Water, Water, Everywhere

.....but for some, not a drop to drink.

I was up at my usual 5:45 am this morning, digging through my cycling kit drawer looking for something that matched when The Wife opened the bathroom door and said, "There's barely any water pressure."  I immediately thought of the extensive road work they are doing a couple of blocks away on Broadway Street and figured they had managed to take out a water main.  There was nothing I could do about that, so I headed off to the levee to meet the Tuesday morning group, getting caught by a rather long train in the process.  Luckily, Robert was busy trying to fix a flat and the group was still hanging around, even though the others who had caught the train and I were about five minutes late.  Finally we rolled out a good ten minutes later than usual.  The pace going out was fairly consistent today, mostly staying in the 24-27 mph range except when we slowed down when Robert broke a spoke, thinking he had flatted again.  I was feeling fairly good and was staying up in the rotation out to Ormond where Woody, who was probably watching the clock and figuring he'd be late for work, made a quick  U-turn and started back immediately. 

The group took a mile or so to re-form, which is typical, after which the pace very gradually started to improve.  Woody was probably a minute or so up the road by then.  We had picked up the Ormond Gang -- Steve, Roland and Pat -- and their relatively fresh legs were keeping the pace up.  After a few miles we must have been starting to close a bit on Woody, which only inspired the front of the group, now down to maybe five who were pulling through, to ramp it up another notch.  The Ormond guys were planning on turning around at the pump, so they each put in a couple of fast pulls as we neared that point, at which time we caught Woody.  The pace eased for a bit and then started ramping up again until we were near the bridge and had to hit the brakes for an oncoming pickup that got trapped on the bike path by some surveyors. It was a nice workout, and by the time I stopped at Zotz for an iced coffee I was soaked with sweat. 

The air this morning was thick and warm and sticky. As I was waiting for my coffee someone mentioned a water line break around Cohen Street, which was on my way home.  As I rode down the bike path on Carrollton I could see flashing yellow lights up ahead, and then I found the entire street completely flooded and blocked by Sewerage and Water Board trucks (old joke:  What's big and yellow and sleeps six?  A S&WB truck.)  I worked my way through some very badly flooded streets and stopped to talk with some of the workers there.  It was so bad that they couldn't yet move their equipment in and were waiting for other workers to shut off water valves all around the area.  The water main that broke is one of the largest ones that comes from the city's water treatment plant about half a mile away, so the rupture, which had apparently happened around 5:30 am, had been a virtual volcano.  The water lines in this part of the city are probably around 90 years old, so it is not all that uncommon for them to break, but explosive breaks in the really huge ones like this that cause major flooding are relatively unusual.  Down the street I could see on car that had partially fallen into the hole caused by the blowout, and all around me the water was flowing like whitewater.  It was *a lot* of water!  Fortunately, there was still a bit of water pressure at my house about an hour later (I waited that long for the pressure to come up to a level at which I might be able to at least shower off the road grit and grain dust), although my morning shower was extremely abbreviated.  

Luckily there was water pressure at work, but many areas of the city are still under a "boil water advisory," including our office and parts of the main campus.  Such is life in the old city.