Fear of Rain

Dear Diary,

The last page left the story thus:  I had arrived at the Travelodge on Aurora in a terrible physical and mental state, with the phone on which I'm writing now so messed up that I was afraid even to shut it down, with much of what I was carrying, and pushing in my cart, soaked.

As I said in that page, I checked out of that motel two days - about 57 hours - later.

I did basically three things during that time.  I continued to live - to go get food, to drink water, etc.  I dried things out.  And I did what I could, obviously much more once this phone dried out, to work on you, dear Diary.

In you, I've written of fear of rain before.  I just re-read every page in you from November 1 on, and I referred to it November 18 in "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford", then discussed it at some length the next day in the introduction to "Standing Room Only".

More recently, though, on January 3 in "Hike 1A:  Inconvenients" part I, I treated it as a psychological problem, rather than a condition of my homelessness.

Psychological problems, however, normally create other kinds of problems.  Let me consider what kinds of problems were created by my decision on January 11 not to be afraid of the rain.

With my phone out of commission, I bought two newspapers.  Cost, $4.

With big shivers, I had to buy a hot meal.  Cost, $16.

Of the books I was carrying, eight were water damaged.  The worst affected, the one at the bottom of the satchel I carried as a substitute backpack, I'd already read; I was only carrying it to remind me to read the sequels.  Oops.  I've since finished another, one of two in the upper part of the cart that got wet, and read the other in full.  Two more were in the bottom part of the cart, to stiffen bedding satchels; I've started one of those, and one of the three others from the backpack satchel.  I probably had Waterway, my source for "Water and Water", with me that night, but it wasn't damaged.

I was, thankfully, charged only for two nights, so the motel cost was well under $200.  Heck, so was the total cost, not counting the books.  I also bought socks while at the motel, but that wasn't a directly rain-related expense.

It's difficult to sort things out here.  I had the money to do this because of the COVID stimulus payments, and the generosity of strangers - and my own miserliness; but I was hiking in the rain, working on you, dear Diary, because of the COVID lockdowns, ultimately.

But of one thing I'm sure.  I am alive tonight because a woman who works at that Travelodge allowed a smelly homeless man to check in.  If there'd been no vacancy, or she'd decided not to let me have it, I might easily have died.

A friend of mine was sleeping in his car when someone threw a Molotov cocktail into it.  We heard of slashed tents at Cal Anderson Park.  My problem was self-inflicted, but those people were handed problems by others.  Part of what I'm trying to get across is that such actions can have terrible consequences.

But another part is that for homeless people, not fearing rain is the pathology.  I'm lucky to have survived it.  So I will stay in the motel tomorrow, and give way to my perhaps not currently warranted, but fundamentally healthy, fear of rain.

Good night, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I'll explain what I did for you those two days.