cold + wet + lightning

weather report: severe storms, lightning, wind, hail.

what genius thing do megan and i do? meet jason, whitney, and erin for bbq in downtown nashville. where do we park? close as we can, which happens to be about 5 or 6 blocks away due to the predators game. so we're wrapping up dinner, filling out credit card slips, and then we notice it starts raining. and the raining only lasts for about 30 seconds, then it turns to a downpour.

now when i say downpour, i'm not talking big summer raindrops falling straight down. no, this is forrest gump "rain that flew in sideways. and sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath." even if we'd had an umbrella it wouldn't have done much good. and we'd seen the radar before we left so we knew it wasn't going to let up any time soon. so we ran for it.

i've never ran so far in sandals. megan's flip flops maybe lasted a block, and the first river (i mean street) that we crossed claimed one of them. she caught it before it got washed away, but she went barefoot after that. lightning was flashing overhead, and cars were stopping at green lights to let us cross out of pity. at that point there's no sense in trying to maintain any dignity. all you can do is laugh at the water dripping off your hat bill while tourists stare and yell at you from the honky tonks on broadway, the windows of the wild horse saloon, and the massive tour buses along 2nd avenue. that was the coldest and wettest i've been since a canoe trip down the broad river in rainy weather at age 11.

it was great seeing you guys. next time, let's go someplace with a parking lot.