i never set foot outside the house today, figuring it'd rain at any moment. however, the big rain event didn't happen until in the middle of the night, when all the channels had emergency broadcast messages scrolling at the bottom of the screen, and i even received a message from the emergency broadcast system on my phone (with a corresponding alarm sound i've never even heard before) about potential flash floods.

this weekend i'm heading down to new york to go hiking with john in the mohonk preserve again. this time we're going to try bonticou crag and the nearby table rocks. i'm leaving tomorrow morning, arriving in new york city by the early afternoon, where i will do exploration before heading to john's place in brooklyn for the evening. we're driving up to new paltz early sunday morning, do a day of hiking (temperature range sunny and windy 40-55°F). returning to new york city in the evening, i booked a 11:30pm megabus back to boston around 3:40am. the only problem i see is it'll be raining in new york during the day, so i'll need to find creative ways to stay dry.

going to new york this weekend means i'm going to miss the cambridge superhero 5k run and the head of the charles. had i done more planning, i could've left boston a bit later (like in the afternoon) and would've had a chance to see a bit of the rowing event, but i've watched it plenty of times already. besides, this weekend's boston forecast doesn't look so good either, rainy on saturday, windy on sunday. next weekend there's the halloween run in boston so i'll still get a chance to shoot some costumed folks.

for lunch i ate a greek yogurt, a leftover macintosh apple, and half a moon cake. for dinner i reheated some leftover risotto and finished the last of my honey crisp apple.

i don't know what was the official rainfall amount in cambridge. with massachusetts still in a drought, the torrential downpour was exhilarating to watch until it started to look scary and streets became rivers. this is the worst i've seen though. i remember one time it rained so much, the sewers overflowed and water was actually rushing out from the manholes.

i didn't start packing until around midnight. there's not that much to bring for a weekend hiking trip. fortunately i made a list of what i brought the last time, so i had that as a reference. this time around: spare pair of underwear, thermal wool underwear, spare t-shirt, spare pair of socks, canon 60D with 18-200mm lens, 10-22mm wide-angle lens, 28mm lens (for night photography), fuji 3D camera, SJCAM SJ4000 with alligator click attachment (for backpack strap) and window attachment (for windshield videos), bag of snickers, bag of pecan, bag of toiletries, umbrella (it's going to be rainy tomorrow) and my quick-dry towel. i'm not bringing my mug because whatever hot beverage i have will turn cold after a few hours, so i'm just going to buy a few bottled water instead. i'm wearing my waterproof merrell moab hiking shoes along with my columbia water-resistant pants.