"M" Captions Log Stardate: Don't even know what that means...

*We'll just stick with Saturday Night Part I*

It was a dark and stormy night....

Oddly enough that's what it ended up being. But first lets begin at well the beginning. My ship mate, we'll call her Riri, and I took off from Boise around noon. She had enjoyed a blessed time at the temple and I was running around like crazy getting things ready for the coming week of frivolity.

We drove for a good long ways with no problems. We decided to take the 93. This goes through Nevada. The other way down would be to go through Utah. Which is the way I know. I hear there are many ways to get to California but I don't know them all.

That's where we were going. Southern California! 10 days of non stop excitment and fun. It was a two day trip down and back. We took my little car, er, I mean spaceship, that had never seen anything beyond Boise, Idaho. The poor thing was in for some shock.

You see, before we even reached Las Vegas, which was our first stop for the trip, my little spaceship went through something it had never endured before. Heck I'VE never endured it before. It was a...

!!!Desert Monsoon!!!

Who ever heard of such a thing? I hadn't. You see in Idaho the saying goes, "If you don't like the weather just wait 10 minutes and it will change." Apparently Nevada has never experienced that kind of weather before! So it's dark out, totaly pitch black because there are NO cities (we had passed a sign saying the next city wouldn't be for another 91 miles) no lamp post, not anything we could call civilization. And then the lightening starts.

That part was actually pretty cool though Riri mentioned it was blinding. I didn't have much problems with that and I was the one driving. But then the rain started. And it got harder and harder and harder until finally I had to pull over. I could not see a thing. This is when we figured we wait until it died down. At one point it lightened up a bit but once I got one the road it would rain harder again and I'd have to pull over.

The sickest part of the whole thing was the other cars. There weren't many of them but when they came back they came by FAST!! I couldn't believe how fast they were going. I kept thinking to myself, "I can't believe I'm afraid of a stupid rain storm. What is wrong with me?" Then we make a phone call to the friend in LV. We are using my phone because Riri's does not have sevice at this time. It went something like this:

Riri: Hey, we are about an hour or two outside Las Vegas but we ran into this horrible rain storm. Caption's pulled over and we are going to wait it out but it doesn't seem to be letting up. Can you look at the news and see what's going on?

Pause

Riri: A WHAT!?!

Pause
Riri: You have got to be kidding me?

Riri turns to me: We are in a monsoon!

Me: That can't be, aren't they tropical? They must be over exhaggerating.

Riri relays this messege to our LV friend.

Pause

Riri: No that's what the weather man is saying, it's a Desert Monsoon. We are in the beginning of the season. They GET THEM ALL THE TIME!

Pause

Riri: Great! (turns to me) we are in a flash flood warning zone and she says it's just staying where it is. It's not moving.

As Riri and LV friend discuss where we should meet once we get there (and Riri mentioning we might not actually make it alive) I weigh our options. Every few minutes a car comes by very fast. We could follow one, they obviously know what they are doing. "But you don't. You could get killed doing that." We could just wait until it's over. "Hello! Flash Floods, monsoon not moving remember?" But I can't see anything. I've already drivien on the wrong side of the road. I could get us killed.

I hear Riri finally off the phone mention something about the wake up strips along the sides of the road. I start forming a plan catching on to what she is saying. We'll go slow, stay on the wake up strips so I know I'm not going to get us killed by running into on coming traffic, and pull over when ever I see someone coming behind us. I Put the car in gear and we head off.

10-15 mintues later the sky is suddenly clear, the rain is gone competly not even a drizzle remains, and the moon is out. As quickly as it came it was gone. But we could see the lightening in my review mirror and Riri says, "Drive. Drive fast don't let that thing catch up to us." She didn't have to tell me twice.

Since I've been home I decided to do a little research on Desert Monsoons. Still a little skeptical they even exsist. Come to find they are very real. It has less to do with climate and more to do with geography. Who knew?

And that was our first night on the road. We knew it was going to be a very interesting trip.