The swim meet that wasn't

Last swim meet of the season tonight.  It had stormed a bit mid-afternoon, but it had all appeared to blow over, so we were good to go.  In fact, as we arrived at the pool, the sun came out and all of a sudden, our cool, breezy, overcast late afternoon turned into a hot, steamy, muggy late afternoon.

Our team warmed up.  Their team warmed up.  They lined up the first few races worth of kids.  First up the 5-6 year olds.  Swimming 2 lengths of the pool.  It took some of them a loooooong time.  Then the 7-8's.  I went to round up M's age group (my duty for the evening) and found that they had all gotten themselves to the bullpen, ready to be seated.  Hooray for competent kids!

Next up, the 9-10's.  A's group and A was swimming.  He swam.  I cheered.  He finished, with a new best time (but not as much better than last year as I had expected).  It thundered.  

Oops.  15 minute delay.  But the swimmers stayed lined up.  We made it 5 or 6 minutes without thunder and thought we might be ok.  Nope, more thunder.  The kids were let free to roam.  We waited with intermittent thunder.  Various people were checking their phones and calling people to determine how big and fast the storm was.  They decided that we would wait until 7:30 before deciding to call the meet off (about 45 minutes away by that point).  We chatted and ate our picnic dinner.  All was fine until KABOOOOOM!  Massive crack of thunder.  It sent us all scurrying inside the building, most of us with our chairs and belongings.  Then a bit later the sky opened up and it poured.  Buckets and buckets full, it seemed (at least an inch, most of it in 15 minutes).

Then the sky started to clear up.  Started looking good.  We even saw the sun.  A few raindrops still but not much.  Then a bit more rain - enough to chase most people back inside.  A little thunder still, but we figured it was just the tail end of the storm - we could still hear thunder even though it was past us.  Then at some point in there, pop, pop, pop went the transformer - and there went our power.  Hmmm.  Even if we got the meet started, we probably wouldn't be able to finish it in the dark.  But some swimming is better than none.  

Then about 7:25, another KABOOOOM, more thunder, lightning and rain.  We gave up.  Meet was called.  They tallied the results based on 5 1/2 races - a tie.  No chance to make up the meet since Saturday is the end of the season.