Floods

When we got up this morning water was sloshing at the back door with the rain still pouring, howling gales. The field was a lake. This house is pretty watertight but there were drips near the door… I got a yoghurt container under three of them and sat and waited. We had both electricity and a phone line. In these circumstances they’re normally both out.

I’ve been doing well with losing weight and have begun to increase the amount of activity I’m doing to help in this and general health. So when the rain stopped and the sun came out I decided to go out for a bike ride. South… maybe to the church on Tremont, maybe around through South Davis.

A six-inch flood about a half-mile down the road turned me north. The creek had overflowed all the way to the levees, swirling eddies of blood-red water. I headed to West Campus and saw flooding everywhere: in the cow pasture, in the sheep field… and of course the creek wherever I went by it. Heading north up Olive Drive, pinging hundreds of unripe olives that had been blown down in the night, I once again got stopped by a torrent of water going across the road from west to east.

I’ve never lived by a really BIG river. It must be a terrifying thing when something like the Mississippi bursts its banks…

We will not be going to Berkeley tomorrow. I-80 was closed most of today between Vacaville and Fairfield, and we didn’t hear a train all morning. Hunkering seems called for.