It's nice to be able to get out without having to layer up so ridiculously. It's still cold but fewer layers required.

Because of my trip, I have been biking a lot, but because I work from home and most things I need are in walking distance, I haven't been commuting by bicycle. I've been walking. Last year I sort of biked in a tornado. A funnel was sighted over the school which was about 5 blocks from where I was biking when the 80 mph straight-line wind came through and swept me off course and knocked down trees on the street I was trying to get down.

Yesterday I was in the gym when the tornado sirens went off. They put us all in the bathrooms which double as tornado shelters. Then we got the all-clear so I gathered up my stuff and headed home. It was raining a little. Then it hailed! I was near shelter so I ducked under the eaves until the hail quit. There was the most beautiful rainbow.

And then the tornado sirens went off again. I was about halfway home-- do I head for the nearest building and take shelter or just go home? I decided to just go home. The sun was shining, the clouds were far off, the wind had died down. There were plenty of houses, all neighbors, that I could take refuge in if something started to happen.

Soon my dad & I will be biking all over Missouri right through tornado season. The bathrooms in all the state parks double as tornado shelters.