It’s been a rainy June. I think it has rained roughly 21 of the 23 days so far. But today took the cake. It was supposed to thunderstorm early this evening, and we even received an e-mail from our company about the hail and dangerous winds (70 mph!) arriving between 4-7pm. I was planning on meeting Mrs. at her office building at 6pm after work to go home. We spoke shortly before I left and with the sky darkening decided that if it was a torrential downpour we would call an audible and just go home separately. Turns out, that would have been the intelligent thing to do.
I walked outside and it seemed to be just a pretty standard heavy rain, so I decided to suck it up and rough it the four blocks down to Mrs.’ building. I had an umbrella so how bad could it be? As I rushed down the street the rain started to get steadily heavier. With just one intersection left to cross the bottom of my pants were a little wet, but I was huddled under my umbrella and relatively dry, looking forward to getting on the train and heading home. And then in an instant, the rain started falling in buckets and the wind picked up to what seemed like hurricane strength. My umbrella stood no chance and quickly turned inside out with about half of the metal spokes breaking and flying down the sidewalk. A woman in front of me was blown into a pole and almost had the suitcase she was rolling blown into oncoming traffic. Needless to say people started running for cover and I followed suit, running as fast as I could (wind aided) through the pouring rain.
Mrs. was waiting outside her building and since I was already soaked to the bone and dripping wet we attempted to run the one block to the train station. About halfway there with Mrs. getting drenched as well we decided to seek refuge in the doorway of a building. At this point as if we weren’t having enough fun, the tornado sirens started going off. We decided to wait a little longer hoping the rain would let up. The sirens stopped briefly and the rain seemed to slow, so after about 15 minutes we decided to make a break for the train. Of course, the minute we started to run the rain picked up again, but brave souls that we are we went for it anyway. We made it to the train and had a miserable ride home looking like we’d just been swimming in our clothes, shoes filled with rain water, and sitting on what was now a soaked seat (sorry to the person who sat there next). I couldn’t see because my glasses were covered in drops of rain and my wet shirt proved ineffective in drying them off.
Luckily, the rain had abated by the time we got off the train and we were able to make the walk to our house without further incident. Our clothes and shoes will probably take days to dry out, and I’m going to have to buy a new umbrella, although it’s debatable if it’s worth the money since they usually only last one storm before going bust. On the bright side, the storms do seem to have lead to some reprieve in the heat and humidity. So at least I won’t be dripping sweat as I go empty the water out of my work bag.
No comments:
Post a Comment