Scootin in the Rain! "Chance of..."

Well my luck finally ran out. I guess I should have knocked on wood after praising the beautiful weather in the last post. Scooting to work and the weather are a tricky thing in Baltimore. Almost everyday in a Baltimore Summer the weather goes like this... "sunny with a chance of...". Now if you chicken out every time a weatherman says "chance of" you'd never ride anywhere, so you just have to go and hope the "chance of" doesn't happen in those few minutes that you're on the road.

So yesterday was the day "chance of" caught me. I came out of work at 4pm, and saw that this half of the sky was sunny and the other half had big DARK clouds, and more over the other half was moving towards this half. So fortunately the dividing line of these halves was Falls Rd, which is not my normal way home but it does go home. So we're off to the races... I make it all the way from Hampden back to Towson, I am coming up Bellona towards Charles when the wind starts to pick up. All of a sudden some "things" start blowing down from the trees, seconds later I feel a sharp pain on my neck, I think oh something in the wind has scratched me. Not so lucky it turns out, the pain gets worse and I pull over. I swat at my neck and kill something that I never actually saw, however the 1/4 inch stinger, and quarter sized bump I now have, lead me to believe I was stung by a wasp at about 35mph. I ask you, how does that happen!?!?

Ok so fine, I was stung but my attention has to quickly turn back to the storm clouds. I continue up Bellona towards Charles St. At the light, here it comes... by the time the light turns green it has begun to pour, so I quickly pull off into a small office complex with a covered parking lot. This would be my hang out for the next TWO hours as I watched wave after wave of rain, thunder, and lightening.
There comes a time around 6pm when my boredom and the lessening rain made me make a run for it. I pulled back out onto Kenilworth Ave and not a quarter mile up the road it lets loose again! I pull off in the Kenilworth Mall covered parking area, this time completely soaked. After I dry a little bit and my terrets subsides, I decide if I am stuck I might as well go inside and get dinner. When I come back out the skies have cleared, the rain has stopped, and the sun is even out a little. So here we go... it's the home stretch! I get maybe another two miles down the road and it starts to sprinkle again, eh no big deal. I pass the Towson mall in the sprinkling and crazy traffic, I make it all the way to about a mile from the house, and that's when the bottom just completely fell out! Heading up Putty Hill in a pouring driving rain on a scooter at 35mph is not fun and even a little painful! But I will tell you that at some point in situations like this the anger and frustration subsides into comedy and you just have to laugh at yourself.

So there you have it, my 3 hour commute home, that's usually 30 minutes. Apparently I had pushed The Gods just a little too far, dodging all their previous rain storms and today was their day of revenge.