FLOOD!

7 hours into the 4-hour drive to my grandma's house, we were directed to a BOCES on top of a huge mountain, as the flood waters steadily encroached on the last safe piece of land in Delaware County... how did we get here?

We knew there had been a lot of rain. My grandma's assessment: "Terrible, terrible, terrible. The river is high. Bridges are out. Worst we've ever had." Unfortunately, this is also how she would probably describe a moderate spring rainstorm, so it wasn't very helpful in our decision-making process. So we went.

The officials were useless. No one had any information about which roads were closed outside of their immediate area, so the police would tell you to go someplace where the road was already closed. Once, we just drove past the Road Closed sign and through a foot of water. Then the water rose and we couldn't get back that way.

So we slept on a mat on the gym floor with a gay guy and his little dog, a mean family with a big mean dog, and a family with little kids that left at 5 in the morning. The nice thing was that we had supplied ourselves for grandma's house: two coolers of food, good pillows, puzzles, books, kakuro, crossword puzzles, music, and a laptop. Basically, we could have been stranded in our car for two weeks and not even been bored.

The next day, we gave up and drove home (through Ithaca) in only 7 hours. The flood got pretty old by then. We did manage to see dugouts, volleyball nets, soccer goals, and a few houses almost completely underwater. Yay. Flood.

[Also: Rejected from potential roommate list despite nice house: catholicvegan@hotmail.com]