Floods and Pizza Knee
The last week of "work" was going uneventfully with the University winding up on Thursday at 1700hrs for the next couple of weeks. Mother nature had other things in mind...Planning to stock up on lollies in preparation for Star Gate marathon #2, I checked the doppler radar just before leaving to see if the yucky looking weather outside was going to deliver anything interesting. I had to leave early to get to the lolly shop before it closed and on the weather radar, the dark maroon blob crossing the city looked to be moving slowly enough for me to beat it home. Maroon means ludicrously heavy rain rate.
Anyway, I got about 2 km along my ride (I bike everywhere, no car) when the familiar feeling of a gust front caressed my bare face. I thought that it felt portentious enough to take cover and it's a good thing that I did. Ducking around a corner, I found a factory with an overhang deep enough to keep the worst of the weather off.
The torrent commenced and deluged the streets. Within 5 minutes, the street was starting to back up with water and the spray whipping around the building was soaking me. Sheets of rain tracked across the water-coated road and pea-sized hail splashed in the puddles ominously slithering around the edges of the building, encroaching on my dry space. Then, the centre of the storm passed and the wind changed, necessitating a crossing of the street to keep out of the worst of the weather. In the twenty seconds required to cross the street, everything I was wearing was dripping with water and I'd puddled (pun intended) through ankle deep water (that's ankle deep on my bike) to the cover of another factory overhang. There I rode out the rest of the storm.
When the torrent subsided to a trickle, I ventured back out into the street and found the cars at the nearby train station submerged to mid-way up their windscreens, emergency personnel chest deep rescuing people from their stricken cars, and employees from nearby factories sweeping water out onto the street. A lady was taking photos of the flood looking up toward the university. Pointing in the other direction I said,
"You should check out the cars at the station, they're submerged up to their windscreens!"
She replied, "Yeah, those are our cars."
"Oh, damn," I said.
24 mm (1 inch) of rain fell in about 30 minutes. I seem to have escaped the university just at the right time... the ground floor of the Earth Science building flooded and the few who were remaining when the storm blew through stayed another hour and a half sweeping water from the hallways. In a follow-up e-mail from administration yesterday, something like 25 of 100 buildings on campus weren't flooded.
My shoes got wet.
Fast forward to Friday morning: I went to the gym before heading south to commence two solid and glorious days of Star Gating to various planets in the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies. After finishing my workout, I headed off and heard the train announcement voice, which meant that my train was coming sooner than expected. In my rush for the momentarily departing train, I tripped over my shoe laces and left behind a lump of skin on the train platform. My left knee was the worst for the encounter. To be fair, I had my bike, bag, and helmet all in various locations surrounding me.
It was one of those scrapes that stays bloodless for a while... it must be that your body is in shock trying to work out how to punish you enough for such a transgression on the vanity of its largest organ. It bled and leaked a lot and with antiseptic powder and vitamin E oil covering it, it now looks a lot like a margherita (tomato sauce and cheese with spices) pizza. Now I'll have matching knees... I did my right knee scree skiing in a gravel pit when I was 15 or something and now the left one will have some scrabbly scar tissue. Yeah!
Merry Christmas! Love you all.
posted by Kyle @ 04:25
4 Comments:
Glad you survived to tell the story! And such an interesting story, too! Seems my children can't keep away from the floods, first Quinn in Mexico now you in Australia!Hope your recent knee injury doesn't give you as much grief as your first one. Perhaps you'll find an alien doctor in one of those galaxies that has some advanced healing power as yet undiscovered in this galaxie! Merry Christmas to you too...love you...
mom&bob
Well Kyle.... I know that you were missing a pile of precipitation in the solid form but you didn't have to bring that down on your local area!
Merry Christmas!
Ed
Lol I think we should keep it on the down low about all the flooding we're in, just in case they start thinking we're the ones causing it! I would rather be in a flood then a snow storm. Enjoy the warm temp. it's cold up here.
Have a merry christmas and if you are on skype over the holidays give me a call! Everyone in Saskatoon wishes you a merry christmas and sends there best wishes.
love you
Quinn
Hope your having a good holiday. The read was entertaining as always, and I'll say it again "you should write books" I know i'd buy them. Miss you pal, talk soon
Cheers,
Bender
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