Sun(burn) & Rain

When I was in Sydney, I let myself get pretty badly sunburned, for which I felt rather stupid. After all, I’ve had the same skin (or rather, the same lack of melanin) all my life and have lived through enough sunburns to know better. But I just sat in a stupor in front of the Sydney Opera House, watching the (other) tourists. The sun was playing peek-a-boo and there was a chilly breeze, so every time the sun blazed out from behind a cloud I just sat and basked and told myself that I really should get out of the sun.

Although it’s been fairly rainy since then, I’ve been carefully slathering on the sunscreen. Then there was Monday. Justin and I decided to walk out to the other end of town (about 45 minutes). I carefully wore a shirt that covered my now-beginning-to-peel neck, shoulders and upper arms, spread sunscreen on remaining visible skin, slapped on a hat and strolled off with unhatted husband. It remained clear and sunny for the whole 45 minutes there, the 10 minutes we looked around the hardware store, and about 35 or 40 minutes of our return trip. (This is as good time as any to point out that it was probably about 90 F and about 75% or higher humidity.)

We could see the clouds gathering as we re-entered the downtown-ish area. Then we felt the wind really picking up. It quickly became clear that we wouldn’t make it all the way home. Should we stop and shelter for awhile? We could see lots of people on the streets hurrying toward the wind-safe side of the street. While we were trying to decide what to do (while walking quickly toward home), we were suddenly hit by the crashing rain, coming at us almost horizontally, and cold.

Within a minute we were as drenched as if we’d been swimming in our clothes. Justin’s white undershirt-type of t-shirt became completely transparent. The water was cold so we didn’t want to stop and stand still now that we were thoroughly wet. People hiding under building overhangs and piling into taxis looked at us like we were crazy. As I stepped off a curb into an ankle-deep puddle, I found that the water down there was warm. The rest of the way home I purposely scuffed my feet in the water running down the streets, relishing the contrast between the warm water on my feet and the cold water on my face.

Right by our house we noticed that the traffic lights were out which prepared us for the fact that the power was off at home too. Naturally our bathroom is a windowless cave, but it does have a drain in the middle of the floor. After we’d lit candles, rung out our clothes and hung them, put on dry warm clothes, and began to rustle up some lunch, I felt my calves stinging.

I looked down and realized that I’d burned my calves on our return trip (when the sun was a bit behind us). I should’ve reapplied the sunscreen, but hadn’t thought of it at all. So…5 days in Australia and 2 separate sunburns!

By the way, I saw a field of wallabies and a tree of bats (last Sunday)!