It was a stormy, dark week...

...but it did get better in the end.

On Saturday (10/2) we still had a high temperature above 100, but we were told things were going to change. On Monday, the storms started to roll through and Lindsey got soaked on the way home from school.

The real storms hit on Tuesday. While Steven was at the Downtown Campus, they were hit by a wind storm that was knocking over trees. Meanwhile Dawn was at home watching pea size hail pile up in the yard. Storms kept pounding Mesa and Dawn saw rain fall hard enough that she could not see the house behind our and watched our street flood. The storms kept coming. Dobson High School delayed releasing students at the end of the school day because of a Tornado Warning and the trees that were falling down all over the neighborhood justified that decision. While we had no damage, there were many streets in our neighborhood with tree branches and even whole trees in them. Steven left the Downtown Campus on the campus shuttle back to Tempe only to get caught in a hail storm in Downtown Phoenix. Fortunately, he clouds parted and Steven biked home from Tempe under blue skies.

But what Steven saw an the way home was stunning. While there was some minor flooding in Tempe, there was little if any damage. However, as he was pedaling on the bike path less than a mile from home, he came across a stretch of destruction. For a half mile the 30 to 40 foot tall power poles had all fallen and almost everyone of them hit a house. All of the houses in between were draped in high tension power lines. The only thing that stopped the dominoes was the fact that there were metal poles along the line that held.

As of today (10/11), all of the poles have been cleared away and new metal poles have been put in place. Judging from how the equipment was setup, they will begin stringing up new power lines tomorrow. Since the storms, until today, the high temperatures have stay below 90 degrees.



The day after the storm brought more darkness.

Steven's office was moved earlier in the Summer from the Tempe Campus to the new SkySong "innovation center" that the University created in Scottsdale. Steven biked to work as usual, but when he left earlier to go to Lexi's band concert (to be featured in a future post), he found his bike lock cut and the bike stolen. What makes things even worse is that there was an incident two weeks earlier where the headlight was stolen off the bike and the building security team promised to keep an eye out. The bike that was stolen was the one Steven bought when he arrived in Arizona, a mountain bike that had been converted into a commuter bike. He had stopped riding his old red road bike due to the back wheel being bent, but Dawn was able to call around and managed to get it repaired by Friday evening.

Having a bike on Saturday morning was a big deal, it was the annual Tour de Fat that is run by the New Belgium Brewery in honor of their beer Fat Tire. The Brewery does a lot of work supporting cyclist and as the MC said "We are not anti-car, just pro bike." A great feature of the festival is the "parade" of bikes through the streets of Tempe by thousands of riders, many that are costumed. The girls were very excited that we were able to ride despite all of the drama of the week.

Talking about the drama, I (Steven) is very happy that Dawn was able to get the bike repaired. It was not in the budget, but she figured out what to do in getting the bike repaired and made it happen. Also, my Director and Dean went to bat for me so that I can keep my bike in the office. I am very appreciative of the support.