now we can do this with very light weight rain panchos. Be sure to have see through plastic ones so that you can use the hood, and turn your head and see to the side and behind you. (If the hoods are not see through your vision is blocked.) At times we have biked holding umbrellas, as many other people do, but it is awkward at best and at times dangerous, so ponchos are definitely a better option. It has been in the upper 80’s and beyond for a week or two, but the rain cooled it down to a cold 70 degrees. We also had an added problem. Today was the Sunday when we bring clothes to trade. Most Chinese do not need used clothing, but Chinese cannot come to our International church service anyway. (We even have been having to show our passports to enter church lately. You can fill out a form and probably come if you are a Chinese spouse, but the church has agreed to just tear up the forms if the government asks if any nationals attend.) But it is a fun time for our African, Indonesian, US, etc. congregation to trade clothes.  Much needed as well. But I had a big bag of clothes and shoes that had to be split into 2 bags and put in our bike baskets and sealed so that rain would not get through to them.  Almost more than we wanted to tackle to get to church this morning. But the pastor is a good speaker and we have been going through II Corinthians, so I convinced Rick that we should go. It was more than a Minnesota all day rain, however, and we were pretty soaked from the waist down by the time we arrived. We didn’t melt, the clothes were delivered, and the sermon was good