Thunderstorms

We ended our last class early...two hours early to be close to precise. We said our fond farewells to the people we cared about and then my good friend from my class took me back to the Lodge. I noticed how extravagantly humid it was outside and how a deep haze hung over the horizon and treelines through Charlottesville. I should have known what that meant.

I was laying in my bed watching television at around 3:30 when I heard a noise that sounded like one of the older women who work at the hotel pushing around a cart of used towels. I didn't really pay much attention to it until I heard it a second time, this time louder though. I kind of figured we were having a passing storm but did not think it was going to get too serious. Until the power went out.

It quickly came back on and I was glad because I really needed the AC going in my room. The power stayed on for another three minutes or so and was then cut out again. This time it did not come back on for a while.

Lightning was cracking all around the Lodge and I could hear water pouring off the second floor balcony into the area in front of my room. I pulled the blinds open and looked outside at the strong winds blowing leaves, sticks, and small branches down from the woods behind the motel. Rain was coming down heavily and running down the hill towards the back of the motel where my room is.

Then the hail started. It wasn't large hail, nothing damaging, but it was enough to take note of. Water, in the mean time, kept building up more and more outside of my room. I opened my door and was met with about two inches of water standing in the walkway. Luckily the doors have enough of a doorstop ridge that the water was never able to breach. I stood in my door frame for a few minutes as the storm raged beyond the protection of the overhang balcony. A Hispanic guy ran out of his room and passed me in order to get to his car for something. As soon as he leaped over the giant puddle that was in front of my door and started going up the stairs we saw an intensely bright flash of lightning and immediately heard a sky-splitting crack. He just turned around and looked at me for a second or two, smiled, and continued running out to his car.

I eventually closed my door (after taking a few pictures of the water) and turned the TV on to continue my done-with-class-early rituals....and the cable was out. It remained out for several hours...Several hours in a hotel room by yourself with nothing to do is terribly boring.

Around 8:30 another storm rolled through. Not as powerful as the first, but still fairly rough. It completely broke the humidity's stranglehold on the area and somehow restored the cable. Unfortunately, the Internet at the Lodge is still out so I'm sitting in my car outside of the Ed. School siphoning the network connection.

It feels a lot like what I have to do at home..