UTMC

I have a new respect for those who live where flooding is a common fact of life. This pic is the result of last year's epic 100-year flood from Hurricane Irene.

This was taken today, 3/7, on my first ride of the season.

Having been part of the clean-up effort after Tropical Storm Allison back in '01, I saw first hand the destruction a little bit of water can cause. Pretty fucked up.

My Dad used to have a picture frame shop right on the Saddle River in NJ. One year there was some bad flooding and his place got water inside. I asked him how much and he said, "Oh, five or six inches, I'll be cleaning up for a couple days."
I stopped by a few days later to see how it was going and he was still shoveling mud out of the place. I still feel bad for not going over earlier to help, but it honestly never occurred to me that a little water would make such a mess.

There was still a lot of post-Irene to be seen in PA on my way to and from Doom last October- entire towns where the curbs were piled with soggy plaster from everybody's basement, and places where there were clumps of grass hanging from the telephone lines.