04-04-11 Call out the instigators, cause there’s something in the air

04-04-11
“Call out the instigators, cause there’s something in the air”
21 miles
The started with great promise. The temperature in the tent was warm enough to sleep on top of the sleeping bag without any other covers needed. I’d been waiting for that kind of fair weather to come my way. I was up around 6:40am and feeling refreshed thanks to my body still being on eastern time. I got up and showered and shaved - first time in 3 days - a luxury to be enjoyed each opportunity. I come out and do a little walk with Mischa and go back to the tent to write some ideas I had and organize things for today’s internet outing. Then the rain starts. Just little bits at short intervals. But the sky darkens ominously. Then it gets really dark suddenly and rain comes down quick and hard. I finish what I’m doing and prepare to leave for the McInternet as soon as things quiet down a bit. Thunder and close lightning strikes are all around.
It’s pre-noon and I see that the clouds move by fast so I’m hoping it will blow over soon. It’s good enough to go out around 12:30 so we head off. I unplug the electrical coard I have going into my tent, just to be safe and put my writing books up on the futon just in case it rains while we’re out.
After a few stops I get online and am uploading post and photos and suddenly the sky blackens and the wind starts rocking the car like it’s a toy. I am just finished with my uploads and the screen of my computer goes black after a close thunderclap. Dear god, have I just lost my link to the world? I put it away and hope for the best. First, to get out of this storm and get enough gas to get back to camp and pay for another night.
The storm has effected the credit machines so I buy $2 in gas and hope it will get me back to camp and back to McInternet in the morning.
I get back to camp and try to pay using two credit cards as I don’t have enough left on any account to cover the $18 fee.
I finally get it covered using a third car with on $7 left on it. 13 from one card 5 from the other. I now have $6 left to my name total.
But I have a place to stay tonight.
I get back and the tent is soaked inside and out. We’ll have to sleep here tonight regardless - that or go to the car if it’s really bad.
Right now it is pouring down relentlessly and huge lightning strikes and booming thunder is all around. I am only one of about three campers still left in out loop of the park. I’m signing off now to protect this writing and netbook.
Soggyness awaits…if we’re lucky.
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We’re not. I keep thinking…“It can’t get worst” but it does. We give up on the tent around 4 pm as the center of the futon begins to soak thru. We get In the car with bare essentials, leaving the rest of the tent to the rain.
And rain, it does! Increasingly bombastic through the evening, The lightning, hot white, filling the sky is more spectacular that any Disney Fireworks display. Sometimes it’s so close I have to close my eyes. Other times my eyes are already closed, but I see the flashes through my eyes anyway.
I feel like one of those storm watchers on the weather channel who I keep saying to myself “Nice pictures, but - are you Insane? Get out of there!” But for Mischa & I, this car is out last refuge,
It IS one of the more spectacular exhibitions nature has to offer. There were a few times when I thought nature had gone array, broken it’s own rules. Lightning so close and filling the sky so fully, I’d expected the most explosive, percussive thunder, and yet it was rather underwhelming comparatively. Perhaps, I’d just become inured to the sound. And it was incessant…Until 9pm…almost on the dot. Mischa & I took the break - for that was all we dared hope it was at the time, for a chance to empty our bladders and for me to salvage what I could from the wreckage of our tent.
Coming back to the car like the Swiss Family Robinson or Robinson Carouso, we nestled in with out jetsum and fell to a quick nap…or series of them. I can’t say what Mischa’s dreams consisted of, but mine were variations on a theme - of home, Homes I’d lived in, homes I’d dreamed about over the years and stylized homes of yearning. I woke to be disappointed to be in the car rather than in those deserted places of the heart, The dreams are not surprising for a homeless man in a storm. And they were, for a second, heart rending to me personally, but dealing with the now is the task.
And I’d just realized the third whammy of this day. A cloudless sky. At midnight. A frigid night would follow. I couldn’t run the heater for fear of running out of gas.
It is now 3:57am central time and I’m covered with a comforter with Mischa on my lap beneath it waiting for daylight. It is bitter cold, and I couldn’t sleep. I will try again now. Perhaps another dream of home will wing me towards daylight.