The Battle for Normandy (Drive)

I changed my mind. Next time there is a natural disaster, I want to have already purchased one of these, with a snorkel, massive winch, and boom lift. Unimog, baby! With one, anything is possible. I still want that big cupholder.

The Normandy Drive Neighborhood is still above water for now.

Three days ago, one of the neighborhood guys asked if someone could drive the truck he was driving to move sandbags while he ran some errands. I volunteered, and spent the rest of the day backing down a really narrow bike path to the berm with 3k lbs. of sand in the back of the old F-150.

When he came back, I told him I was sorry for driving it like I stole it. He said it wasn't his truck, either. So I'd been beating a truck I borrowed from someone who had borrowed it. I offered to let him drive again, and he said he had watched me a bit and thought he couldn't do better. Eventually the owner of the truck came by and asked to get some tarps out of the toolbox. I acquiesced, of course. I helped build the berm behind his house the day before and he recognized me. He said to just keep at it.

Yesterday when I got out there at about 1pm, the guy from the day before said, "There's my driver - finally!" and threw me the keys to another truck. I spent the rest of that day loading and unloading it.

On another topic, there has been some in-fighting in the neighborhood. The city engineers came around and put in some stakes showing elevation a few days ago, and made some general predictions about where the river will crest. Some of the interior neighbors panicked and made a run on sandbags to do their own houses, even though most of them are 5-10 feet higher than the outer ring. When the sandbag loaders figured out what was going on, they started inquiring as to where bags were going before they would load outbound trucks. That led to a bit of a fracas.

One of the old guys who was sandbagging his own house finally walked out to see what was happening on the berm, and to haggle. He was yelling and swearing. We had a bit of an exchange. I couldn't get too worked up, my Bishop was standing right there. He yelled, "It's worthless, you're never going to build enough - you'd have to get all the way to the bluff for your berm to be worth a damn! That's almost 200 yards away!"

Yesterday we made it to the bluff.