So I am driving to a high school to help a principal locate a missing file. The tech guy at the High school is gone for an entire week. He also did not put the district required software on the principal’s machine to allow me to remotely access her desktop. Thus, I am driving along to meet this principal at her school.

Five minutes into my trip, I realize I went to the wrong school, so I decide to stop and get my bearings and go to the correct school. I pull into a parking lot to hear some nurses remarking about the ugly green color in the sky. They scramble as the head nurse shouts that they are going to evacuate.

It looked like a normal thunderstorm in the distance to me. Then again, I imagine the head nurse lived here for awhile. I wanted to go home, but duty called and I hope to get to the school, .75 miles away, before it rains really hard.

I’m within sight of the school when visibility changes to zero. The car in front of me is no more than 20 yards away from me, but I can only see the brake lights when he/she pushes them. At some point, the rain actually increases in intensity and I hear hail bouncing off the roof of the car. I pull off into a parking lot to wait out the storm. I found an open place sans trees. You may think I’m stupid, but I’ll explain the rationale.

I was in an old section of town. Many of the trees there are huge and 100+ years old. This equates to being a lightning magnet. I’m grounded in the car, but the flaming branch hitting the car is not a pleasant thought.

Anyway, I put the car rear facing the wind and pull the emergency brake. I have one of those cars with a raised back end so that the car slopes downward. This means that unless I face it just right, hail cannot directly strike the back glass.

So you’re saying to yourself, did you actually think through all of this? How long did it take. Yes. Ten seconds. It happens when you live here for awhile. You get 10 minutes warning at best when these storm form and move in. I had two.

So here I am in a parking lot somewhere only vaguely aware of my location. The hail starts coming now in sheets. It is so loud in my car that I am plugging my ears. The radio was up to 9 and I still couldn’t hear it. I don’t really see anything, but I presume that branches are flying around.

At this point, I decide that I should just turn around and go home when I get the chance. Yes, wait for the hail to stop. Wait for the horizontal rain to stop. Wait for the car to stop inching forward – yes the emergency brake is on.

Five minutes later, it all stops. The wind is gone, the hail is gone, the rain is gone. The car is fine and surprisingly undented. I am surrounded by tree limbs and look up to see that I had turned into a parking lot beside an open field. Driving through the branches, I see the other cars creeping along waiting for the sky to open again.

No surprising to folks that know me, I also realized that I am lost. Somewhere in the rain while trying to make my way east, I somehow ended up going in some other compass direction.

Now I realize that my biggest enemy is flash flooding. I try to call home, but the cell tower for my carrier is disabled. (When I later discovered that some places had winds of 115 mph, I understood why.)

Seeing the number of trees and tree branches in the road, all I am trying to do is drive west and north. I just need a numbered street to get my bearings and make my way home. It would take a long time, but eventually it would work. What followed was an odyssey of high tension and failed hopes. As I tried to make my way, the gas light came on. I laugh out loud because it just strikes me as too funny.

The high tension came from confronting impromptu rivers at familiar intersections. Watching a truck plow through one of those intersections, I realize that my car won’t make it through unless I want water to come up to the door handles. North and west, I tell myself. Just drive north and west.

I ended up in a neighborhood north of my home. I knew I was a little over a mile away, I just had to get to a major road. I find the numbered street and make my way west so that the numbers will go up to 90. At 90th street, I’m on a major highway that leads home. I get close only to find perpetual tree blockages. Even heading north, I cannot find a way out, so I head east. I eventually end up at a major road three miles north of home.

At this point, I should mention that there are no working stoplights on in the city at this point. I had been in neighborhoods driving through smaller rivers, so I forgot about that. I turned left (at great risk to life and car) thinking that it was west. After more tree, river, and stoplight issues, I ended up a half-mile EAST of my home. I finally made it to a street that was more or less clear and made my way home (Blondo Street).

I turn onto the street leading home and discover a large tree in the road. I try to drive around it only to find all roads in my neighborhood with big trees in the road. So, I make it back out to Blondo so that I can drive around the block on major roads to enter the street leading to my home from another direction.

From Blondo, it is full stop. Creeping forward I remember that, oh yeah, the I’M REALLY OUT OF GAS LIGHT has been on the entire time. Gas?!? Is there a gas station open at this point? I’ve been driving for an hour, do I really want to get home or stop?

Turns out that there’s no working gas stations anyway. They are out of power. Plenty of gas, just no delivery mechanism. In any case, I finally make it around. The other end of the major street leading to my home also has a tree down blocking the road. This one has a power line entangled in it as well.

At this point, I laugh again. I had enough sense to park the car at a small insurance company and turn off the engine. Yes, I’ll walk home, but at least the car isn’t burning more fumes while I’m appreciating the humor of all of this. I notice the half-inch deep hail in the parking lot. I think to myself, I made it through all of this only to get a head injury slipping on ice in June six blocks from home.

Delicately walking through hail, I also delicately make my way around the fallen tree. There was a path around the tree, through lots of soft mud. I actually walked through someone’s backyard to avoid the tree, power line, and mud. Walking down the road, calls are barreling down the road trying to escape. Whereas I couldn’t get in because of the trees at both ends of the road, they cannot get OUT. Yelling on their cellphones, I think that they have no idea.

I finally make it home only to see leaves pasted to the front of the house and a huge lake for a driveway. Fortunately, my neighbor’s driveway is high and dry, so I walk through it and a little water to get to my front door.

No power.

Who cares?!? I finally made it home. The gas grill is okay, so we’re set. Grill everything, relax at home, chill, relax and have a great time.

An hour later, I ask my wife, What do you mean there’s no meat in the refrigerator?