Yet another adventure driving in the rain

The rainstorm came so suddenly this afternoon that one of my co-workers gasped and said, "Look outside" and ran to the window. A solid wall of water was rushing down the side of the building. The air was so white it looked like we were on the inside of a cloud. We were entertained for a few minutes before we all sat down and got back to work.

5:40 and I finally escaped work. Upstairs from my desk I had seen a couple of people walking through the parking lot under an umbrella. An umbrella would have been nice. Downstairs a crowd had gathered at the front door, waiting out the rain, I suppose. I didn't want to wait that long. I put a plastic bag on top of my head and walked fast. The rain wasn't so bad, it was the puddles that caused the problems. My black flats, nylons and the bottoms of my pants got soaked. These days I am afraid to ruin my clothes, and I was horrified at first but relaxed after I realized the water wouldn't really ruin them.

I drove through several fast-moving streams of water getting to the interstate. Looking back my rule *should* be, you can never be too cautious in a potentially dangerous driving situation. But honestly I was just tired and eager to get through this wet mess as quickly as possible. I was fording these streams without much thought.

I was waiting at a traffic light and saw a truck stopped in my lane ahead. A man was getting out of the truck. What's this guy doing? I thought. He got down into the water and propped up a construction sign that must have fallen in the rain, which otherwise all the traffic would have had to go around. Woo-hoo, this guy is my hero.

More rain-related fun on the way home: I narrowly missed getting hit by a pickup truck after traffic stopped suddenly in front of me and I made a quick lane change. Incidents like these make me debate in my mind whether I'm a bad driver or not. I'm a "bad" driver in the sense that I don't have good instincts for the physical act of driving. I'm a "good" driver in the sense that I usually follow traffic laws to the letter. That is, except when I am very eager to get home and start getting careless. Rain and rush hour, double reason to slow down.

The finale of my latest driving in the rain adventure: a rainbow.

Wouldn't it be cool if there were a pot of gold at the end of it, at the top of the mountain? But no pots of gold, instead another go at rush hour tomorrow.