right now i can hear the thunder all around me. it’s almost every thirty seconds apart. remember those beautiful peaks in my last post? well they are echoing the thunder all around me. every time lightning strikes the sound circles 360 degrees around me. it’s quite disturbing.
can you see the visitor center? it won’t be long now before i get to tree line. it’s raining really good right now. in the picture just below, you can see a white minivan. nothing special, just i thought it was inspiring to see someone actually at the end.
the rain turned to hail, and it’s not feeling very good. i guess the good part is that i am not getting wet :) the lightning kind of stopped and i am starting to see tree line. i was going to stop and wait under a tree till the lightning stopped, but since it stopped i can keep going.
i got about a half mile into tree line and the thunder and lightning started! now i’m scared no where to hide… crap! i pulled over to the side of the road near the embankment hoping to get a little shelter from the lightning. there was no where to really sit down unless i felt like sitting on tundra… which i didn’t. so there i was standing over my bike in a ditch next to the road [sorry no picture].
one couple passed by and the guy asked if everything was alright dude… yeah i’m fine. while i was there i thought that i would get some food. remember it’s pouring rain at this point. i pull out my burrito from this morning and carefully remove the soggy paper that it’s wrapped in. this is not easy, because it is very fragile and breaking into very small pieces. i manage to pull it back about an inch or so and take a bite. not sure if i got all the paper off. so i don’t want to hold the burrito in the rain while i am chewing, so i bit off as much as i can before i get to the start of the paper.
ok, so do you have a good picture: it’s raining/hailing very hard, there is lightning every thirty to forty seconds, i am standing in a ditch over my bike, eating a cold taco bell burrito… with my mouth full. at this point some lady drives by and asks if i’m ok. i can’t speak, because my mouth is so full… i don’t know what my face looks like at this point, but i just nodded my head. i probably looked really sick at this point, she had this kind of scared look on her face. she said, “are you sure?”….”i have a bike rack in the back…” i really wanted a ride but, i was so close. i thanked her for the offer, but turned her down. i wonder if she even understood what i said, my mouth was so full. by the way that cold burrito was so good, i can’t believe how much better it was that the one i ate down in estes.
it felt like the lightning slowed down a bit, so i packed up and continued my quest.