In the old times, before the drought, there was rain and floods and the roads would shut. Muddy rock hills slid down on your highway of choice and massive tree trunks cracked across and this was when your car would break down and this is just how we did things here. In the drought times, we didn’t have this and we got to do a lot of agility all the time and it was super except for no taking showers and wells drying up and climate change destroying civilized culture and animal families and so forth.

Here is a thing we can do in the rain now. West Cliff is the path along the cliffs for a few miles and on it walk and run and bike the things that are a tremendous collective nemesis for the mental health of Banksy when they speed by. On a sunny day the scenic path is full of many of the following: surfboards being carried by a human surfer on a bike with a running dog attached, skateboarding humans being towed by a running dog of great joy, and tiny koala bear sized kids on tiny sheep sized bikes who wear those tiny eyebrow brush sized mohawk helmets which have sparkly flying bits attached everywhere and also occasionally running dogs attached to them and all of these things go at greater speed than us walking slowly because me and Otterpop and Ruby are slow walkers.

These things used to make Banksy pop a cork and a plethora of them all at once was like way too much perfect storm for a nice plain dogwalk when me and Gustavo and Ruby and Otterpop are all, can’t we just walk along the sea? Fast moving things have been challenging for the eyeballs of Banksy to view when she’s on a leash. But I bring a pocket full of cookies and we have control unleashed it in our neighborhood since she’s been a cork popping baby and now these things are really not so much of a thing.

When I see one coming, I’m all, Hey What Do You See? And she looks at the exciting thing and then looks at me and gets a cookie. So she looks at them all she wants now and instead of her first thought being, GET IT!, or even if it is, her second thought is, cookie in my mouth. Which apparently has become an ok second choice to chasing down the faster, cooler choice.

Unless you get the perfect storm of all of them all at once which at high tide sunny summer Sunday you do get around here since bikes and skateboards and dogs are the main mode of transportation in my part of the world. But a rainy night, not so much. The surf is blown out and murderous and the kids have to sit in assigned seats and do video games and most dogs are laying on couches waiting for the sun to make it’s next appearance. These days and nights have made walking on West Cliff a breeze.

I am “The Lady With All Those Dogs” so apparently some sort of local treasure or eccentric character at this point. I frequently get my photo taken by people with foreign accents when we round the bend to Steamer’s. I tell everyone who comments on how I’ve got my hands full what good dogs they are and if it’s too muddy to get up and run in the woods, we trek along West Cliff now, marching the combined speed that works for all of us as far as we can go.