Tonight we traveled to Des Moines for a concert by rock band Phoenix which was held at People's Court in the Court Ave. district. As we were preparing to leave, I should have known it would be an interesting night based on the dark, ominously-low cloud cover that was moving over Ames. It almost seemed like one of those sci-fi movies where the sky darkens, clouds swirl, and then a huge bolt of bright-blue laser beam touches down from the alien spaceship hovering in the heavens to destroy a major landmark.
So the sci-fi aspect didn't happen, at least, but more on that in a moment.
I enjoyed the concert, though it was a bit short. I got in a little late, and the band ended up playing for only an hour before giving the obligatory "thanks, that's all" fake sign-off, leaving the stage for a few minutes while some looped noise played, followed by their victorious return for a two or three song encore. The songs I recognized sounded quite close to the versions from their great Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix album, though they stretched some out in a few places. Most interesting were some songs that I didn't recognize, including one that had some repetitious and rocking guitar and synth lines building up a wall of sound while the bandleader sang over it using a harmonizer effect (think Imogen Heap's vocal from the track Hide and Seek). I hope to track down a recorded version of the song once I find out what it was. I think it had the word "funky" amongst the lyrics.
After leaving the concert, we jumped on I-35 to head back north around 11pm, only to find huge walls of rain slamming into our car once we got near the outskirts of Des Moines. I was wishing our Ford Fusion had a little quicker windshield wiper action, as some bursts rain nearly blacked out the windshield at moments. Coupled with constant lightning flashes, it was a harrying experience making our way back to Ames. Our speed dropped as low as 25 MPH on the interstate as I struggled to keep an eye on the white lines of the road and/or the blinking caution lights of the car ahead of me.
Many folks had pulled off to the side of the road to wait things out, but I forged ahead, thinking we would eventually drive out of it. In the end, we never got out of the rain, though we seemed to get out of the worst of the storm about 10 miles south of Ames. Once back in town, we found ourselves running into police roadblocks on South Duff and then on Stange Road as we repeatedly tried to find an open route home to the north side of town. Apparently flooding across major roads in Ames had already begun.
Not good!
Luckily we found what may have been the last remaining open route, using Hyland west of campus to get up to 13th Street, where we snuck back on Stange north of the roadblock, and navigated through some major standing water before breathing a sigh of relief as we reached the driveway and garage. Home sweet home! The picture above was my attempt to capture some lightning-brightened sky and rain. I give myself a grade of C+, mostly based on effort... (the sky is a vaguely brighter than normal, if you tilt your screen just so).
As bad as it was tonight, tomorrow will probably be worse (editor's note: yes, I posted this "tomorrow", so I know for a fact it was worse... more to come).
No comments:
Post a Comment