hailstorm

I was sitting in Te og Kaffi on Laugavegur last Friday afternoon. It was sunny and cold and I was sipping a cappuccino and reading Morgunblaðið, glancing occasionally out the big glass front window at passersby, when suddenly I heard a tremendous hissing sound. If a hiss could be a roar, this would be it. The sound was millions of tiny white hailstones tearing out of the sky and sandblasting the street, the sidewalk, the cars, the pedestrians, and the baby carriages.

As is often the case, parked outside of the café were three or four baby carriages, babies snoozing snuggled in their fleece-lined cradles in the cold air while their moms sipped coffee inside (such is the life here). Anyway, the tremendous roar of the hail sent the women scurrying outside to look after their little ones. Each mom first peeked in on the baby, but then instead of bringing the kids in, each woman unfolded some manner of heavy-duty Gore-Tex covering (the old mechanical designer in me admired the different ways to accomplish the same goal: one was like a tent fly, one like an accordion, and one like a convertible top) that rendered the carriages completely hailproof. Then they came back inside and resumed their coffees.