Swimming the Dan Ryan

I went out to see Mom yesterday. She's looking good, not a day over seventy five, which is good for somebody who is ninety six. Best part about visiting Mom is that I've finally reached the age where she and I can compare aches and pains, ailments and memory lapses. One of my projects while visiting her, is to scan all the photos from the albums my dad put together. Yesterday I got so engrossed in my project that I didn't even notice it had started raining. It wasn't a heavy rain, but I still said goodbye to Mom and got out of there because I hate driving in bad weather. Just about at the Chicago city limits the rain started to pick up. After twenty seven years of driving in Florida I thought I could handle any rain that came my way. Florida downpours are spectacular events where the rain is so thick you almost need scuba gear to walk through it. Rain on the Dan Ryan Expressway would be no challenge to me. But as I drove on into the city the rain kept getting heavier and heavier until I could barely see the car in front of me. I couldn't see the lines on the pavement and then I lost the car in front. It simply disappeared. I couldn't just stop, I was in the far left hand lane of a sixteen lane highway. I couldn't speed up, I was driving blind. Thank goodness for the CTA Train that runs down the middle of the highway. I gauged my location by watching the train moving along next to me. And then that vanished. What is amazing is that traffic kept moving. Nobody stopped, there were no accidents, and the huge semi truck that was illegally in the lane next to me didn't run me over. Finally, somewhere around fifty first street, the rain started to let up. All this time traffic had been moving along nicely despite a Florida grade downpour. So the sky brightened, the sun even tried to poke through, and the traffic now came to a standstill as I merged onto Lake Shore Drive. Seriously, a blinding downpour and traffic moves. Clear and bright, and the morons create gridlock.