Chasing The Apocalypse

I feared for my life a little bit last night. Just a little bit.

My friend Peter and I were taking a stroll around the plaza where we got our ice cream (CHEESECAKE flavoured ice cream...how long has this been around and why did nobody tell me sooner?!) when we looked up at the sky and saw a huge storm front moving in complete with suspicious looking green clouds.  Peter made a comment about how he felt like we should be in Independence Day, and I agreed. I stared up at the sky and waited for some gigantic alien ship to emerge through the clouds.

We'd already changed our plans because of the weather. We were going to head down to Ed Fest to see The Arkells and Pilot Speed when the thunder made us change our minds. This was probably a good thing because apparently, according to the Sonic 102.9 twitter feed, the stage blew over, and garbage cans were flying through the air.  Not wanting to be blown over OR hit with garbage cans, Peter and I did the next most logical thing. Got food and went tornado chasing.  

Although I had my smaller, lesser quality camera with me, I still wanted to go home and grab my "good" camera, which took us in the same direction as the ominous dark clouds.  I've got my head out the window while snapping pictures with one hand and steering with the other, and Peter is torn between staring at the clouds and making sure I don't crash my car.  We came to a stop light where I could finally take some non-blurry pictures, and noted that we just may be witnessing the apocalypse.

Earlier in the evening, Peter had rolled down my passenger side window not knowing it was broken, and naturally, it refused to go back up.  This wasn't that much of a problem until a huge cloud of dust and debris came tumbling down the road at us. Peter is now manually holding my window up, and the wind decides to take some rocks - not stones, but rocks - and attack my car, leaving a nice crack in my windshield. You know, because the broken window just wasn't enough. *growl*.

We turned into my parking lot, and the street lights, as well as the lights in my building, are flickering on and off. Peter had been kind enough to hold on to the cup of my leftover ice cream until he had to put it on the dashboard to hold up the window, but since I'm driving like a maniac, it went flying through the air and landed in his lap.  I start laughing. He is not too pleased, but figures it's an equal trade off for the broken window. 

Up in my condo, Peter cleans up while I grab my camera, a few garbage bags and some packing tape.  We go back down to my car and notice that it has decided to start raining.  We frantically try to tape up my window but keep losing the end of the packing tape. Okay, *I* kept losing the end of the packing tape.  I can't do things when there is a storm to distract me!  I get all giddy and excited and ridiculous.

Peter uses the light inside my car to search for the impossible to find end of the packing tape

We finally get it taped up as much as possible and try to drive off to find a good place to watch the storm. Except for one little problem. With the passenger side window now completely covered in black garbage bags, I can't see any traffic coming from the right, and therefore cannot make any left hand turns.  So, four right hand turns later, and we'd settled in a little parking lot near my condo building. And, after years of trying, I was finally able to photograph some lightning:

This one flickered for a good few seconds and Peter said "You HAD to have gotten that!" Yes Peter...yes I did.

I call this one "Nature Doing The Splits"

Sheet lightning making my condo building look like the entrance to the abyss

We eventually decided to head back to my condo and watch the rest of the storm from my balcony.  Of course we did this when it was raining its heaviest, my parking lot was a massive river, and it was hailing.  I thought it would be a good idea to take a video of the mad dash from the car to the condo. You can't see much in the middle of the video, (it's mostly my high pitched giggles), but it was the most fun I've had in a long time.