Summer Rains

Sunday morning I woke up at 7:55am in New Jersey to rain beating horizontally across the hotel room window. It looked like a blizzard. 'Maybe my eyes are fuzzy,' I began to think to myself, but when I heard the rain I knew otherwise. It was like an old black and white film with the rain so intense and out of proportion to other sounds in the scene it seems fake. Seriously, it went there... For 37 minutes. Finally the storm lessened so then it only sounded like the Marine Corps was pelting the window with peanuts. 'How can rain fall horizontally?' I was still working through my waking experience.

Soon enough the lights began to fade in and out. The power generator was surging, setting off the fire alarm. 'Whatev's, I still have to fix my belt.' There was pounding on the door, and a young girl's voice came through, "Peoples! This is an alarm! You need to leave! Peoples..." She went calling down the hall. The hotel was being evacuated. I've never had that happen before. There were five fire trucks outside by the time we made it out. 'It's only a generator surge...'

So we head off to the airport, at least the rain had dissipated. To make a longer story short, our flight was delayed and eventually cancelled. We were on the waiting lists for all of the following flights, and there was a good chance of getting one owing to all of the other flights unable to get into Philly. I set up camp by a window, which was fascinating. You know how weather channels show cloud patters as they move over the land, well, that's how the ground outside looked... White masses circulating around like swirling soap in a bathtub. My goodness.

Hours went by, but we made it on the next flight, which was only delayed an hour, and made it to Greensboro, North Carolina, later that night. It hasn't rained an inch.