Picking up where I left off…

I dropped Soleil off at the vet’s for 9am. Usually she jumps in and out of the jeep on her own, but because of her leg, I’m lifting her in and out. When we got to the vet and she realized said fact, like a petulant child, she turned to face backward in the front seat, and glued her behind to the seat, refusing to budge. In the end, I had to go and get a vet tech to help me extricate her. She was not happy at the prospect of another vet visit. I felt miserable leaving her there.

I had my own appointment to get to, 300km away, so from the vet’s I headed straight toward Hamilton. Tim was in charge of collecting Soleil when the vet had finished x-raying her, and he was going to keep me posted on the news. He called me not long into my trip to let me know that the vet had called and he could pick her up at noon, and that all of the tests had come back negative for a ligament tear. They’d even done a vertebral x-ray to make sure there was no damage there. The conclusion is that it’s either a damaged muscle or a micro-tear in the ligament, but nothing that requires surgery.

These are her x-rays. No medical reason to post them, but it’s certainly not every day that you get pictures of your dog’s insides.

My day got a whole lot better after that news.

Tim kept me updated on Soleil throughout the rest of the day (‘’sleeping’’ was the catchphrase).

Soleil sleeping it off:

Arwen as workshop companion, clearly also exhausted:

On my way home from the appointment, I travelled back roads because the highway north was clogged with people making the Friday journey up to the cottage. The news radio station was tracking some intense thunderstorms, which were moving south-eastward from Lake Huron. I was travelling north-eastward, tacking across country, just on their eastern periphery. Because I was travelling across relatively high ground (an area known as ‘’The roof of Ontario’’), I could see the weather to the west and it was eerily fascinating. The clouds, which I have since learned are ‘’shelf clouds’’, were black-grey-green, massed and ragged, with trails of rain jagging to the distant hills.

Not my photo, but one taken of the system that I was driving through. 

Photo credit @kylerobertson on Twitter

There were a few bursts of intermittent heavy raindrops, but I was managing to remain just on the very edge of the worst weather. The radio was updating storm warnings for various areas, however, and mentioning golf-ball sized hail in a spot not 10km away from where I was, so I knew that I wouldn’t escape forever.

I turned due east at one point, and made some headway against the weather. The Toronto radio station signal disintegrated into bursts of static. The sky behind me, to the west, where the setting sun should be, was an angry pitch black, with slashes of lightning raking across it. I was almost at the intersection with the highway, the only real road north at that point, for the last 100km of my journey.

Stopped at a traffic light marking the intersection of two main roads near Wasaga Beach, I looked out the window to my left, and saw a finger of brownish-green cloud literally racing ahead of the storm. There was no rain at all, but the wind came up incredibly quickly, and so powerful that it rocked the stopped jeep on its tires. I wondered if it was a nascent tornado. The light was eerie, surreal. For a few moments I debated whether it was safer to be in the vehicle or out, moving or stopped, under cover or in the open. In the end, I kept going, and picked up the highway.

As soon as I did so, the storm unleashed everything it had. Rain pounded down in sheets; the wind gusted mightily, and a purple-brown twilight descended. There was a fair amount of traffic on the highway, and to a person, everybody had their 4-way flashers on.

I am absolutely not a fan of driving in bad weather, and I do everything possible to avoid it, but this was truly a sink-or-swim situation. And, I reasoned, something so intense could hardly sustain itself for too far; we’d drive out of it in a couple of kilometres.

32 kilometres, to be exact.

But then at some point, I realized, I was enjoying it. There was a bizarre camaraderie, sharing the road with the flashing taillights of other vehicles,  sluicing through the rain, witnessing the forks of lightning and cracks of thunder, adjusting and correcting to the swirls of wind. I ate a protein bar. Drank a diet coke (sorry, dan). And I smiled when the Barrie radio station played Thunderstruck then Hell’s Bells. Like we were enjoying our own live weather version of an AC/DC concert.

I'm rolling thunder pouring rain

I'm coming on like a hurricane

My lightning's flashing across the sky

You're only young but you're gonna die

As we finally drove out of the storm, the very low sun broke out from under the clouds and streaked golden light on the wet road. It was beautiful.

And when I came home, a groggy Labrador was waiting to greet me, standing on her own four feet.