Walking in the rain

Distance walked today - me and dogs 17.9km
I sold Father's car today. It was also my last chance for a long walk before the odyssey begins next month. The weather however was less than kind. It was raining consistently. I spent half an hour looking for my overtrousers without success. I'm a bit perplexed as they were in my back pack earlier in the week. So I went off in shorts and merino top since the temperature was less than 10degrees. I also had my wallet with the money from selling the car.

I started out about 12:30 with a walk to Patrica's Pie Shop (a lasagna pie today). I got about 10 minutes further on when I realised I had forgotten my phone so back home to get the phone. About 5 minutes after leaving home the second time the rain started getting inside my Gortex shoes. I'm fairly certain this was just rain getting in through the top of the shoes. Gortex shoes are hopeless once the water gets in as the waterproofing seems to stop it getting out again. I think I need to invest in Gortex socks as well.

The first part of the walk down to the coast was with rain in my face but once out of Island Bay the cliffs were deflecting the wind so that going out of the bays along the south coast it was a head wind and coming into the bays it was at your back. The waves along the south coast were fairly big and the tide was in. Sometimes you can clamber around the rocks from Houghton Bay to Princess Bay. Not even a remote possibility today.

When I got to Kilbirnie (about 1 hour) I went to the National Bank ATM to deposit the money from selling the car and a couple of cheques I had. The ATM gave me the deposit envelope and then decided it wasn't going to actually accept deposits so my wallet went back into my pocket. The wallet was a bit damp so I moved it from my shorts pocket to the parka packet which I thought was waterproof.

Next stop was the Miramar New World to buy some milk and biscuits for parents. The checkout operator spent a great deal of time drying the money I gave her. I noticed that there were some very wet disintegrating bits of paper in my wallet.

I got to Mother and Father's place just in time for afternoon tea at 3pm. Somehow the subject turned around to hearing aids yet again. My father is getting a bit forgetful but won't accept it. His hearing aids have a remote for changing the volume. He changed hearing aids a couple of years ago and is absolutely convinced that he still has the remote from his previous hearing aids which was a different shape from his current one, which has stopped working. Other things we can convince him he has forgotten but not when it comes to the hearing aids. He is gets very worked up about it. My mother also gets worked up - I think because this comes up 2 or 3 times a week and every time he gets very stroppy about it, suggesting we are telling him he is stupid when we try to tell him that was the old hearing aids. It got very nasty with him ordering me out of the house - I didn't go. But I feel sorry for my mum having to put up with him day after day.

After an hour I turned around an headed for home - through Newtown this time. The rain had eased off and the footpaths were not flooded in Miramar any more. However I still managed to step into a deep puddle in Evan's Bay just to make sure my feet werre wet.

I stopped at the supermarket in Island Bay and got some food on the way home. I then had a warm bath - the first I have had in about a year. It was lovely soaking in warm water after all that time in the cold.

P.S I found the overtrousers on Moday at work. Not much use there