At Maroubra I sat on my bike and gazed out to sea. A wall of blue-black cloud had begun to rise from the horizon. It would slide up the sky, its leading edge quite straight, and then begin to arch over high above, due to the curvature of the earth. By then the rain would surely be falling hard. I studied it briefly. The sea was a silvery blue, the greater expanse of sky was clear and pale. I could almost feel the coming rain in the air, and smell it, so I rode fast up to the heights and then down through Maroubra Junction, where I turned north along Anzac Parade and held my highest cruising speed almost without pause. All the lights were with me.
Every now and then I looked up and back to see how much of the sky had been eaten by the cloud, I was determined to reach home, or very near it, before the drenching. I must say that this was a very impressive and exhilarating run through the darkening air. It was going to be a close thing.
The air was darkening because the clouds were blocking out more and more light and because it was already late afternoon. In about twenty minutes or less I slowed down to ride through the Sydney University from the Newtown side. That is to say, the back entrance, if you do not know Sydney. On the other side a drive curves down to the front gate and that is right at the point where Broadway and Parramatta Road meet, which is diagonally across from the building where I live.
So I was up on the plateau where the quadrangle, the clock tower and the Great Hall stand, and I was about to tip forward and go sailing down. I glanced up and the blue-black cloud had arched over me. Here comes the deluge, I thought, and I also thought I would be briefly saturated and then I would be home, so that was alright. Instead of the rain there came a tremendous crack of thunder and a brief pulsation and vast flicker of sheet lightning which illumined the known world it seemed. So loud was the thunder it blasted every rational or continuous thought out of my head. What I did think was, ‘I’m dead, I’m shot!’ And indeed I was lying flat along my bike and gliding down the curving drive. I also thought, ‘I am a dead man riding’. But I either came back to life or deduced from these thoughts that I had not died – fortunately before I ran out into the traffic of Parramatta Road.
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