View From the Bushes

I went for a bike ride last night (as I mentioned). Before leaving I briefly considered taking along my normal glasses in case it got cloudy, but I decided against it. When I pulled out of the driveway it was hot and sunny, but there was a cloud bank right below the sun. Initially my thought was, great this will give me some shade, cool down the ride, but I was already regretting having sunglasses on. After heading north for a few miles I headed up into the "avenues," which basically consisted of going up a steep hill for a few blocks and then cutting over and recovering before going up the next hill. In this fashion I finally reached the high road that ran above the cemetery, which was just about the same time the lightning started.

I cut through the university, which was a little nerve-racking because I ended up on some big roads with low visibility and construction. It was about this time that it started raining. Fortunately I made it off the big roads by the time it started pouring. When I say pouring I mean pouring. I'm sure there are storms far more intense than the one I biked through last night, but not in Utah. Myself and another cyclist sought refuge under a tree for awhile, but it was about that time when the wind whipped up and it stopped providing any shelter. As long as I was on the flat and had a bicycle lane I wasn't too worried, but a short distance past the tree was where I had to turn down to get off the hill. My brakes weren't working very well, so I decided to walk down the hill. It's probably a good thing because if I was going to pinpoint the height of the storm it was while I was walking down the hill: I was getting grit blown into my face, branches were being blown off of trees, I could barely see across the street -- it was that bad.

By the time I was safely off the hill it had started to calm down a little bit, or perhaps I had reached total saturation. In any case, the wind had died down somewhat. Once I was back to biking on a flat it went pretty fast, and despite the tempest, I arrived home at around the time I said I would, which is good, because if I had been five minutes late, my wife would probably have started calling hospitals. Overall quite the adventure. Speaking of quite the adventure, there was that plane crash of sorts in Toronto. One of the passengers apparently took some pictures.

Still a little wet
Ross