A So Cal Girl in the Desert

You may have heard about it on the news! On Tuesday night the Phoenix area experienced the biggest monsoon they've had in two years. Unfortunately, we were out in it.

I had a meeting with some local business owners in Maricopa, and my husband and stepson drove down with me to have dinner with Mr. D and Little D (Mrs. D was in the meeting with me). After the boys got home from dinner and the meeting broke up, Mrs. D and I took the dinner the boys brought home for us and went together to make her rounds. I may not have mentioned this before, but we both own our own pet sitting business. Mine is just starting up, and she has been a tremendous help and a wonderful friend. So we walk outside her house and we're in the middle of a huge cloud of dust. It's really bad, and dust is getting in our eyes, which really hurts. We jump in the car and head out. I asked her, "Do people stay home when this happens, or do they go out and drive around and live their lives like normal?" She said, "Well, it usually doesn't last very long, so people usually go out in it. The dust part never lasts over ten or twenty minutes." Okay. I have to say I totally trust her and her driving because I've been in the car with her before, but I was really quite scared driving around. The visibility was about zero, and when you could see something it was usually a tumbleweed or branch rolling right in front of your car. She was driving and chatting...driving and chatting. I was sweating and gripping...sweating and gripping...trying to listen.

We got to the first house and the dust had settled, literally, for the most part. Just a little wind and a few drops of rain (the rain part comes after the dust part). It was a quick stop with a Great Dane puppy. Oh my! His head was up to my chest, and the house was full of glass cabinets and vases. The puppy was hurdling the living room furniture, and it's tail kept whipping everything. The vases would spin on an edge of their bases and settle back down until the next whipping. It's a miracle nothing broke. And you know how puppies like to jump on new people? Well, this one was no different, only he was taller than me on his hind legs. Can you say H-O-R-S-I-E?

We went back to the car and the weather was just a little windy, but by the time we got to our second stop at the German Shepherd's house, it was blowing pretty hard. Mrs. D did her duties, and we sat down at the dining room table with our Styrofoam containers. Then the lightening started. The sky lit up purple all over. It was the only time we could see outside at all, because there are no street lights in the residential areas of Maricopa in order to preserve great star-gazing conditions. So then the doggie door started to bang, and with each bang came a huge gust of wind. I never knew you could feel that much wind from a doggie door. We started hearing rain, but kept on eating and chatting with the GS in our nice dry spot. When it was time to leave, we opened the door and shut it right back again. However this home's roof was designed, it was not kept in mind that someone might need to leave during a rain storm. All the roof angles pointed down to about two feet in front of the door. So not only was the sky dumping, but there was a genuine waterfall, which was nearly making froth on the front porch. We started laughing. "Do you want to brave it?" Mrs. D asked. "Let's go!" I said. So we did. Never mind the fact that we both had on white shirts...we'll save that story for another audience. After making it ten feet to the car, we looked like we had just jumped in a pool.

On the way home, it began to rain even harder. There were a couple of trees down, and with all the construction going on, there were lots of downed construction barriers and the like. We made it back to her house safely, and then it was time for me to get back in the car with my family and make the trip back to Chandler where our apartment is (about 28 miles). As soon as we got into the car, the lightening frequency increased even more, and it started to rain harder. We thought the wash area might be flooded, but we made it out of town just fine. Then we hit the 347, which is a four-lane highway that stretches through the Indian Reservation just north of Maricopa. Pitch black, then lightening, at increasing frequencies. It became like a strobe light, and watching the windshield wipers was like watching a bad 80s dance video. My stepson was scared when the thunder started, and we were all scared when the lightening bolts started hitting the ground quite close to us. "The car is one of the safest places to be because the rubber tires act like a barrier. Just don't touch the metal door handles." My husband instructed. Huh? I think his intention to calm us had the opposite effect. He kept reducing his speed, and on a road with a speed limit of 65, we were going about 35. I asked if we should pull over, but we pressed on. When the rain started to come directly at the windshield, sideways through the air, and was the hardest rain I'd ever seen, my husband started to crack-up. "What's so funny? What's so funny? What's so funny?" My stepson asked. "Well, it's just, um, well...CRAZY!" my husband said. How do you explain this driving situation to an eight-year-old? You don't want to alarm him and say "Well, son, I can't see a damn thing, and our car is about to get blown off the road." The lightening was blinding. I've never in my life seen so much of it. I would say the sky was lit up more than it was dark, and the bolts seemed to come from every direction. We finally made it home safely, though sopping wet, and heard on the news how the airport was shut down and that it is the worst monsoon the area has had in two years.

On Wednesday morning our world was covered with dust and mud. The most unbelievable thing happened when I got into my Jeep to take my stepson to school. Even though all the windows were zipped up, the inside of my car was covered with dust and had a musty damp smell. It appears as if the dust and rain got through the zippers and Velcro of my soft top while it was parked in a covered parking spot surrounded by other cars. This is weather they just don't have in So Cal! Nothing a good car washing won't fix. Hey, Honey?