Do not fear the rain

Suppose that you are in Providence, and the following sequence of events occurs:

- The sky gets kind of dark.
- The wind starts to blow.
- You feel a few sprinkles of rain.

What should you do?

The answer is: run. Wherever you are going (and you must be outside going somewhere, because you felt a few sprinkles of rain), you should start running, because it is about to start pouring rain.

In Oxford, this is not the case. Several times now, I have been outside and those three things happened, and I thought, "oh no, I'm going to get soaking wet," and then -- nothing. A few sprinkles, and then nothing more.

On the other hand, I was doing a track workout on Wednesday, and during the workout the sun came out, and it was evening, so the horizontal rays of the sun made beautiful colors on the buildings and the track, and it was so bright shining in my eyes that I thought about sunglasses. Then, during my cool down run, it suddenly started pouring rain and I was soaked immediately.

I brought all of this rain gear -- a nice light raincoat, an umbrella, knee-high rubber boots, and full foul weather gear. But the only times I go outside are to run, to go to the grocery store, and to meet with my advisor. I'm not going to wear any of that stuff to run. I'll postpone my grocery trip if it's raining. So I brought all this stuff to England in case it rains while I am walking to my once-weekly meeting with my advisor. Hmmm. Maybe I should start going to the library (but only when it's raining), to have an excuse to wear this stuff.