Jemini

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Friday night was very interesting to say the least. But I am not going to stop with just that and leave you hanging. Oh, no, this story is so worth telling I had to write a blog on it.

As soon as I got home from the day job Friday evening, I do the usual skimming of my home page on Facebook and see a post from Sammus Theory front man Sam saying the band is going to be playing a last minute acoustic set at a place called Broadway 50/50 in Alamo Heights. Since it wasn't far from where I live, I decided to go and check it out.

While heading down to the venue, I notice the clouds in the sky getting a bit thicker and lightning in the distance. Not thinking too much of it, I proceed down the street to the parking area at the venue. I ended up finding a parking spot about 25 yards or so from the venue entrance in a street side angle parking spot next to a gutter. (This will be important later in the story.)

After unloading my things, locking the car, and introducing myself to the Sammus Theory boys, I find an open table and settle in. Looking outside the glass front doors of the venue, I notice the lightning getting a little more frequent. At about 10:30 or so, the Sammus Theory boys start their set. Playing primarily originals from their albums Trusting the Liar and See it Through, the boys rocked the place out acoustic style. Midway through their set, it starts to poor down rain. I look through the front doors and see a bit of pea sized hail coming down. Trying to not focus on the weather, I continue to take a bunch of photos and try to concentrate on the boy's set. Much crowd participation, applause, and great tunes took place. Towards the end of their set, the lights started to flicker at bit. After thirty minutes or so of playing, the boys took a break and helped headliner Dennis Dietz get set up for his set. The lights flickered again. Dennis takes the stage and starts playing a cover tune. After some applause, he starts playing a Sublime tune.

The lights flicker again. Suddenly, Dennis stops playing. "Hang on just one second everyone, we need to do some emergency equipment moving." Right after announcing this, I look over at the front door and not only see a river outside but water leaking through the cracks of the closed front door. Not trying to think about it, I start up another brief conversation with the couple sitting next to me. Five minutes later, I look at the front doors again and there is water a foot high outside. Just as I look over, the manager of the venue makes an announcement saying that if anyone has their car parked along the street, they need to go move it now or you will risk the engine getting flooded.

Bar personnel started moving vehicles to higher ground. At this point, I was starting to panic about my car. I go over to the wait staff area and ask if there is anyone who could help me move my car. One of the members of the kitchen staff was nice enough to help out. Following him outside through the side entrance, I get into his car and we drive around to the other side of the parking area. Entering onto the completely flooded street, we make our way to the flooded street side parking. The gutter right next to my car had completely clogged and the area around the vehicle was submersed. As I stepped out of the staff member's car, water comes up to just below my knees. I wade over to the driver's side of the car and the water level rises about another inch. I peer inside the back seat window and see a pool of water behind the passenger seat.

"How high is the water next to the car?", the staff member asks. "It is just past the doors, all total about a foot deep," I reply with a white face. "Well try the other side and see if it is any shallower." He replies back. Wading over to the passenger side of the car, the water level goes just past my knees.

"Is it any deeper?" He asks. "Yes, much deeper." I reply. "Well, is there water inside the car?" The staff member asks. "Yes there is, in the back seat but I can't tell how much." "Here is a flashlight, that might help." he says as he hands me a small key chain flash light. Wading over to the driver side back seat I shine the light into the car and see a pool of water about three inches deep on the passenger side and a second pool of water on the drivers side. "There are several pools of water inside!," I manage to shriek.

"Ok, let me park my car uphill really quick and I will move your car. We need to get it moved or the engine will flood." The staff member quickly goes to park his car, hops out of his car and wades his way over to the drivers side of mine. Handing him the keys, he quickly gets into the drivers side, and puts the keys in the ignition. The car starts without any problem. Directing him out of the flooded parking space, the car gets moved to higher ground without any problem.

I wade my way over to the above water parking area dodging debris as I go. Making my way to the non-flooded parking area, the staff member gets out of the car. Giving him a big hug, I thank him profusely. "Your welcome. As soon as you can, take the car to a car wash and get that water out of there, otherwise it will start to really smell in there." Hey replies. "Ok, will do. Thank you so much once again.", I reply still in shock at what all has taken place in the course of an hour and a half or so. "Your welcome. Be careful getting home, ok?", he replies with concern. "Will do, thank you so much."

With that, I put my camera equipment on the back seat and climb into the drivers seat. Still white faced, I put my seat belt on, put the car into reverse, back out of the parking space, and begin the drive home. With Broadway completely flooded, there was no way I could even begin to try and drive on it. So, I head for high ground and attempt to make my way home through a bunch of back streets. Of course, as I am driving the back streets, I am having to dodge all of this debris in the middle of roads and several low spots that had turned into raging pools of water. That and the water inside the car would slosh around every time I made a turn. Several times through the course of making my way back home I had to turn around in the middle of the street and head back in the opposite direction. Eventually I make my way to Austin Highway and turned left to get back on Broadway and head home. At the intersection of Broadway and Austin Highway I see emergency vehicles in the intersection on my left side tending to a wreck. Creeping past the emergency vehicles, I finally make my way onto Broadway and head home.

As soon as I get home, I park my car into a covered parking spot as it is still poring down rain outside, I grab the wet/dry shop vac out of my storage closet and begin to vacuum as much water as I possibly could out of the car. After several hours of vacuuming and getting things as dry as I could, I finally called it quits. When all was said and done, I ended up vacuuming about 10 gallons of water out of the car.

Before i went to bed, I got back onto Facebook to make sure the Sammus Theory boys had gotten out of the venue safe and sound. They mentioned in a post that the water in front of the venue had risen to about two feet! Thankfully, they made it out safely and managed to get back to their hotel without any problem.

After all of this, all I can say is thank you God for looking after me and sending your team of angels to assist!