Okay, we're only a couple of miles from the tunnel. We'll push on.

Cellphones go off again. TORNADO WARNING: SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

Sounds serious. And then we look--and about 100-200 yards down the road, a swirling cloud is dragging itself across the highway, turbulent gray cloud-stuff churning at the base of it. 

My wife stammers, "Is-is that...?"

"Probably, yeah."

It might help for me to note that, as a kid and well into my teens, I had a serious phobia about tornadoes. Like, screaming for the basement if the sky *looked* threatening. 

I later learned why I had that phobia--a reaction to my mom freaking out during a storm when I was a preschooler (to be fair, it was a terrifying storm and there were tornadoes then too)--and once I figured that out, I was more or less over it.

So I watched this raggedy funnel cloud cross the road and my only thought was "I'm glad we weren't going a little faster."

Most exciting thing that happened last week, even including my 62nd birthday.