After weeks of snow, and I'm talking "In the bleak midwinter" here folks; snow upon snow, the rains have come. In the space of 24 hours all the snow we've accumulated since November 2010 has vanished. I'm talking about 2-6 inches everyday bar 3, that I can remember... that's one heck of a lot of snow. What makes me talk about the weather, well apart from it being the British thing to do, is I am going somewhere with all this.
In our little village of one road, we have a creek/brook. Usually a very unprepossessing little thing, that does what all good brooks should do, burble. Whatever ! I was out in the yard this morning, and couldn't understand why I could hear a strong wind blowing. Wrong ! All the snow melting is running in to the brook, and along with the rain, that joker is rising, and rising fast. Not normally seen from the balcony outside my bedroom, it is now visible in all it's glory, and has risen about 10 inches, just today.
Obviously this is something the German neighbours and emergency services are taking seriously, as they are patrolling the road that runs next to the creek, and the volunteer fire department were frantically stuffing sandbags, when I walked past them earlier. I am, however, not seeing any building going on.
That neatly brought me back to my ark. I have my wood situation solved. In a village where everyone seems to have a wood burning stove in their homes, there are plenty of wood piles that I can pillage my supplies from. Hubbs has more than enough nails in his toolbox, and for waterproofing I was thinking along the lines of duct tape. After all it is like the force, it has a light side and a dark side and holds the empire together, on this premise I figured it would be good caulking for my ark, and I could take any left over spools of it with me for emergency repairs. My biggest problem in all this, is the animal situation. I have two dogs, but again this isn't ideal, with them both being ex-males, and I honestly can't see any of the other villagers letting me float to safety with their animals. If anything, I can see them hunting me down with pitchforks and burning torches as the ark takes shape, seeing as the weather we've had since we moved here, has been the worse they've experienced in 10 years. Hope you are seeing their vision behind this.
Another problem is propulsion. I really don't want to be reliant on a petrol engine, as when the flood comes I can't see there being many fill up points that will still be above the water-line. So that leaves me with sail power, another good use for my queen sized duvet covers, and california king bed sheet, or crafting some oars form the wood piles for Hubby to use. If I go with the oar thought, I'm going to have to scale down the size of the ark to make it easily movable for Hubbs. I wouldn't want him to put his back out as we navigate the highways and byways of Europe, as I can't be rowing and checking the ark for leaks with my duct tape.
So as I sit here, sharing my emergencies preparations for the first flood since Noah, I am also surfing the next, and there are no reasonable sized ark plans out there ! How is a girl supposed to be prepared when I can't get a basic plan.
Oh well, I guess if the worse comes to the worse, we can always break lose the bath tub and sail away on that.
Until next time, happy bailing !!
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