Day 4,087—Flashflood and Losing Power—

 

My day became very different starting at 3:30 p.m. (yesterday) when I got home from picking up Vivian from summer school. My bathroom downstairs started flooding, and then the power went out.

I was in the middle of trying to contain the flooding, using every towel in my house, collecting water in a cup, taking that water into my foot bath container, and finally dumping that water into the bathtub.

Sarah left to get Felix but ran into trees being down everywhere; the main road by our house was closed, and power lines were draped over the street. She sent me a picture and said multiple fires had also started.

The power didn’t come back on until everyone had gone to sleep at my house. We went out to eat for dinner, and I used my portable power bank to do a lot of basic things. I also used a lot of my camping and running light stuff, so it felt good that a lot of the stuff I had bought for running ultras was now being used by everyone in my family. My daughter was using one of my headlamps as a nightlight.

Today, I went and surveyed the damage, and it blows my mind how it only seemed to be in my area that so many trees were down. I wanted to do more than this, but this was a difficult ten miles for me. I went back home, promising myself I would go back out after I got hydrated, but I got sidetracked by making food and watching my kids. I am going out of town tomorrow, and I am not ready at all.