hail to the no!

Yesterday afternoon, I was here at home taking care of a few things when the rains came.  I was glad I wasn't on my way home on the bicycle.  Then the hail joined in and I was really glad.

And it just kept on a-hailing.  Buckets of the stuff, it seemed!  I was here with just the menagerie and shot this video shortly after the cat came in and verbally abused me, like the mother hail storm was my fault.

As you can see, China was not too happy about it either, but at least she wasn't blaming me.

The toads and snake seemed pretty oblivious.  The monster fish?  Who cares, it was probably their doing as part of their evil quest for world domination.

At that point, it turned out that the hail was just getting started.  By the time things calmed down, we'd gotten about nine inches.  The good part was that it was pretty isolated to our neck of the woods - possible additional evidence against our evil fish residents.

Meego texted me for a ride home from school.  He typically walks, as his school is about a mile and a half away and the hail had stopped by then, but there was no walking around among the piles.

I looked out the window at our street and wasn't sure I could even get out of the neighborhood, especially since I just had my parents' diminutive Toyota Echo they'd entrusted to my care.  The big van is here, but trapped in a hail bog.

Boldly, the Echo (Suzy Q) and I ventured.  I barely made it out of the driveway, but kept it slow and steady, the whole while "this is a bad idea... this is a bad idea... this is a bad idea..." repeating in my head.

I really had to pick my route carefully. Where there weren't huge mounds of hail, the roads were veritable rivers.  I felt like I was trying to drive a Toyota through the Everglades.  To make matters worse, several cars were stuck anywhere and everywhere, leaving limited options as to where to drive.  Stopping to help them would be futile and only make matters worse, it was best to try to keep moving.  So I did.

Magically, I made it to the high school.  My route took me a good 20 minutes.  The parking lot was still pretty full with people trying to extract their cars from hail lake.  Meego swam over and climbed soggily in.  Our next adventure - make it back  home.

Employing the same tactics I'd used to get out, we eventually made it back to the house.  Suzy Q to the rescue!  She was pretty beat up, though.  I had to free the gallons of hail that had collected just underneath the grill.  A panel there had come loose and had acted like a big scoop every time we bottomed out through the hail - which was pretty much the whole route.  Upon my inspection, I'm guessing that the panel has probably been loose for a while, just hadn't made itself known before now.

Eventually, the sun came out.  Then a snowplow cleared our street.

I made it out later, in Ellie Mae, for some groceries.  There was a guy near the toothpaste, talking animatedly on his phone.

"There's like 10 inches of hail!  They closed the freeway!"

I'm guessing he's from out of town since people around here don't typically call the highway the freeway.  It's the highway.  Legal pot, remember?

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