Well what an exciting week it has been in Dublin! Monday they closed down the high street in Dublin as they were hunting an armed burglar who had abandoned his car at the bottom of the road that leads to my work and had jumped down to the river bed and hid. They closed the roads off, brought in canine, officers and helicopters to hunt for him but eventually didn’t find him. The interesting bit was they were looking for him right where I go for my morning run. So an interesting Tuesday morning run (they had given the all clear that he was no longer in the area) but I did kind of wish I had pepper spray!
Tuesday night I had no water in the house.
Wednesday night, again in downtown Dublin, there was a fire in a local restaurant – I guess one customer wanted their steak *really* well done. Oddly enough this didn’t make the news but again the whole down town area was shut off as fire crews worked on the scene.
Thursday the temperature hit 99 degrees so I decided not to run.
Friday I worked from home as the plumbers ripped out the old pump and sunk a new one along with the drain pipe down into the well. Cost $2500 – not fun. Then in the evening the fun *really* started. Five to five I am working at the desktop and I realise its suddenly got dark. I go to look out the window and it’s really stormy. Then the rain starts chucking it down. I was grateful as this would mean it would fill up the well. I had sawn off a branch from the tree so they could get the equipment in to remove the old pump and all of a sudden I saw this branch (about 20′ long) go flying down the road. About 5 seconds later, branches literally started falling from the sky. It was time to dive into the basement.
It’s really dark in the basement when you have no power, it’s dark outside and you’re trying not to step on a black cat as you walk down the stairs……
About 30 minutes later it sounded like the storms had passed – no tornado sirens went off through any of this – and I went upstairs and outside…
It was a mess. Branches down everywhere. Every single house on our street had trees or branches down. I helped clean up and remove branches from a couple of the neighbours and got to meet them – they’re actually all really friendly 😉 Only one guy had a gas/petrol chainsaw so he was a very popular man. He cut up several of the bigger trunks and we hauled them out of the driveway so everyone could get their cars in and out of the driveway.
After that I figured it’s now cool out – it’ll be hot tomorrow – go for a run! I got my gear on and headed out for a 6 mile run. Our street got the brunt of the storm – I didn’t see any other streets that were as bad as ours apart from one house where a car was peeking out from under the branches….I don’t think the car was actually that bad but just totally hidden. The part of the run through the woods was fun, like an obstacle course as I had to jump over or go around about 8 trees that had fallen down over the path. A good run and really appreciated the cooler temps compared to the upper 90’s earlier in the day.
Saturday Was cleanup time. I was so relieved when I woke up, turned on the light switch and had power – however – that meant it was time to work! Grabbed a coffee and waited until about 830 so it wasn’t too antisocial to start up with the chainsaw. I chopped and chopped and chopped, hauled branch after branch after tree to the side of the road. Met the neighbours directly across the street from me up. At one point I went up to the neighbours 2 doors down as they were hand sawing branches – urgh. I walked down the road with my chainsaw and trailing my electric cable and said ” I assume you have power – you can borrow my chainsaw”….They didn’t. A tree had fallen directly on the line to their house so they had no power so I wasn’t able to help. I went back and carried on sawing…
Eventually got all the big branches to tne end of the driveway – my back, legs and arms ached and I was soo hot so I couldn’t be bothered to start picking up all the small twigs and stuff so went into the house around 1.30. A long time of working out in nature’s gym.
I uploaded a video of my collection of branches and nature’s dumbbells at video and there are a few pictures of the Dublin 2012 storm posted online for your enjoyment.
I got a message back from Dublin – the reason that they didn’t sound the sirens was that they hadn’t got an official warning of a tornado – thats a load of rubbish as normally if someone sneezes in Dublin (or a 100mile radius) the sirens go off…….
Thats been 2 Hurricanes and 1 mightaswellhavebeenahurricane I’ve slept/vacationed/satinthebasement for.
Apart from that…..not a lot else has happened.
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