Travel Adventures, No Plane Included

Immediately after my second shower today, I was gifted with an unexpected, third one. I manged to get caught in the most ridiculous downpour I've ever seen in Western Mass. Melissa and I were out shopping for sneakers, by which I mean looking for the sneaker shop, which closed ten minutes before we got there, when it began to drizzle. We thought that we would beat the rain, but the weather certainly won this competition — we found ourselves running, soaked, down a side-street as lightning hit the parking lot to our right and the wind bent trees backward and blew a large dustbin into the middle of the street. After we had dripped ourselves into the car, I was reluctant to drive; I couldn't remember whether it was even safe to be in a car under such conditions and I could barely see out of the windscreen with the wipers going full speed. I decided that it was better to be moving than sitting still, so we left, but slowly. Some of the people around us were definitely doing the speed limit, though I'm not sure how. A branch had fallen off of a tree on to the other side of the state road; I am glad that didn't happen to any of the trees around us while we were running — I would have been too freaked out to get us home.

The storm was so bad that we almost gave up on our second errand of the afternoon, which was to get me some reading material for the trip to and from Montana (more than 18 hours worth of travel, all told, despite only having one stop each way). We sat in the Barnes and Noble parking lot for two minutes, wondering if we should get out: it wasn't pouring there, but it was drizzling, and in the two minutes that we had parked, four separate zigs of light traced their way through the arsenic-coloured clouds. Melissa wanted to accomplish something, anything, for her pains; I was more keen on getting home and dry. As a compromise, I said that we could see if the dry-cleaner's was open, since I had a jacket there we could pick up. We drove there rather than get out at the bookstore; the dry cleaner's was closed.

In the end, we got the books and headed back to the house. Apparently, the storm caused an electrical surge in the town, because the traffic lights at the intersection were broken. One side was flashing red; the other, amber. The whole outing — the torrential rain, the broken traffic lights — reminded me of home. How fitting that as I leave, I am reminded that the two places that hold my heart are not so different, after all.

Plus, now I have all of these.
So excited. :-)

Love,
Katherine