Flood Warning

 

The geese are back. They disappeared so surreptitiously that I never realized they were gone; they who once dominated the yard. I'd seen a few V formations out on the routes but didn't give it another thought. Then, while doing a post trip inspection I rounded the back of the trailer and there were two couples; four geese on the surface of the pond. They were obviously already aware of me, though I was taken by surprise.

The next morning I was pleased to see that something else I hadn't remembered to miss was back: the gentle reflection of the warehouse lights off of liquid water thrown onto the sides of the trailers in the predawn darkness. It's been a “Canadian style” winter. I wondered early on how the fish could survive in a block of ice then forgot about it when winter became commonplace. I hope the fish survived; the pond's not very deep.

Damn the Goose shit!

With four inches of rain and a Winter's worth of snow melt the rivers in Indiana are high. More rain is not only predicted, it's falling. They're building a new bridge over the White River in Martinsville, along my commute. They built a cofferdam to pour a foundation or something. It was fun to watch the water rise against the dam day after day until one day it was simply gone; only a ripple, then not even that. They moved all of their heavy equipment away from the bank. I think they're going to have to move it further up; the water was already lapping at its treads yesterday.

I'd heard about real flooding but it was just an abstraction; until US 224 was closed in front of me due to high water. The first time that I saw the ROAD CLOSED AHEAD sign I had no choice but to make the turn, I was simply following the highway. I got into the left turn lane before the next Road Closed sign and while waiting for an opening noticed that everybody else was going straight ahead, regardless. “There's the bridge right there,” I thought, “the water's not too high. Maybe they just haven't taken down the signs yet, or maybe there's a way around it; at least I'll already be on the other side of the river.” So I put my right turn signal on and fell into line behind everybody else.

Two blocks up the street was barricaded. Beyond the orange and white boards the road disappeared into brown water. “Now that's high water!” I exclaimed, following the other cars up a street to the right. I was still hoping that I could get around the flooding. The first thing I saw, however was a sign that read “Weight Limit 8 tons.”

“Oops, I think I'm a little too heavy!”

Fortunately there was a business on the corner with a parking lot that I could turn into. It wasn't large enough for me to turn around in but it wrapped around the building to the closed road on the far side of the barricade. As I was backing up to go back through the lot the other way a guy came running out of the building and pulled back the barricade, opening the road for me. Whew, a potentially horrible situation was made easy. I had to go miles and miles out of my way but for no reason at all I'd started early that day and I was still on time for my appointment. Sometimes I get lucky.