The Big Rain

Yesterday I drove on surface streets for about two hours in each direction to a city on the northern outskirts of the county. I don't drive on freeways, which is the way most people in this spread-out area of the country get around, because they are rather insane, increasingly gridlocked, filled with people in multiple lanes who do not signal, enormous behemoth trucks, and generally a pace that I cannot tolerate. So for my own and others' safety, I stay off the freeways. This rather limits where I can go
in the area.
On the way home, in the dark, I got lost and ended up around Disneyland, far from where I was supposed to be, looking for a familiar street, which I finally found. It began to rain, one of those Southern California downpours in which all the stored up moisture comes at once, flooding the streets and making them as slippery as an ice rink. Lightning lit up the sky down to its very roots, and enormous booms of thunder startled me, close by in the hills. In all this, my windshield wipers were not working well, so that it was difficult to see, more difficult than even the pouring rain would normally make it.
I maintained my cool, and got home in one piece. This morning, the world (and maybe even my dirty car) looks freshly washed and lovely, though I think the rain is not done with us yet.