Monday, May 31, 2010

Turbulent Run

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. That's a day when we're supposed to honor people who served in the military, but mostly we have cook outs and sales in stores.
I slept in (for me) and got up to read the newspaper on the front porch. Then I dressed for my morning run. The wind had picked up a little by then and the leaves were whispering as if they were already falling raindrops. I shook Earl awake and asked if he'd put the top up on the convertible. It's a two-person job now that the motor has burned out on the convertible top. He said he had and rolled over to go back to sleep.
I headed out into the humid morning to enjoy the breezes sweeping along. I'd run more than a mile and a half before the first raindrops struck me. I'd been hearing a sound that could have been far away thunder or might have been an airplane or loud truck. Who was I to judge?
I was just coming out of a cul de sac that I run for an extra half mile when the sky opened and the rain fell in torrents. Still, a little rain is no big deal. I'd worn my running cap and it kept the rain off my face.
Then from behind me, a loud boom made me jump. The thunder, followed by a streak of lightning, was so loud and close that it set off car alarms. I paused, wondering what to do. Should I move onto the sidewalk and stay under the trees? I know, I know, I should never stand under a tree during a thunder storm, but I didn't want to run in the middle of the road away from the trees either.
There were a couple of friends' houses not too far away. The one who was closest would still be asleep. The other was three blocks away, and she might be awake. If not, she had a large front porch that could shelter me.
I started to sprint (for me) running hard down the sidewalk. The safety of my friend's porch was within three blocks. After two blocks of sprinting, I could feel my heart pounding. I was going to have to slow down or walk, I thought. Another bolt of lightning followed by booming thunder urged me to keep going. And I thought about the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie I'd watched the night before when he was ready to give up underwater and gave one last blast to pull himself to the surface. "Ascendio!" I shouted in my head and I made my legs keep pumping.
I reached the porch and peered in the doorway. Anne had just gotten up. Wearing a pink sleep shirt, she let me in and gave me a towel.
I was still about a mile from home. My slumbering husband was rousted from bed to fetch me, and he grumbled about it all the way home through the standing water on the road and the claps of thunder above.

5 comments:

Sheila said...

today has been a crazy weather day. Blue sky then buckets of rain. My yard keeps flooding, drying up then flooding again.

One Run-On Sentence said...

Nothing like a little added excitement to your day. My question is, "what about your ipod, did it survive"?

I had lots of insect excitement. As I waited for our maintenance man to return from the Asian festival to take a look at the air conditioner that just quit working, on Saturday, my neighbor tried to get my attention.

It startled me, my first thought was maybe the heat pump was actually on fire. No, she just wanted me to know, we had a swarm of honey bees; so many that the group formed together hung down from an overhead beam, just above the entry way.

What frightened me most is I had not even noticed. I had been in and out of that door, I don't know how many times on Saturday. While trying to listen to my neighbor I was forced to close my screen door, because wasps were flying around. Pulling the screen door shut, I looked up to see two wasp nests in between the door and screen. Lovely.

Finally, thanks to an article in the local newspaper, I read how travelers are being forced to spend a couple thousand dollars to rid their homes of bed bugs that they pick up while traveling, either from the hotel or airplane. "Do not unpack when you return," the article suggests, "take all your clothes straight to the dry cleaners". What about the bed bugs that might be on you or on anything else? Needless to say the article left so many questions unanswered, I might have been better off not reading it - but now I'm just thinking of not traveling, not visiting anyone who travels, not visiting anyone......

Okay, No more coffee for me.

Paulita said...

Okay. Your turbulence beats mine. Yes, my iPod survived.

Linda said...

Lightning is dangerous stuff. I used to see huge storms in Texas and still do in Provence. I love watcing them from the safety of a house.

Stephanie said...

I'm such a slacker! I stayed in bed rather than go out in that.

Now you're MY inspiration. Hee Hee!

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