you dead?’
Set against this background three things were clear. One we had
nothing to whine about with our bit of rain. Two, Arnie has his work cut out for
him – even with all his experience of battling aliens and robots (perhaps it was
this aspect of his CV that got him the job?) And three, you can never escape
the mother-in-law!
Our talent of being 'rain-dancers' continued outside of California. We spent
the first week of January driving east towards Florida, spending alternate days
doing road trips or visiting sights. A pattern soon developed of clear skies and
increasingly warm weather while we were on the road, so good that we
decided it was almost time for shorts and t-shirts, followed by cloudy cold
weather whenever we stopped to look around places. A pattern surely familiar
to anyone who has organized a picnic in a heat wave, experienced a summer
bank holiday in Britain, or attended Wimbledon for that matter!
'Our weather' only really caught up with us when we stopped for a few
days in Louisiana. Evidently driving through three states was not enough to
shake our tail, although it did take a day after we arrived to make an
appearance. It made up for its tardiness by subjecting us to heavy rainfall for
a whole day, forcing us to cancel a swamp tour for fear of the boat sinking.
On this occasion we failed to drive out of the bad weather, but on the
plus side the clouds seemed to empty themselves and we had dry weather for
the next few days while we visited Baton Rouge and New Orleans. In fact, the
dry weather continued for over a week as we drove across into Florida and
then down the east coast. Perhaps this should not have been surprising, as it