I closed out Starbucks last night. When they come around with a mop bucket and start cleaning around your feet, you can’t miss the message. My lodging arrangements are strange but it works and I don’t have much longer to do this tippy-tippy dance. I escaped the apartment early this morning, before anybody else got up. It was still dark and a steady rain was going on. Once in the car I have to start making decisions. I won’t come back until after 10:30 tonight.
Sometimes I start out at Starbucks with decaf and a bagel. I can go in and hang out without buying anything but feel guilty when I do. This morning I went there but the rain was pecking on the roof and dotting the windshield so I shut everything off but the radio. With the seat back and rain and the radio, a cat nap came easy. It wasn’t long before a car door closing brought me back. The rain hadn’t let up any and the windshield was covered with droplets.
There was music on the radio but the show was up on the glass. Water is pretty amazing stuff. An H2O molecule is absolutely tiny. But they stick together so well that they pool up into droplets and drops, and even tiny puddles. When you have a light mist, really tiny droplets, there isn’t enough turbulence in the air to make them bump into each other so they make it all the way to the ground as pin point size droplets. If it’s a bumpy ride down, they do bump into other droplets and the attraction between them is so great that they stick together. Two tiny droplets combine to become one, slightly larger droplet; two larger ones make an even bigger drop.
Water likes to stick to other stuff too, like my skin when I climb out of the pool, and my windshield. So I’m sitting there behind the wheel, watching rain drops that are stuck on my windshield. As they encounter other droplets, they grow from the pin points that landed there into drops as big as a pencil eraser. That’s nice but there are other things going on that will change the story.
The glass provides a surface for the drops to stick onto but you also have to factor in the arc and the angle of the glass and gravity. As drops get bigger, there is more for gravity to pull on and the shape of the drop tends to flatten out. Or, if the surface is at a sharp enough angle, the big drop is overcome by gravity, looses its grip on the glass and begins to slide downhill {down my windshield}.
As it gains speed, it touches other drops in its path. When they touch they say, “Hey, let’s stick together and be an even bigger drop.” That big drop accelerates down the glass, gobbling up all the drops in its way, leaving a clear streak behind that immediately begins to collect other, new, tiny rain drops.
I watch big drops on the glass that are just about ready to let go and take the plunge. With my imagination I can almost hear their conversations, like kids with their sleds, lined up on a snowy hilltop. “Go ahead, I’ll follow you.” At any given moment, there were three or four drops in progress down the glass and as many streaks left behind that hadn’t filled in yet.
So I’m a 73-yr. old dude who hasn’t outgrown the sense of wonder for how the world works. I’m sitting there trying to predict which drop will go next. A really big one was up high, near the edge where the glass wasn’t as steep. I figure it was bragging, “When I go, I’ll take a lot of little guys with me, and be going so fast when I hit the wiper blade at the bottom that I’ll ooze together with everybody else and we’ll flow off the end and just keep on going.”
The smaller guy asks, “Where will you be when you get there?” The big guy says, “All the way Baby.” I could have offered an opinion but thought better. Still, it went through my mind. “This isn’t Kansas Dorothy. Halifax Harbor is only a couple of miles down the hill and All The Way isn’t all that far.” The big drop got the bump it needed and streaked down the glass. It was fast and I couldn’t hear the splat but I’m sure it added to the stream, running off the end of the wiper blade.
I skipped the bagel & decaf, didn’t want to spend the five dollars. Swam with the early birds today and went to my aerobics/yoga class afterward instead of before. I was done by 10:30 and it was still raining. The library is just across the street from the gym so I logged in with my visitors card. Won’t be doing this much longer. One more gym class this week and three or four more swims. I have computer classes tomorrow and Thursday, a story telling gig at another coffee shop on Friday night; a short road trip on Saturday. Then all I have to do is see some friends farewell on Sunday. I’ll drive down along the South Shore on Monday to pick up some stuff I left there last week. Somewhere in there I need to get the car serviced and do laundry. Early Tuesday morning I’ll nose my little blue Toyota down hill and make like a rain drop on the windshield. I don’t count the days but I know exactly how many more wake-ups here are left.
I’ve done just about everything I came here to do. I’ll write it off as a success and start thinking about what to do, where to go after the holidays. The five day drive will be good therapy and layovers in Dayton and Grand Rapids will be good medicine too. In a few hours I’ll close Starbucks down again. Seven wake-ups.
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