Standing out on the sidewalk, in the sun, in the pouring rain, with a couple of other people grinning from ear to ear. Nothin' like the first summer rain.

Lissa and I had just finished an early dinner in the Double Rainbow, or whatever it's called now, when the rain started. The front window looks out on old Route 66, and it was still sunny when we saw the rain - big heavy drops, glistening in the light as they dropped at an angle slightly off of perpindicular. Lissa looked at me. "Wanna go walk in the rain?"

People were standing out on the sidewalk in it, looking up and smiling, and we turned left, then up a little alley. In the five minutes it took to get to our car, our shirts were soaked - the sort of rain where there's space between the drops, but each drop is enormous, and the air is still hot and the raindrops icy cold from their travels.

The rain kept getting thicker as we drove home, and by the time we got to our house the streets were running. But there were still people playing soccer in the park. The first summer rain is like that.

The rain gauge showed two tenths of an inch when we got home, that in probably 15 minutes. There is little quite so satisfying as sitting on the front porch watching a summer rain, which we did. It's always a struggle between the pleasure of the rain and the cold from the wind and the icy raindrops. The air stays warm - the temperature at our house dropped from 100 to 75 in half an hour - but the splash and the chill still eventually won out and we we went inside . It's still raining now, an hour later, gently, just small drops. And the sun's shining. I love New Mexico in the summer.