Time may change me

To set more context for my meltdown on the phone Thursday night, let me share what we were doing Thursday morning. As in, from midnight to 7 am. This was driving home from Ohio, through a string of thunderstorms. And worse thunderstorms. Chains of lightning across the sky. And torrents so intense that the road threatened to become impassable. At one point, not an hour from home, it was so intense that we did pull off the road, huddled with some other cars in a Speedway parking lot, waiting for signs the storm abated enough to make the last leap home.

The extra sickening irony of this is that I have developed the driving habit of thinking: ``what's the worst thing that might happen right now? What's my plan for handling that?'' Usually that's, like, picking where I would aim if I saw a deer running across the road. Or figuring where I would swerve if a truck were determined to merge right into me. After hours of dealing with heavy, heavy rains, I was somehow not thinking ``what do I do if the road is flooded?'' But nearly all our travel was on Interstates, or US Routes, paths that don't flood easily.

It was on the final off-ramp, going from 127 to Kalamazoo in Lansing, not a half-mile from home, that I made the fatal mistake. I failed to think about the certainty that the road would be flooded. I drove my car right into two feet of water.

My engine died immediately, of course, and we sat, helpless. Thinking how horrible this was. Me, cursing myself for my stupidity. And bunnyhugger wondering what to do.

Some more people came down the same off-ramp. One saw us sitting there with our emergency flashers going and avoided the crash himself. And, when I realized water was coming into the passenger cabin on my side, bunnyhugger got out on hers. With the other person they were able to push us out and onto the shoulder, where I bailed water out of my side of the car and waved down maybe eight more cars plunging their way into the water. Eventually all of them backed up the off-ramp --- backwards or forwards --- and to the highway.

What was there to do? Call AAA for a tow, of course. AAA wanted us to use their web site. Or, if like bunnyhugger you did not have a smart phone, to use ... their web site. Certainly we understood they were overloaded. There had been hours and hours of pouring rains and there were flooded streets and stranded cars all over the metro area. But you would think they'd at least have the option of calling someone on the phone.

After enough of this we decided the best thing to do was split up. bunnyhugger would leave her phone with me, and walk home to contact AAA by their web site. She huddled up with her camera, her Switch in its travel case, but not the rain jacket we forgot we had in the backseat for just this sort of contingency. (I had left my phone at home, on the supposition that we didn't need two phones to handle one car maybe getting stuck.) This is not a long walk; we both take it regularly, normally by day. Never when sudden downpours return without warning.

As she walked through the rain, a skunk leapt out from some bushes, sprayed bunnyhugger, and disappeared before she could think anything but ``that's a scraggly-looking cat''.

She would take two showers using an anti-skunk-spray compound and using Dr Bronner's soap and still think she stank intolerably before sleeping. And the spray soaked into the rubber of her iPod protective case, her Switch case, her wallet ... you know, all things with rubber surfaces that are, microscopically, all nearly enclosed bubbles ready to hold a scent agent forever.

So she got on with AAA and arranged for a tow. And I had to decide where to: home, or a mechanic? I figured mechanic. It was imaginable that my electrical system might not be completely dead. The lights were still working, the car still kept the time, had my radio settings. The motor might turn over given time to dry. But the front fender at least had been dislodged, and goodness knows what else was broken under there. The mechanic would the next day say the splash shield was damaged, and that the rear fender was touching my tire. Mechanic it was.

Eventually, getting on 4:30 am, the mechanic got there, and did the slow process of loading my car onto the tow truck bed, using that chain system to get there. He talked about how bad the flooding had been, and that US 127 just north of us --- where I would have gone if I'd thought about the flooding sure to exist --- was shut down because of fatalities. In both directions. He knew where my car dealer was, but getting there was complicated by, of course, flooding. Which would have knocked out the other path we might have used to get home. Basically from where we were there was no way not to get flooded out.

