I'm on my bike heading for a dental appointment at eleven. The dental appointment is at eleven because they no longer see anyone in the afternoon, which was a better time for me but never mind. Being a dental appointment, it's not something I'm looking forward to, but I suppose it's better than having my teeth fall out. I've worked out that it takes me thirty minutes to get from my home to Doctor Stalker's surgery on my bike, and I've set out at twenty past ten so as to take a slightly longer route through suburban neighbourhoods, thus avoiding the highway and heavy traffic. It takes fifteen minutes to get to Broadway, which is more or less half the distance, and then I'm into the familiar territory of St. Luke's, the middle school from which our kid graduated a few months back.
Unfortunately as I reach Olmos Park, I find the road barred by a barrier carrying the familiar instruction turn around, don't drown. I should have known.
It's not that it doesn't rain much in Texas, but the rain is infrequent and when it rains, it's torrential and makes up for lost time in a single concentrated blast. Creeks swell overnight to ten or more feet of water which will drain away over the next couple of days. The trail I regularly follow becomes impassable as Morningstar Boardwalk is swallowed by a temporary lake, and the city sends some guy out to close the barriers, each one embellished with the hexagonal warning sign.
Turn Around, Don't Drown.
It seems unnecessary. Most of us can tell whether or not it's wise to keep on going, and the familiar wooden walkway being underwater is usually enough for me; and yet nine out of ten times, I'll ignore the warning and skirt around the barrier, because if the waters have receded sufficient for me to be able to see Morningstar Boardwalk high and mostly dry, then I feel fairly confident that I'm not going to drown, and that the city simply hasn't got around to reopening the barrier.
So that's my reaction right now, I can see Olmos Park up ahead, and yes we've had a bit of rain this week, but I'm not turning around now. I have an appointment to keep.
I walk my bike around the barrier and remount, cycling slowly because the road surface is slick with mud. The park is deserted and almost entirely brown in hue, and the puddles are admittedly large. If I can just get through the park to Dick Friedrich Drive I'll be fine. I'm just minutes away.
There's a small bridge I need to cross, and as I approach, I realise that water is flowing over it as well as under. All I can see are the handrails. The water looks to be four of five inches at most. I'll do what I usually do, raising my feet from the pedals to coast along where it gets deep.
Annoyingly, it gets deep, then deeper, and I've slowed so much that it's either pedal or fall over; so I pedal, sinking my feet into water which is now almost up to my knees.
Fuck.
I cross the bridge.
I keep a pair of flip-flops in my saddlebag for eventualities such as this. Once I'm clear of the park I can take off my shoes and socks, and the hygienist will just have to work on a shoeless man with damp trousers.
There are further puddles, some of them thirty yards across by the look of it. Worse still, the ground isn't actually ground, but a six inch layer of soft Texas mud with the consistency of diarrhoea. I make it across the underwater parking lot to Dick Friedrich Drive and see that my intended route presently takes me through an actual lake.
It's not happening.
I look on my phone but I don't have the number. The dentist's office regularly sends messages in the form of jpeg images which won't show on my phone because it isn't a smartphone, because I've never really given a shit about smartphones. I call my wife and ask her to contact the dentist's office and tell them that I won't be showing because I can't get there.
I head back to the main road. There's probably another way through, but it will be more than a mile up the road. I'm apparently stranded in a post-deluge landscape, just mud and water as far as I can see, and yet somehow I'm in a public park in the middle of a city. I don't understand how this can be. There's a fountain of water about six feet high where a storm drain has burst just on the other side of the deserted highway. I'm on the mud planet.
I reason that going back the way I came at least means I won't experience anything worse than I've already come through, so that's what I do. Everything below the knee is soaked, but I make it out of Olmos Park. Once I'm beyond the mud, I stop and switch to flip-flops so that my feet will at least dry out. My sodden socks and shoes go in a bag.
Once again I'm lost in the suburban maze of Alamo Heights, with only a vague idea of where I'm going, so I cycle home by a meandering route as I recover from what has felt like an ordeal. I buy cat food from HEB, then somehow end up at Target on Austin Highway. I remember that I have money in the bank, and that I've been putting off buying crackers and socks for the last twenty years or so. I am fairly certain that at least two pairs of crackers currently in service can be dated to 1993, one wife and two girlfriends ago, originally purchased when Mandy poured scorn upon Y-fronts still hanging on from an era when such items were supplied either by my mother or relatives who didn't really know me too well at Christmas.
I guess there's no time like the present.
I'm treating myself. I buy underpants, a box containing six pairs - no holes through which anything can dangle, no saggy elastic, and not fucking boxers either.
I've been to the mud planet and missed a dental appointment, but I have new underpants. It's an ill wind that blows no good.
No comments:
Post a Comment