June 15 2009 Nebraska, our Nebraska experience was boring at first and then VERY intense. We drove and drove and drove. The flat land was occasionally dotted by lines of spiky grey towering windmills.They came in rows and bunches rising off the horizon and passing into view. I was told that they are loud, but we never heard them make any noise. The sky was filled with ominous clouds.
We could see the rain in the distance and JJ excitedly looked for tornadoes. A tornado would be the treat of the vacation for him. JJ has dreamed of tornados since before we first met. He would dream them out a window or he would be standing among them. In his vision they would pick him up and twirl him around. He always felt like those dreams were a token of good fortune. The last 30 years have felt like a whirlwind to me. It went so fast.
No tornadoes tormented us but we were buffeted by a hail storm that stopped traffic with silver dollar sized hail stones for 20 minutes. Some lucky drivers found shelter under a bridge on the interstate. We were lucky to find limited shelter between to 18 wheel trucks. I felt like I was living inside a sinister popcorn popper, “Pop pop poppopopopopopop.” The hail’s vocabulary was limited to onomatopoeia. No one ever taught it nouns and verbs and adjectives. I imagine that a more educated hail would track us down and terrorize us rather than being random as this onslaught was. Perhaps I should be grateful for the restricted lexicon. The hail put at least a thousand dents in our car hood and in our roof. We let the insurance company know about. It will be another of the post vacation tasks we will have.
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