Also I paid close attention to the path the driver used because bunnyhugger would have to pick me up, and she doesn't have a working GPS, and doesn't feel confident in her driving. Ordinarily with the surface road knocked out I would say take 127 down and back but ...

So. The tow driver deposited my car in an empty spot that I hoped was part of the dealer's parking lot. I gathered up the stuff I figured I absolutely had to bring home that day, and also got a raincoat for myself, and walked out to find the night-deposit drop. Which was inside a metal box, good, although the actual slot was obscured by the flaps of the envelopes for filling out what the problem was. All right.

I phoned bunnyhugger to say I was ready to be picked up. What I heard on her phone was: `` ''. I grant that I am bad with cell phones and maybe screwed up something, so tried again. What I heard was: `` ''. The phone rang, and it was her. I picked it up and she said, `` '' while I cried out hello or are you there or anything, and tried to describe where I was and what she had to look out for.

She, of course, heard none of this. From her perspective, it was now 5 am after two hours of being stranded in the rain and being sprayed by a skunk and now she was haunted by silent phone calls.

I tried again, finding on her phone a new set of (screen) buttons for a Speaker. And with that I was able to get her voice, and to explain where I was and how to get me. Her mood was not good, but then, neither was mine. Gads. I was able to give her good directions around the flooded area, although apparently I told her the dealer was on the wrong side of the road, giving her one last bit of needless aggravation on the day.

The phone issue, it appears, is that one of the two microphones on her phone --- the one for ordinary speaking, not for speaker-phone --- died. Yes, at 4:30 in the morning, in-between a call from the AAA guy confirming where I was and directing me when to set my car in neutral and my getting to the car place. So an additional bonus chore is that she needs to replace her phone with a more modern non-smart phone.

Oh, and she had left her car windows open, when she set out, and when we did not know or suspect we would get 210 inches of rain. So the seats were soaked and she was angry about that and I would not hae realized if she weren't angry about it.

So we got home, finally, as dawn was coming together. And got Sunshine her evening medicine and food and water and all. I tried to fill out my car dealer's online form to explain what I wanted and got stuck, because there's a point where the submit button gets hidden behind ... oh, who even knows. I didn't care anymore and can't think why you would.

About 7 am, finally, I collapsed into bed.

And a footnote and punch line. Some time back the new corporate owners decided that I need a Developers Laptop. So they put in an order for new computer equipment for me and I guess I don't mind moving work stuff off my computer and onto theirs. This was all scheduled months ago, but it's in the last few weeks that it started to arrive. First, a wide-screen monitor. Then another wide-screen monitor, because if there's one thing I need less than a monitor for my laptop, it's a second monitor for my laptop. Then a keyboard-and-mouse set arrived, all filling up more space with consumer electronics I don't really need.

Well, guess what arrived that Wednesday, ahead of the rains? And that, like the rest, was delivered without a signature being requested? Was just dropped off on the porch to await the fates?

So on the bright side I can say the neighborhood Facebonk complaints of rampant package theft are overblown. On the down side, the new laptop finally arrived and got, over the course of maybe twelve hours, five inches of rain poured all over it. The box had all but disintegrated, of course. I haven't opened its sorry remains to see if maybe, somehow, the laptop was wrapped in enough plastic to have a hope of survival. I take no blame for this; if they had communicated anything about their intentions of when to send this, or if they had shipped with the signature requirement anyone with a lick of sense would have demanded, it wouldn't have been a problem. If the laptop's dead on arrival, well, they can buy a replacement.

Trivia: One legend has that the first church bells were installed in the town of Nola in Campania (thus the term ``Campanola bells'') in the 5th century CE. Source: The Calendar: The 5000-Year Struggle to Align the Clock with the Heavens --- And What Happened to the Missing Ten Days, David Ewing Duncan.

Currently Reading: Lost Sagendorf: Spur Line, Bud Sagendorf. Editor Stephanie Noell.