I knew on Thursday that my trip home from Little Rock today might be dicey. I considered, very briefly, to come home last night to avoid the potential danger I could face driving up the Missouri/Kansas border to my home in Kansas City. That (would-be) 7-hour drive (6 hours for ol' Lead Foot here) was supposed to be smack-dab in the middle of the moderate risk area. Anyone who follows storms like my husband does (literally, he follows them, the fool), will tell you that moderate risk days are not to be trifled with. [ugh, dangling participle]
Mother Nature wasn't playing around today either.
I made the fortuitous, and educated, decision to leave Little Rock before nine this morning. I only drove through one moderate downpour, and had virtually no issues with rain otherwise, except leaving my gas cap off for 120 miles during said downpour .
Around 1:30, my husband contacted me to ask where I was. "Lamar (MO)," I told him.
"Don't stop," he replied. "There's a storm coming up behind you going about 60 miles per hour."
"Not a problem. It'll never catch me!"
(Please don't tell the cops, but my speed was between 83 and 88 miles per hour nearly the entire trip. I'm not bragging, and if my mother ever reads this, she will no doubt reprimand her 40 year-old daughter, but I am admitting my guilt. Like I said, please don't tell the highway patrol.)
I was right. I missed all the weather. I missed the tornadoes (plural) that ran along Highway 40 on which I had just sped, my satellite radio blasting, just a few hours prior. I missed the mayhem, the disaster, the lives lost, the property destroyed.
And for that, I thank my crazy, adrenaline-riddled husband who chases storms and worries me constantly every spring. That dumbass (and I mean that lovingly) kept me from harm's way. Guess he wants to keep me around a little longer.
Probably because he needed clean socks.
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