I’m about to finish my second trip to Sicily, a site visit for a former employer of mine in Los Angeles. The first trip in September was a blast, and while this second one is fun as well things have changed a bit. Maybe it’s the fact that this trip is more serious in nature. The first was a recon mission but now that we know what we’re up against we’re trying to make sense of what we’re seeing. Or perhaps it’s the weather and how cold it has gotten. Flying in from Wrocław it never even crossed my mind that it would be warmer in Poland than here in Sicily. I didn’t really pack for this weather and I’ve been constantly cold.

It also rained two out of four days we’ve been here, enough to force a site closure. That took all the fun out of walking around to inspect the site and cramped us into a small office waiting for the rain to stop. But even after the rain stopped there’s nothing to do outside because of the mud. The earth here, mixed with clay, is rock hard when dry, and impassable when wet. After just a few short steps our boots would accumulate two to four pounds of mud, enough to make walking a challenge. Not just walking of course, Bobcats and other 4wheel drive vehicles were all getting stuck, hence the site closure when it gets really wet. On top of it all you get a fierce cold wind, which explains the power generating windmills on all of the hills around us, but makes for a cold and wet trip. Not at all the warm and swimming pool friendly Sicily I remember from just a few weeks ago.

On the upside…we’ve got puppies! And puppies always make things better. There were already a few dogs at the B&B, now there’s two more.

Food’s still great, people are still fun to work with, and the mission will be a success as we have learned a lot on the status of the build, inspected what we wanted, and are happy with the progress. I guess I would just prefer for it to be warm and fuzzy like the first trip, that’s all.