Thunder from above

I can feel it in the air when a storm is possible.  It is always a risk when I head out for a ride in these conditions.  It is not pleasant when it rains but it does not prevent the ride. I will put my phone in a zip-lock bag and get ready to get wet.

This particular ride started out dry but as I said the sky was hanging heavy. I had planned to follow my twenty two mile training ride.  It is my most familiar ride but because of the ominous atmosphere I was trying to ride at a quick pace so as to beat the weather.

The map of this ride is shaped like a lollipop; a long straight path followed by a big loop that comes back into the same straight that I use to get out to the loop.

The rain started when I was riding the loop. It was upsetting as I was really hoping to have avoided getting wet. The concern of getting wet was soon diminished with the first cracking of thunder.  Panic started to set in as I could see the lightening in the sky followed almost immediately by the rumble.

Sitting on a steel bike, in the middle of a farm field, soaking wet with bolts of lightning lighting up the black clouds does not engender comfort. As you would expect I started to search for any type of shelter where I could hunker down a wait out the storm.  I started to think about getting into one of the ditches along the road that is used for run off from the field.  I would be very wet but I think it would offer me the best protection from electrocution. I considered continuing my ride as fast as I could and keep my fingers crossed that I would be able to outrun the danger.  That thought was just dumb!

Finally I saw a barn with its door ajar and felt this was my only choice.  I pulled up on my bike and leaned it against the outside wall and stuck my head in just to be sure I would not be met by any guard dogs.  The barn was housing several horses and about a dozen fierce guard cats.  When the cats realized I was not there to feed them, they quickly ignored me and when along their way.

Oddly, almost as soon as I got squared away inside the doorway of the barn my phone started to ring.  I expected it would be Lisa (my wife) even though I had called her when the rain started only to learn she was not home and could not pick me up. As it turns out the phone call was from my brother Paul.

As I stood in the doorway of that barn I looked out at the fast moving dense clouds.  I watched those clouds ignite with lightning.  I watched the rain come down in sheets and I listened to the roar of the thunder claps. I heard my brother tell me that my father had lung cancer. I was engulfed by a storm far larger than what I could see in the sky just outside that barn door.