Water and stories and such

I have a bunch of photos I took as Sandy was coming at us full force.  I even have one which I think is of my car being drowned, at least I'm guessing that's what it is, since that was the only time there were any lights to be seen during the assault.

At the moment, tho, I find I can't look at that stuff.  Now, I don't feel as though I am particularly traumatized by having been in my house for the duration of the storm, but it must be in there somewhere, or I could process the pictures and upload them here.  Any maybe even talk about them a bit.

But no.  Can't do that quite yet.

Instead, I'll tell a story or two. 

One comes from my sister, who lives on (and occasionally in) the river upstream from me, in Little Silver, NJ.  She, or her neighbor, after the storm, found a mailbox in the yard.  It was closed, so they opened it, and found mail inside.  The mail was addressed to someone in Staten Island.  We looked it up on Google maps, and found that the mailbox had traveled roughly 28 miles on the storm surge to get there.

Now, my mailbox is also MIA.  Looked around for it on the grab and go visit, no signs of it.  I wonder if my mailbox floated up to Staten Island in a weird sort of exchange program?

Next story.  One of my neighbors also had his car on our block when the road got too flooded to get out.  He had a Jeep, one of those big square ones that look so imposing.  Well, we learned during high tide that while Volvos (my car) don't float, Jeeps do.  His Jeep took off around a corner from where he had left it, then floated down the block, apparently to where the river coming up met the ocean, came back towards the ocean, floated back to the river, etc, several times.  When the water finally went down, it had turned around to face the opposite direction from which it had begun its trip, and nestled against a wooden fence.

Another one, from a gentleman who I was speaking with while on line for the grab and go bus the other day.  He had a boat, sounded like some sort of power boat, I am not a boat person so the specifics go right past me.  Anyway, during the storm he had been across the river in Rumson, trying to see with the assistance of binoculars how his boat was faring.  He hadn't taken it out of the water, and was of course concerned that it was ok.  While he watched, it started moving, and floated away down the river, with its owner no doubt having a freakout.  After an extensive search, his boat was finally located.  In Staten Island.

So.  Enough of this for now.