Floating Cars

Well, yesterday (actually, last Wed the 1st – that holiday. It just takes me forever to finish writing and post anything) we learned that if you are at a bar drinking, and it is raining, you may as well stay at the bar until the rain has stopped because there ain’t no gettin' home!

Golf didn’t go so well. Jack only got to play 7 holes before they got rained out – and I didn’t get to play any or hit any balls. We were having lunch at the golf course and it was just pouring down rain and lightening, too. On the way over to meet the guys I noticed that the road-kill chicken place was already open, since it was a holiday. So, we decided we would leave, get road-kill, then all have supper and watch movies at our place.

(On a side note: Lil’ G was having the kids plate of fish and chips (only no chips) and she liked the fish so well that at one point she abandoned using her fingers and just put her face right down on the plate to gobble it up. It was crazy how much she liked it! I guess the fingers were taking too long! It was the first time she had fish, but I just bought her some fish sticks to keep her happy.)

We finished our beers and then dashed out to our cars with our umbrellas and headed home. We couldn’t go the usual way, as the tunnel was flooded. But the first detour would still take us by the chicken place. We didn’t make it there because the water was too deep, so we had to turn around. I can’t even describe to you what this water was like. You could feel the waves underneath the car, and it was coming in through the bottom of the doors. (Our car is still wet inside. ) All the water from the top of the mountain was gushing down the streets because there is NO DRAINAGE to support these rains. It was like a deep, fast moving, mountain stream coming at us. (NOTE: It turns out that if we would have kept going forward, our cars would have been sunk because the road caved in and it is now closed. It is a big, gaping HOLE! This whole area is volcanic, so there are probably caverns and cisterns all over the place, not to mention all the old ruins just barely covered up. Good thing we stopped when we did!)

We tried two more detours trying to make it up the mountain, driving slowly so as not to get our distributor cap wet. Finally, Sam’s car died. He was driving fast and he backed up really fast at one point and just sucked in a bunch of water. Then, a big pickup drove past him and a wave of water went over his hood. It washed off his front plate and it was sitting there on the hood of his car. That wave was all his car could take. So, we stopped and Jack walked back to get him and show him where we were. I have to get the pictures they took with their phones on here to show you. Two guys, walking with umbrellas in water up to their mid-thighs, with GOLF BAGS! (Abandon the car, save the clubs.) All the Italians thought they were crazy – where did they come from anyway? Why do they have golf bags?

They finally made it back up to where I was sitting and we then made it home. That turned a 20-minute drive into a 2-hour adventure – and a very expensive one for Sammy. His car is still in the shop!