End of days and I'm in freaking Albuquerque!

Headed to Albuquerque today for a two day meeting with our group from New Mexico and the L.A. area. As I had a free ticket (thanks Kleveland Kim!!) which was expiring on Thursday, I decided to use it for this trip and fly standby.

Flying standby is risky at best and not the way to travel on a regular basis. It can work well though if you are flexible and can find out the general availability on certain flights. The flight I was targeting ended up being completely full, but only AFTER myself and a few other standby folks got on board.

Upon arriving and leaving the airport, I noticed this huge rain storm in the horizon against the mountain, exactly where we had to go at some point as that's where ESDNM lives. As we dropped off two of our cohorts at their hotel, the runoff canal had little to no water in it. Twenty minutes later there was a category 4 rapids rushing down it. Quite the sight.

After leaving the hotel and picking up dinner to be eaten at home, we headed towards the rain and the road was wet. Out of nowhere, like bats out of hell, came three roaring fire engines headed towards a lighting strike no doubt. Our vehicle, we determined, has some braking issues (probably warn out pads) and ESDNM was barely able to avoid a collision.

Lightning, rain, fire engines.....end of days type of weather and events....and I'm stuck in Albuquerque.