Simple Saturday
Saturday was exciting. I thought I was going to have a relaxing day reading, catching up on the blogs I follow, and riding my bike over to Cambridge to check out the early Bastille Day celebrations. Boy was I wrong! Storms rolled in as expected in the early afternoon. The temperature immediately cooled which was quite appreciated after days and days of 90 degrees with high humidity. Since I was planning to leave soon to ride my bike and my plans had been foiled, I decided to go get drenched outside. I put on my rain jacket for good measure but it didn’t end up helping me out too much.
We ended up having flashflooding all along my street. It was funny at first because I’ve never seen such a thing. Watching the drivers decide to drive through or just park was quite entertaining. My roommate and I also talked to our neighbors on the stoop while we watched this weather episode. I walked down the street because it looked like there were waves at the end. Down the street is slightly lower than where I live and it also happens to be at the bottom of two hills (the other hill is closer to my apartment). Thus, this area at the end of the street had very deep water.
There was a basement apartment at the end of the street. The steps that led down to it were filled with water all the way to the top of the door handle. Not only was there water but also mulch. Our street has mulch all the way up and down and it was actually just put in a couple weeks ago. There was mulch all over the street. Back to the basement apartment. The residents were stuck inside with water coming in under the door. We communicated with them through their small window. We asked them if they had any buckets or trash cans. Then we started to get the water from inside the little stairwell out onto the street. This took 3 people 10 minutes to vigorously complete (only 2 people could stand in the stairwell at a time). It was good to help them out even though we didn’t know them.
In just a short time after that, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The water drained from the street. This whole episode occurred in about an hour. This is why I sarcastically say this was a simple Saturday.
