Detour.

We got a lot of rain yesterday. This wasn’t the whimsical, ‘water the flowers’ type of rain that one would hope it would be, no, this was rain that fell from the sky in buckets for several hours. More than a soaking rain, Hurricane Irene brought us some flood-inducing rain. To keep it interesting, there was enough wind to knock around and down some trees and powerlines, though we didn’t lose our power. There was one impressive gust that tried to bust out one of the windows in the great room but we fought back and won.

The back lawn flooded a bit yesterday but that’s to be expected. The county and the town have been fighting over the ownership of the drainage ditch that goes across the back part of our property for years, so it hasn’t been cleaned out by anyone. I guess if we want the ditch cleaned out we’ll do it ourselves and send the government the bill.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to run to the store to pick up a few household items. I was a little surprised to see that the driving rain had flooded one of the local rivers this much:

As the day moved on, more and more detours were posted and by sunset there was only one way to get to and from anywhere from here.

This morning I was up and ready to go at my normal time. I headed off to work 10 minutes earlier than usual, thinking that I would have to use some creative measures along the way to navigate some of the back roads since I expected more detours to be in place. I wasn’t disappointed.

The Thruway was closed in both directions from milepost 210 to milepost 173. In these situations traffic is usually diverted onto either neighboring NY Route 5 or NY Route 5S, however, because both of these routes go through the Mohawk Valley as well, they had been flooded out along with the Thruway. Therefore, traffic was diverted to the high grounds, along the exact route I take to work through Amish country on NY Route 67. “New Turnpike Rd” was never meant to live up to the name it’s hyped to be, so there were countless out of state drivers and tractor trailers mingling with the Amish buggies that make me smile on a normal day to work. As I mentioned on Facebook, folks should remember to slow down on these back roads and also remember that Amish buggies do not have EZ-Pass.

Traffic into the little city I work in was backed up about 8 miles. I made a few creative detours of my own (because of my familiarity with the area) and found myself ahead of the curve, so to speak.

I was at work for an hour and a half or so when Earl called to tell me that he wasn’t feeling good and heading to the ER. I headed home to be with my husbear. We are now back from the ER and they have changed his meds again. His MRI came back clear and they think he has an upper respiratory infection of sorts. These meds should knock it out. He seemed well enough to eat for the first time in days when I made him a turkey sandwich on toast.

Today has been a day about detours. I’ll be happy when they lead back to the main path again.

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