Hurricane Colorado

Hurricane Frances is churning up Florida right now (my father-in-law had to bail from his place), but it felt like we had one of our own on the "boys campout" in my Colorado backyard last night. As you can see in the picture below, our friend Brenden joined Dirk and Kyle in the "winnebago" tent last night (sleeps 8 adults ... comfortably ... it's big, but cheap). Every other time we had tried camping this summer, we had gotten rained out, but there was some blue skies as we set up ... but as you can see to the West, that didn't last for long. We had a great time hanging out and telling stories - highlights were the Billy Goats and Three Little Pigs where everyone got to play a part - guess who I was in those stories? We then turned the lantern off, and as we started to doze off, we could hear the thunder from the first wave of the storm approaching. We had quite a light show and it rained fairly hard, but not for too long ... but it is REALLY loud inside a tent. I thought the boys might be scared, but they laughed through it. After that, everyone went to sleep except me - my nice queen size air mattress had a slow leak, so it wasn't that comfortable of a night. About an hour later, I could hear the second wave coming ... and this one had a lot more thunder and lightening, and pounded us with rain for a while (sounded like hail inside the tent) - amazingly, the 3 boys slept right through it ... and the tent didn't leak! I asked Wendy in the morning if it had really rained that hard and she said it poured. Then in the early morning before dawn, the wind came up - again the boys slept right through it while I waited for the non-aerodynamic tent to collapse ... but it held up. Needless to say, I didn't sleep too much, so I might be hurting at a party we are going to tonight. My 40th birthday party was just a "regular" shin-dig, but this one is going pretty upscale and includes a tent/performance in their backyard by a noted (even "uncool Alek" has heard of her) local musician named Hazel Miller. Good news is that it is right across the street (less than 100' door-to-door), so I don't have to worry about drinking and driving. Ditto on the neighborhood Margarita party next Friday - wow, two adult functions (no kids) in less than a week!
"Hurricane Colorado" coming