"Oh, the weather outside is frightful"

I live in the desert. We don't get much rain. We average 7 inches a year; that is our average and we haven't gotten that in the last couple of years. We average 364 days a year of sunshine. That means that we never have to worry about getting rained out of anything. We only worry about heat and pray for a change in the weather.

So imagine our surprise when last Sunday the meteorologist announced that the Phoenix area would be getting 8 inches of rain this week. There would be change in our weather and next came the media blitz! Since the media gets excited anytime there is a prediction for change in our weather, and most of the time it doesn't happen, we were all doubtful that we would end up with even an inch of rain.

Well, this time they got it right. Monday it started to rain a bit, but Tuesday evening we got hit with the first big down pour (we've hardly had a reprieve since). At about 6:30 I was fixing dinner when I got a call from Garth on his way home from work. He had a flat tire on the freeway, almost at the exit to our house. You know every person that creeped by him that night was so glad it wasn't their vehicle with the flat.

His truck is a monster to change tires on and he wasn't in a safe place to do it, it was raining buckets of water and it was dark. We debated what to do, called a couple of friends to get advice and eventually I borrowed a heavy duty jack and set off to help Garth change the tire.

By the time I got there, one of the friends I'd called was already that and he and Garth were about done (yea, I didn't have to get soaked) They were soaked to the bone, but within 10 minutes Garth was home. Thank goodness for great friends!

Moral of the story is, when the tire pressure light goes on and you can get off the freeway and find shelter and light at a QT, don't think you can make it home. And sometimes the meteorologists are right in their predictions.