As I was driving Gary back from the doctor, he complained, “Why are we driving on highway 40?”
“Because it’s a straight shot from the hospital to home. We just cross the river and turn right.”
“But I hate highway 40. Nothing good has ever happened on 40. Remember, I had to turn entirely around that one time and drive over the median and then that one time remember we saw the drowned pig?”
I dismissed him. Until I saw the cloud.
We debated the cloud while we went over the river and turned right. Right into the cloud.
Gary was saying, again, “It isn’t a tornado. It isn’t a wall cloud. It can’t be a tornado, there’s no rotation.”
“Is it smoke? Maybe smoke from a fire rising up into a cloud?”
“Well, it looks like steam. Look at it. It’s so low I could touch -“
BAM
“What was that?”
BAM. BAM BAM.
“Hail!”
And hail it was. Sheets of hail, curtains of hail, carpets of hail. We pulled off the road and under a tree. Hail just rips right through trees. BAM BAM BAM. For about ten minutes or more.
And, this is interesting, Gary is unconcerned that he now has hail dimples all over his hood. He says, “I’ll just park it in the sun and it’ll bake right out.”
“Dooooo you think the sun will melt the steel of your hood?”
“No, but it’ll expand the metal and the dents will pop right out.”
I’m not a car expert. Can this happen?
This was before he took the muscle relaxants, by the way.
4 responses to “Highway 40: Highway of Doom”
He’s going to end up on one of those cheesy ads, “Dent Repair Shops Hate This St. Louis Man!” I can’t wait to hear his explanation next week for why our atmospheric conditions are juuuuust wrong for it to work like it should.
Gary is wrong. Call the insurance company now. You won’t be the only ones. This happened in Florida a lot.
You are wise to avoid Highways of Doom.
I felt that way about the “Beeline Expressway” in FL and that was even before I went through a wall cloud.
I have one hail dent from that horrific storm a couple of months ago. Apparently you can wait until an absolutely sweltering day – like temps in the triple digits – and go put ice on the dent. I’m not sure if this will work, but I’m not paying my deductible for one dent. Also, I have a friend here with a car so damaged it looks like a golf ball; he calls it his downtown car.
Caroline – eHow agrees with gary! I emailed the eHow article to you.Becs – That’s the plan. I called today and ran it past him (it is his car) and he’s turning it over to them.Amy in StL – I looked it up on eHow, and they recommended a hot day and little chips of dry ice. We’ve got a lot of dents, plus we’d probably kill ourselves with the dry ice. Calling in a claim tomorrow.