(Singing?) In The Rain

It is raining outside. Down here in San Antonio that is rare enough that I feel justified in blogging about it.


I love rain. I'm not talking about the kind of rain that washes the road dust off your car. I'm talking about the rain that puts your paint job in jeopardy. Not rain that will mess up your carefully crafted hair gel but the kind that can strip fingerprints. I've never lived in a place that really rains on a regular basis, so maybe I'd start feeling differently if I had to live with it daily, but from my perspective there are few things as theraputic for the soul as a good stiff rainstorm!


It makes me think about truly memorable storms I've experienced...


I remember a storm while on my mission. I was tracting with Elder Gough in Wagga Wagga (yes, that is really the town's name). It hit fast. We went from sunny to downpoar in probably about 45 minutes. A lady who had no interest in listening to a discussion nevertheless took pitty on us and let us stand on her porch for 30 minutes because the street, sidewalk, lawn and just about everywhere else was ankle deep. It was actually a little awkward because both of us had been missionaries for over a year and had very little to talk about besides the message and the lady stood there with us for those 30 minutes until finally Gough and I just decided it was time to move on. Our leather shoes were never quite the same afterwards, but the memory was totally worth it!


I also remember the "Great Utah Tornado" of 1999. I was groundskeeping at the golf course. I was trimming the sand traps near the green on hole 3 pretty much working on my tan when the sky darkened and then exploded. As I'm sure there would be at any golf course there were a few old stalwarts who tried to play through but for most of us the day was over. After about 45 minutes my boss gave us the rest of the day off. It wasn't until the car ride home that I heard Salt Lake had been hit by a tornado.


There was a few memorable storms the summer I was in Atlanta and one I remember in Milwaukee. Most recently I was on vacation in West Virginia with my parents and brother. We were biking a trail when a storm came up. What made this storm memorable was not so much the wet rain, but the frozen kind. At first the hail stones were small and I figured my bike helmet would protect me. After a few minutes the stones had progressed to pea-sized and then...well, they eventually got to be about ping-pong ball sized. This picture shows some of them but I think they got even slightly bigger than this.

As much as these stung my knuckles when they hit; as is so often the case it was a storm that turned this event from something fun into something legendary. And you know, maybe I shouldn't be surprised...sometimes it is the "storms" that make turn something ordinary into something just a little more memorable!