Umbrella? What Umbrella?

If you live Oklahoma, you get plenty of opportunities to experience the wind that comes sweeping down the plains. If, like me, you grew up in Oklahoma, you learn to deal with the wind and, during those rare extended periods of no wind (to me, that's a wind speed less than 10 mph) you actually start to miss it.

One of the ways I've dealt with wind is to not carry an umbrella. I'm not sure how many umbrellas were blown inside-out before I learned this coping skill, but at one time I reached a point where I stopped buying new umbrellas.

The down side is that I have to think ahead for dealing with rainy days. Usually, I try to park close enough that I can dart from building to tree (yeah, I know, bad idea if lightning is involved) to building to get to work.

Today, though, I couldn't use that strategy because my car went into the shop for repairs. Sure enough, a thunderstorm rumbled into town just as I was leaving for work.

No umbrella, of course.

I stuffed a couple of garbage bags into my backpack, knowing that I could use them as ponchos (for some reason, I forgot to buy emergency ponchos when I had the chance). But I knew that my head would still get wet. And besides, wearing the garbage bag poncho over my backpack would make me look like the Hunchback of the Garbage Heap.

In a flash of inspiration and a rumble of satisfaction (or maybe it was the lightning and thunder that did the flash and rumble thing?), I grabbed an unused storage tote lid and headed out to the bus stop.

Awesome! It kept my head dry and was big enough to keep my backpack dry as well. Not only that, but I knew that a gust of wind wouldn't turn the thing inside-out.

After I got off the bus (people looked but didn't say anything about my tote lid), I still had a few blocks to walk to get to my workplace.

The rain had more or less stopped, so I carried the lid next to me.

I discovered its next use when a car drove though a puddle in the street next to where I was on the sidewalk. With my "totebrella" at my side, the water didn't splash me. 

Yess!!

I made it to my office and from there to my class (it had started raining again by the time I'd ascended the stairs from the basement to emerge outside), using my rain shield.
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I wonder if I could make any money marketing the Totebrella?

The Beauty of Nature

   Today, as I was driving back to Stillwater from Tulsa, where my wife had a doctor's appointment, I saw a dust devil.  They're not real common, but I manage to see a few every year.  This one lasted longer than most I've seen.  It danced and swayed and seemed almost alive for about 30 seconds, maybe longer.
   My wife had never seen one.  She's heard about them, of course, but she thought they were really figments of the imagination or perhaps a tall tale.  This was her first view of these mostly harmless mini-tornadoes that pop up in dusty, dry, and usually flat areas.  She grew up in hilly Cincinnati and has hardly ever been west of I35, which more or less is like a dividing line between the hillier eastern half of Oklahoma, and the flatter plains to the west.
   I grew up in Oklahoma City, and as a kid we would chase after the dust devils that danced across playgrounds and little league baseball fields.  They seldom lasted for more than a few seconds, so often it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  Once inside a dust devil, the dirt and debris would swirl around, pelting us on all sides.  The winds were always too weak to whisk us off to Oz.  Then the experience was over before we knew it, the magic dissipated to perhaps, or perhaps not, re-form elsewhere on the playground.
   I wish I would have had my camera out to capture today's dust devil, along with the delighted surprise in Susie's voice when she witnessed one of the little miracles of nature that often pass unnoticed to most people.