soaker

What a completely sucktastic day to have to do a 7 hour road trip! As predicted, it was indeed POURING rain! It was the type of driving where you wonder why the automobile engineers never think to create a faster setting for the windshield wipers, because it's coming down so fast and furious that you cannot see the frigging road. On top of the rain, it was also so windy on I-5 that some of the plants on the side of the road were actually being so violently blown over that they were pressed down and laying horizontally along the ground. I had to hold onto my steering wheel so tightly to keep the car from blowing off the road that once I got home the palms of my hands were red for an hour.
It. Was. Crazypants.

The only real fun part of the drive? Well, listening to MyFavoriteKid tell stories about his few days at the farm was pretty great....but also, after I gotoff the freeway and was getting closer to the farm on rural, I spotted my very first yellow-billed magpies.


I'd never seen them before. There were two of them actually, but I didn't have the luxury of taking too many photos because every time I rolled down the car window to shoot, I got rain soaked. They were far more impressive to me than my sad little photo here. They were much bigger than I expected, and they were so pretty hopping around from branch to branch in the rain with their tails fanned out and their wings spread open. And they sang! For me!
(well, probably not for me, but I'll pretend)