Thunderstorm.

You'd think that after nigh on twenty-one years one would be able to handle a little severe weather. Thunderstorm warnings, tornado warnings and watches, high winds, hail ... kind of the supreme pizza of weather, if you get what I mean.

Goddamn*, the weather sucks. Right now there was a lovely burst of thunder. That's just a very small taste of what I drove through. I left Winterset at around 4.30p after gassing up, and drove, and drove, and drove. I decided to take the scenic route [Highway 20 to 63, through Waterloo]. In the end, I'm not sure whether that was the best choice or not. Farther north [from when I left the interstate for the aforementioned 'senic' route] there was some pretty crappy weather. From listening to the weather reports on about five different stations while I was driving, I think the weather was relatively the same in both directions. North of Waterloo, I hit the worst weather I have ever driven through in my life. [This not being too much, as I don't drive nearly as much as some people I know.]

The sky was terribly dark, the clouds were low [thunder crashed just now], it was pouring, and lightning flashes made the sky around it purple. There were about ten miles of hail, and somewhere between Waterloo and New Hampton, I lost my passenger side wiper. It broke right off. After a small freakout fit, I kept going, because there was nowhere else to go. I could barely see ... I followed the taillights that happened to be in front of me.

Once I finally hit New Hampton, I pulled in to a hotel parking lot to rest for about a minute. Then I drove through the town, and found a KwikStar, and called AE. I decided that it was best to keep on trucking, so to speak, because the weather that I had avoided from the other direction was still behind me. So I drove the thirty-five miles in about forty-five minutes, which, now, wasn't too terribly bad. [.. news break: there was a tornado, I see, about ten miles south of where I was driving along Highway 20, it seems, sometime near when I went through there ..] Except for the other wiper, which I lost about a mile outside of Decorah.

Long story made a little shorter - I'm back, and I don't want to drive any more. And I have to buy new wipers. And Michael's musical was really good. As stressful as the drive was, I'm very glad I got to see it.


*You know how often I swear in my typing, so you'll pardon me.