Fun with water (not!)
It rained ALL WEEKEND. I don't mean like in Seattle, England, or any other maritime climate where it drizzles, spits, and rains lightly. I mean monsoons. With tornado warnings and rain coming down in buckets complete with bucket. I've lived in my neighborhood for years but I've never seen puddles like this before. Puddle does not even begin to describe what I saw last night.
We went to dinner with
wwilliam47 and
torrilin to celebrate Bill's birthday. Since it had been raining so much Drew decided we would drive, and since their apartment is next door to my office I was the one driving. Not a big deal when we went; I was just driving to work as usual. On the way home was when it got exciting. The rain was pouring. I decided to go home the short way because it was 8:30 on a Sunday night and traffic was light. So I turned up South Street towards the Dean Clinic. Their patient parking lot has two driveways and as we passed the first one Drew spotted a bicyclist riding down the second one. The bike got into the road and the water was up over his hubs! I quickly backed up and turned around; obviously this was not the route we were taking after all. In turning around I went through the secondary drop-off circle at the clinic and found myself in a huge puddle that I hadn't seen in the darkness. Managed to get out of it and not take out the bicyclist who was now opposite me. I had had to accelerate quite a bit to get out of the puddle. In retrospect I'm glad I went through that one; it allowed Drew to instruct me on big puddle procedures.
I turned up Park Street which is a major thoroughfare and I figured I was home free. But half a block up the street I found myself driving through a big puddle. And slowing, and slowing, and slowing some more. Drew started shouting "Don't slow down! Keep moving!"; I put the accelerator to the floor before we got out of that one. We were both a little rattled. From there on home Drew's job was to look for the subtle shifts in road appearance that would tell us if the intersection was flooded or not. Thankfully there weren't any more.
According to the paper, there was an awful lot of flooding like this last night. And we could get another inch of rain today. I am SO looking forward to going to a desert island at the end of the week!
We went to dinner with
wwilliam47 and
torrilin to celebrate Bill's birthday. Since it had been raining so much Drew decided we would drive, and since their apartment is next door to my office I was the one driving. Not a big deal when we went; I was just driving to work as usual. On the way home was when it got exciting. The rain was pouring. I decided to go home the short way because it was 8:30 on a Sunday night and traffic was light. So I turned up South Street towards the Dean Clinic. Their patient parking lot has two driveways and as we passed the first one Drew spotted a bicyclist riding down the second one. The bike got into the road and the water was up over his hubs! I quickly backed up and turned around; obviously this was not the route we were taking after all. In turning around I went through the secondary drop-off circle at the clinic and found myself in a huge puddle that I hadn't seen in the darkness. Managed to get out of it and not take out the bicyclist who was now opposite me. I had had to accelerate quite a bit to get out of the puddle. In retrospect I'm glad I went through that one; it allowed Drew to instruct me on big puddle procedures.
I turned up Park Street which is a major thoroughfare and I figured I was home free. But half a block up the street I found myself driving through a big puddle. And slowing, and slowing, and slowing some more. Drew started shouting "Don't slow down! Keep moving!"; I put the accelerator to the floor before we got out of that one. We were both a little rattled. From there on home Drew's job was to look for the subtle shifts in road appearance that would tell us if the intersection was flooded or not. Thankfully there weren't any more.
According to the paper, there was an awful lot of flooding like this last night. And we could get another inch of rain today. I am SO looking forward to going to a desert island at the end of the week!