So I made a promise to stop whining. I’m amending that promise to just stop whining about things that no one really cares about. So I can whine if it is interesting.

This has been a bad day. My head doesn’t feel like it was too bad, but emotionally, I feel drained.
I signed up for a JavaScript course that has effectively sucked my weekend away. It’s for people with only an HTML background, not eight-years-of-C++-programming-experience background. Let’s just say I could have taught 95% of the stuff on the first day.
Today was the second and final day. It was nice out, so wearing shorts and T-shirt, I scootered downtown to the Alberta College Campus. Nice place by the way. I actually learned some stuff today, but I’m still feeling that I could have learned more. Anyway, because it is web programming we had constant access to the internet. There was a 70% chance of thunderstorms today, but it looked fairly nice out, so I didn’t worry too much. They said the same thing yesterday, and it was beautiful all day. (Heck, I played disc golf yesterday evening.) I kept checking the weather office and it was at about 2:30 that the radar indicated that out of nowhere, a storm was falling to the southwest of Edmonton.
I got out at around 3:15 and got onto the scooter and headed home. It was sprinkling a bit. I don’t worry too much about rain when I’m on a scooter. I don’t want to scooter in the rain, but I will if I have to. I get wet, but if I take it slow, it isn’t too bad.
Personally, I think I overuse the phrase “And then the heavens opened up.” But this was the poster child for that saying. It wasn’t rain. It was hail and rain. There may have been thunder and lightning, but I couldn’t hear it against the pounding on my helmet.
I had just crossed the river when the hail started. It wasn’t too bad, but it was hurting. My bare arms are stretched in front of me, perfect targets for the stones. I briefly thought about sheltering under an overpass, but I was five minutes from home, so why bother.
When I had gotten out of the river valley, it was pounding harder. Every light seemed to be red. The hail was getting worse, and my arms were in a lot of pain. I crossed Whyte Avenue (82nd Avenue), and the streets were overflowing with water. I successfully turned right in a deep puddle onto 80th Avenue (a residential street). There were big trees that should have provided shelter. They didn’t help. Under the constant bombardment, the street was literally filled with hail. You couldn’t see the pavement any more.
Did I mention it was slippery?
I’m surprised I didn’t wipe out earlier. I felt I was starting to lose control on that street, but I kept it together. But right next to my building, before I was turning into my back alley, I lost control in all the ice. I went gently over onto the side. I was going slowly, so there wasn’t much hurt. And the scooter seemed fine, but I wasn’t paying attention. Get out of the hail.
I got to the garage entrance, and balanced the bike while standing in a deep puddle of moving water, trying to fish the entry fob out of my wet pockets. I got in, and drove to my parking place. My arms were killing me from the hail and I don’t think I was thinking totally clearly. I ignored all the alarms and sirens around me. Must be a weather warning thing.
I was getting off the elevator on my floor by the time I realized it was a fire alarm.
I didn’t care. I went into my condo. Took off my shirt and put on a dry one. I then took my laptop out of my wet backpack. Seemed fine. I then did the proper fire alarm thing and went down to the front lobby.
A person on the condo association looked at the alarm chart and reported that it was a dust detector on the roof. I think the hail probably set it off. I decided to not worry about it.
I then went and checked the scooter to see if it was damaged much. There was a white plastic ring that was loosely attached to the bottom of the bike, but I have no idea what it was from, or even if it was part of the bike. The biggest thing I found was the front right signal-light covering had fallen off. i.e. the clear plastic that protects the light from the elements. It happened before the first time I wiped out.
The hail had let up a lot so I walked out to check where I wiped out to see if I could find it. It wasn’t hard. The hail had left a nice imprint of the car tire that had run over it. I collected up the pieces and went back to my condo.
The alarms didn’t stop until the fire department arrived an hour later.
My arms are covered in welts from the pounding hail. I’ve got a scrapped knee that seems to have swollen up a bit. Right now I’m feeling a little down. It’s not about the scooter though. That doesn’t bother me because it wasn’t too bad. But I just feel in my gut, a little down.
I’m probably just tired.