Lightning strikes twice

I went for a nice easy ride today that degenerated into one of the most terrifying weather related experiences I've ever had. Is someone trying to tell me something? Am I crazy for setting off on a 900 mile bike ride in light of these recent circumstances? It rains every single day. It's cold too, so the hypothermia index is high. And then there are the drivers, hundreds of motorists ranging from careless to downright malicious. Finally, today, I thought for a period of time that I was going to be electrocuted by lightning. In all my days as a cyclist I've only seriously considered taking shelter on two occasions. One was about thirteen years ago when I got caught out in a hailstorm that was pummeling me with quarter to golf ball size hail and left me covered with nasty red welts. The other was this afternoon when I was two miles from my house and twice had lightning strike close enough that I wasn't sure if I had been hit or not. The first strike was somewhere to my left and made an eerie sizzling sound in the split second before the near simultaneous clap of thunder. The second one sounded and felt the same but left some apparatus on a utility pole 40 feet in front of me smoking. All of this resulted in my riding of that last two miles at a near record pace. Luckily, the hail didn't start until after I got into the garage but in the time it took me to remove my soaked riding clothes and run up the stairs to check the windows, my front deck was covered in hail. I have not been that scared in a while. I hope that doesn't happen again anytime soon. I'm thinking maybe I need to have a weather scanner or something for my trip. It was really crazy how quickly this storm came in and also how it never appeared to be that bad until it was too bad to do anything about it.