here comes the rain

When we first moved to Maui, it rained. A lot. In fact, it rained like it was never going to stop for a time. And when I say it rained, I don’t mean that light, sprinkling rain you get on the mainland. I’m talking 40-days/40-nights type precipitation. It doesn’t start slowly, build up, peak, and slowly diminish either. It drops out of the sky in buckets from outta nowhere and when it decides it has rained enough, it just stops like someone turned off a faucet.

This year we hadn’t had much in the way of rain. I was beginning to think last year was a fluke. Then four weeks ago it started to rain on Oahu and flooded Honolulu and the surrounding areas. All the other islands were getting rained on too, but not Maui. I thought maybe we would be spared the powerful rainstorms assaulting the other islands. Then about a week ago, the rain gods finally appeared in the form of a series of rain storms that dropped a foot of rain all over the island.

This picture was taken on my cell phone camera as I got caught in a torrential downpour. Keep in mind that when I walked out of my house, it was sunny and warm. By the time I got down the street, I felt like an extra in a cecil b demille epic about a great flood. I cowered in an alcove for twenty minutes as the rain hammered the ground around me. It was fun to watch the tourists, sneering their bad luck, run to the cars and head to their temporary lodgings thinking that the rain would last an eternity. Of course, 20 minutes later, the rain stopped, the sun came out and all was once again perfect in paradise.

I love living here when it rains. It washes away the dust obviously, but it also washes away the dirty bastards who take it all for granted.