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| Damned Drowned Rodan |
...God and the rest of the world can. I've a pretty strong feeling that, yesterday afternoon, God was looking down at me, shaking his head, and thinking, "What a dink." Had to do maintenance on one of my caches on the Bigfoot Trail, so, despite the weather forecast calling for scattered thunderstorms, I headed on out there. It's a good mile and a half to ground zero, but I rarely let the threat of rain keep me from a good hike. The closer I got to the cache, the darker the sky got, and — sure enough — the moment I reached my destination, the bottom fell out. I was under the trees, so I only got a moderate soaking as I took care of business. But right about the time I started back toward the trailhead, the lightning started popping. Close. Terrifically close!
Now, my hiking pole is made of metal, which clearly made me a walking lightning rod. I didn't want to just leave it out there because that pole and I have a long and sordid history together (yes, I know how it sounds, so STFU). To make forward progress, I started spear-hurling that pole down the trail, running after it, grabbing it, spear-hurling, etc., etc. I'm sure I heard God laughing his ass off, but... yeah... the pole and I survived. By the time I got back to the car, the skies were clear and sunny. Job done, no death by electrocution, and you, perhaps, get a chuckle. I say go for it.