San Gabriel Flood, 2009

Last weekend, we were kinda just hanging around the house doing nothing but watching football. Bethany's friend Riley was at the house chillin' with us. Totally blissfully boring Saturday.

But it was raining. It hadn't rained here in months and months and months and everyone was loving it. Well, that was day two of the rain. I got a notification that the weather service had issued a 'flood statement' for the river that runs thru town.

The statement said that the South Fork San Gabriel river was officially flooded at 9 feet and that we were currently at 9.8 feet. So we decided to go check out the river.

Just two days prior, there was NO water in the river. Not even a drop. You could walk across the river bed to the other side and not get anything on your shoes but dust.

When we got to the river, we were amazed. The water was coming up over the banks in some areas and threatening to in others.

We got some great pictures (which I will share with you later when I find the disk).

After getting our first pics, we got back in the van and drove further down the river and got out to take some pictures from that end. When we got there, all the geese that frequent the river were huddled together around the banks, honking.

I wanted to get some pictures of all the geese; there must have been 50 of them. So I tried sneaking up on them so as not to disturb them.

That was a mistake. They turned, as a group, and started chasing me. Well, the ENTIRE gaggle didn't chase me, just about 30 of them.

I was wearing flip flops and it was raining buckets. Not good running conditions. But I tried. when I turned around to run, I discovered that I was all alone. Bill, Bethany and Riley (Bryan stayed home) had abandoned me to the geese!! And they wouldn't come back to help me and the geese were getting dangerously close.

At this point, I decided that the best defense is a good offense and I started chasing the geese. They took off in the other direction and I was safe. *whew*

I looked up and there was Riley.

FINALLY somebody came to rescue me (a little bit late, but better late than never right?)

I pointed out to my "loving" family that I didn't give birth to him and HE came back to help.

and then Riley said (and up to this point he was one of my favorite teenagers...) "I didn't come back to save you. I was going to push you down and sacrifice you to the geese so the rest of us could get away"

Nice, very nice.