Ellie and I were quite excited about 4th of July. First, it’s Ellie’s favorite holiday. Second, we had the very unique opportunity of watching Austin’s fireworks from the top of the Wells Fargo building, one of Austin’s tallest buildings.

So we’re on the roof along with about 20 of Ellie’s coworkers and their families (her company owns the building) when Ellie and I start to get a little nervous: we see lightning in the distance and we’re 10 feet away from the building’s flagpole.

We work hard to manage our irrational fears. What are the odds right? Even if lightning hit, we’d be ok since it would hit the flagpole right?

Well, we’re sitting there and all of a sudden we here this really loud static sound and it’s coming from the flagpole. One second later lightning hits the ground about a mile away near the Frost Bank Tower. That was enough for me. The way I see it, that flagpole was competing for a lightning strike. Then it happened a second time and pretty much everyone concluded that it was time to vacate the rooftop….rather rapidly! I need to look up some more lightning information, but the way I see it, there was a good chance that lightning would hit the rooftop. Even if it didn’t hurt me, wouldn’t it be super loud? Who knows…

Anyhow, we missed the fireworks =(