Flotsam, Jetsam, and Roadsam

Yesterday while I was at the doctor's office, there came quite a deluge. Yes, I was cooling my heels in that 4th floor office (don't be shocked, Backroads DOES have skyscrapers) for a considerable amount of life-minutes that I'll never get back. But still. We had a lot of rain in a little weather time.

Actually, my doctor is located over in Bill-Paying Town. I left home at 2:00, under bright sunny skies, to arrive at 2:50 for my appointment scheduled for 3:00. We won't go into that now. Maybe another day.

The weather was still sunny, just a few clouds, when I arrived and scored a parking spot on the end of the third row. That's incredible. One local hospital was recently absorbed by the other, so there are now TWICE as many patients coming and going.

I signed in and sat down and opened up one of the two books I brought along. After about 45 minutes, a lady came to the window to pick up a prescription, and revealed that we were in for some major weather, by the looks of the clouds building up. And then I heard it. Inside, on the 4th floor, with no windows in sight. The downpour of rain.

Once I was called back to the inner sanctum, I was placed in a room with windows. Hick in a tuxedo pumping a handcar! The sky was black, and sheets of rain slammed from cloud to pavement with abandon. I knew I was in for a drenching, once I escaped that slow high-rise to not-China. And I was.

I put my handbag over my head and played chicken with a car in the circle drive. Even VAL would give a walking person the right-of-way in a torrential downpour. Once in T-Hoe, I cranked up the heat, turned up the blower, and tried to dry out my shirt. Hick and The Pony were leaving home to test-drive a Ford Escape. I told them to bring an umbrella. They told me the low-water bridge was passable FOR NOW.

I stopped by the bank for the weekly cash for our allowances. Then I went straight home. The bridge had a good 8 inches left before the water flowed over. I got the mail and sent a text to The Pony telling him I was home, and fudged two inches, saying the bridge was 6 inches from flooding. I figured Hick would take heed, and come the other way. He knew it was rising.

Of course not. The Pony sent me another text ten minutes later that the bridge was overflowed, and they were heading back the other way to go around. That water sure came up fast. Besides, the rain had stopped by the time I got to Backroads. But that water was still in the run-off process.

All that was to set the scene for today's trip to the pharmacy. It sits in a low-lying area covered in pavement. The pharmacy, the next-door Chinese restaurant, and its next-door Convenient Care clinic floods with six inches or so of water every time there's a couple inches of rain in a short time. I knew when I drove onto the lot that it had been flooded the evening before.

The decorative lava rock was all out of its landscaping. This is but a small example, looking out T-Hoe's driver's window towards the Dairy Queen. All down the side street lay more lava rock, all the way to the Country Mart, which I am sure was also inundated, from the smell when I stepped inside. At least the pharmacy seemed to have contracted a flood aftermath team this morning before opening, because they smelled of cleaner, and had fans going all over the place to dry out the mats and freshly shampooed carpet. I wouldn't buy any Chinese food or groceries for a while.

Anyhoo...that's still not the story. The story is that when I stepped out of T-Hoe to go inside for my prescriptions, I found a treasure. Some roadsam, if you will. Washed along by the floodwaters, deposited right there where T-Hoe's unsuspecting tire could have flipped it over and taken the shiv between the tread.

I snatched it up and brought it home for The Pony to take a picture. I might wash it off and give it to Hick. It's a Craftsman, you see. Sears' Best! I mainly wanted it off the parking lot so it didn't flatten my tire. If my sister could get a bone (I'm still mad because she didn't ask her mechanic for it, so I could have a picture and mull over what kind of dead body it came from) in her tire, and I could pick up a giant bolt in T-Hoe's tire...this little driver would have no problem screwing T-Hoe out of a radial.

Always an adventure when you ride with Val.