Hail Storm

It's been a bit, but we've been busy, sort of. Having read, read and laid around far too long we decided one day we would take a bike ride. What a novel idea, ride our lovely bikes that we usually have weighed down with all our belongings. Gen, Emma, and I had ridden our bikes a couple miles but nothing serious. We hadn't been all out together on our bikes. We planned on taking a quick spin out to the other side of the island, a place we could only see from our hill top house and also where the only paved road led.
Large billowing clouds floated slowly over the mountain tops as we departed. The sun shown brightly, with light winds, perfect riding weather. We raced each other liberated from the lack of weight down the hills, along the cliff sides, awed at the bright blues and greens of the ocean lapping at the rocks bellow. By the time we had peddled the 4km out of town and reached the fork in the road, the weather had flipped. We collected on the side of the road with nothing but blue skies, open roads and empty hillsides ahead it looked silly to turn around, but in the opposite direction dark rain clouds moved fast over the mountains and horizon. Should we turn back or head on? I lingered until a large thunder clap motivated my feet to turn around and follow the others.
Peddling quickly we traveled up and down the cliffside roads , sprinkled with rain and battered with wind. In and out of the valleys we traveled, the temperature plummeting as we went. As we reached the outside of town with one final uphill push the rain really starred dumping. The wind pushed us sideways, upwards, downwards, basically always it blew we strained hard to avoid it pushing us over, that was unless it helped us. Rain fell so strongly I was blinded and could barley see, but we were so close to home that we didn't want to stop. I was freezing in my bike shorts and wicking shirt soaked to the bone. Then the rain started to hurt. I biked slowly next to Emma asking her
if she though this could be freezing rain, "no way" she replied " it's in the 60s" she shouted over the wind. "not up there I yelled," gasping up at the sky. We continued on and within seconds the clear rain turned to white sheets, "now this is hail," Emma yelled. Onward I thought. Emma and I reached town first, I though we might wait out the storm but Emma peddled on, up the steep streets. "I don't think this is a good idea Em," I warned as she disappeared around a corner. The streets had turned into small rivers and and debris flowed down the street as we slowly peddled up stream. Exhausted from the uphill push our last task was to carry our bikes up two flights of steep stairs. Frozen and wet we waited, Em and I had forgotten Gen had the key. Georgia and Gen arrived minuets later and by the time we were stripping off our wet cloths the sun was out to dry them. So much for our bike ride.

Here is a picture of a different day, but similar quick rainstorm over the mountains at sunset.