It was bound to happen sooner or later...

We have been tempting fate.

We live in a sub-tropical climate and all this time we have been walking around without protection. I don't know what we were thinking... We never bought ponchos!

Fortunately, it has only rained once since we've been in Taichung, and we were sleeping.... that was until today. Tonight while we were at work, a thunder storm arose. I wasn't too worried about it until it came to 9:30pm and the rain still hadn't let up.

Before I could even get to the poncho issue, I had to deal with the first unfortunate truth: Since Nick's new helmet is HUGE and takes up the whole seat compartment, I always have my helmet hanging upside down off of the handle bar (his is more expensive and newer - since his old one was stolen - so it gets to go in the seat). As a result, my helmet had been just hanging there like a bowl collecting rain in it for a couple of hours before we got off work; needless to say, it was completely saturated.

Next we had to deal with the second issue: no ponchos! No worries, we just went to Family Mart (a convenience store) just outside of work to buy some and - of course - they were out! We were just about to take off on our scooter for the 20 minute drive home w/out any protection from the rain when a colleague reminded us that there was a 7-11 across the street: Saved!

After purchasing one poncho (the other was generously donated by a student of mine) we were off... in the rain... and proceeded to get soaked! It didn't take us long to remember why Americans don't drive scooters or typically use motorcycles as their primary mode of transportation: it SUCKS to be on one of those things in the rain!

People here have some pretty serious ponchos though and they seem to keep pretty dry... so next on my shopping list: Poncho, rain pants, and some galoshes!