Monsoon

I guess it's been super stormy everywhere this week. Something about the heat wave from the previous week created some pretty wild weather down here in the valley. Today, in fact, while I was chatting with Kristen, it began to rain. During the next five minutes, it moved to progressively heavier rain and wind, blowing the trees sideways (and over in a lot of cases). Then it began to hail. This too grew to the size of gumballs before abating.
Afterwards, I thought, wow I should get going to school so I don't end up stuck in a tornado or some nonsense. I had to wait a bit, as a bit more rain kicked up, but around 2 o'clock I finally set off. Blue skies shown through onto the streams running down gutters. These, I found, led to a river. It may seem like a joke, but I tried to cross Main St and found myself ankle deep, even though my feet were on the pedals.
I turned around and went up University. I had to keep to the sidewalks, far to the right to avoid getting splashed by passing cars. I turned left onto Horne, thinking I would rejoin Main upstream, were the rapids might be calmer. But, hereagain, I found myself stomping my soaking legs out of a basin and onto a sidewalk. Luckily, by the time I made it across the block to Mesa, the water was lower. I still couldn't ride the bike lane, but that was alright considering I was still making forward progress. It was just passed Center when I found my first downed tree. It had fallen in front of some lucky woman's car (I knew it was a woman because I had to ride into the street as she didn't notice my call of 'On your left!').
From here the pattern emerged.
All along Main up to Alma School and from Alma School to Souther, I saw fallen foliage and debris. I had this happy image in my mind of the rain as a healer and cleanser, washing the trash and glass and bottles into the drains. Such was not the case.
As I turned onto Southern, making the push for the final mile to school, I saw police lights up ahead. I was detained at the turn into Fiesta Mall, and a man who had just gotten off the bus joked about my soddened condition. I asked him what had happened up at the light. He didn't know, but was friendly enough about it. I crossed to the left hand side of the road (the wrong side unless you want to be hit by a driver coming out of a parking lot or turning right). I started to cross the Fiesta entrance, as I didn't see any traffic, but a couple cars burned the light. The last cars driver flipped me the bird even though I was stopped in the median. Bad day I guess.
I casually made my way west until I got to the light. I passed more fallen trees and found the lights in the big steel hooks dead and dark. Policemen stood in the intersection and directed traffic. I took a chance and crossed. Luckily, no one pummeled my dumbass.
I got to school easily after that. I noticed the cause for the malfunction of the signal light on my way; there were two powerlines knocked over. My grandma told me later that something like 17 had been knocked over in Phoenix proper. It might be an exaggeration, but not by too much. Once on campus, I parked the bike and walked towards were I had parked it the day before. I had brought an adidas pullover, thinking I'd need it for the ride home. I put it on and zipped up the throat against the cold.
I went and found the key I had lost the day before, lying in the pebbles and dirt, then went to the library. The rain went crazy while I was there, so much so that I watched it for a while in a conference room. Everything was gray and black. I had been growing hungrier and had forgotten to pack a snack for my post-ride recovery. I decided to brave the rain and go to Pita Jungle for a gyro and some garlic potatoes. This turned out to be pretty tame, as the rain began to clear after I walked out the doors.
After the meal, I went back to the library and started Thomas Pynchon's V. Then I went to class. Nothing to it.
Afterwards, I packed up and grabbed my bike. I had a moment when I thought about getting out my headphones, but I decided to leave them locked in the ziplock I had brought to carry my wallet and phone.
This was really lucky.
As soon as I got out of the small area for locking up your bikes, it started to rain. I sighed and started to pump my way home. I got down to Alma School and turned left. The wind came hard and it began to rain a bit more. My eyes were squinted to see through it. I made it down to University and turned right. There was more debris but the weather lightened up noticeably. I thought of turning into the street to make up some time (the first leg had taken me the same amount of time, 30 minutes, as the total trip home had the day before) but at Country Club a big lifted pickup decided he (always is) wanted to blow up the starting line so he could get over in front of the guy in the lefthand lane. What the guy managed to do was spin his tires really loudly, shout forward and sideways at the same time, and then roar down the street to maim others. I decided to stick with the sidewalk for this particular outing.
After that, it was a easy ride home to a hot shower and two very long phone calls.
Exciting stuff, n'est-ce pas?