Sunday, January 01, 2006

The New Year's Walk

Rick and I took the New Year’s walk early to beat the rain forecast for today. Growing up at 96th and Madison in New York, Rick and his dad and brother would traditionally take a walk around a body of water on New Year’s day. The first walk was in 1954 in Central Park. He never misses--rain, snow, etc. I joined in on the tradition in 1976, in Berkeley, to and around Lake Temescal. Our traditional walk in Orinda is from our house to Lake Cascade, around and back.

We are bracing for the next storm to hit Northern California. Is this the Pineapple Express? The forecasters have been saying that the storms are stacked up all the way to the Philippines . When we went on our walk it was 54 degrees and the low last night wasn’t much colder. We awoke Saturday morning to water in our kitchen from a flooded patio from very heavy rains Friday night and Saturday morning. My rain gauge was full at 5-1/2". We were lucky. No power-outs. But the soil is saturated and the next storm is supposed to move through very quickly.

2 comments:

Elle said...

Did he ever say how the tradition of walking around the water got started? It's so interesting!

jpsam said...

How the tradition got started: Relatives were visiting from out of town. The women were cooking a big mid-day meal. The men decided to take the kids out to get them out of the house. Central Park is only one block away. They walked up to Harlem Meer, a walk they wouldn't normally take in Central Park, walked around the lake, and a tradition was born. You know kids: do something once and it's a tradition! The next New Year's day and the kids wanted to take the New Year's walk. When we were living in San Diego we joked that the nearest body of water was the PO.