Who'll stop the rain . . . . . ?

Boy, it just keeps coming and coming.  A day or two of relatively reasonably weather over the weekend, then the rain started again.  We managed to squeeze in a 25 mile bike ride on Wednesday morning, but by the evening, the skies darkened again, the wind started, and a drenching rain came and went most of the night. 
The weather radio alerts came and went for a good portion of the night between 11PM and 3AM.  Tornadoes touched down about 40 miles southwest of Des Moines, but as of this morning limited damage is indicated.  We then tune into the forecast for the next 24 hours and -- apparently due to the anticipated temperatures today heating up to the mid-80s -- the threat for severe thunderstorms (and all that go with it) are even higher tonight that they were last night.
We've got a little sun now, and, although there are mini-lakes of water all around from last night's deluge, we may try to get in a ride this afternoon with Chuck, a fellow workamper and RAGBRAI participant.  Hopefully a good portion of the standing water will evaporate in the heat this afternoon (which of course will start the thunderstorm/severe weather/tornado cycle all over again . . . . . ) and we'll be able to try out a new cycling route along the Des Moines river about 5 miles from here.
Its a good thing that diesel prices are still up there, and we feel compelled by our commitment to the people and our job here, otherwise we'd think seriously about picking up and heading somewhere else for the summer.  This crappy weather just isn't our cup of tea, and it sure isn't helping us get prepared for RAGBRAI.  We keep hearing from everyone here that this weather is highly unusual, but that doesn't do much good when we can't have the summer we anticipated -- I guess we've been spoiled.   But, we'll ride it out here (no pun intended) and will probably look back on it as a character-building experience  . . . . . .how's that for rationalization?
More picture posts will be on the way in a couple of days, since this rain cycle has got to break sometime.