Packing it in

Just after we bought our land in Corrales, which was 21 years ago this month, an early summer thunderstorm dumped so much water in just a few minutes that the arroyos nearby filled, re-carved their spaces and filled the local streets to within inches of flooding the few homes just east of the arroyo.  At the time everyone said it was a 'storm of the century' and unlikely to be repeated for fifty to a hundred years.  The politicians did eventually build a storm runoff pipe to divert the arroyo water to a concrete lined flood channel to the north.  And they did put up signs on the local streets which advised 'roads may be impassible in times of heavy rains or inclement weather'.

Thirteen years later Corrales had another major flood during a summer thunderstorm.  The runoff pipe did its job and diverted most of the water to the concrete lined channel.  But added to this water was mud and debris from the mesa and growing streets to the west.  So much mud and debris came down the concrete flood channel arroyo that the main road was closed because the bridge was weakened and the asphalt road had washed away.  When everything finally dried out and the mud was removed from the streets we were told it was one of those very odd 100 year flood events.  Nobody seemed to pay much attention to the fact that the prior '100 year storm' had been just 13 years earlier, about a tenth of the predicted timespan, but then again it was a different batch of politicians and a different batch of homes impacted.

Fast forward seven years to last summer, when many more homes had been built and now filled the 1992 storm arroyo and flood plain runoff area.  One big summer thunderstorm and mud filled basements, mucky water ran 6-8 inches deep through courtyards and kitchens, asphalt sinkholes captured firetruck wheels and pallets of firewood travelled half a mile from their arroyo starting position.  This time, people sort of remembered the 2006 storm, so they called this storm a 500 year event. And the village is trying to do some additional flood control channeling and hardscaping in the arroyo flood plain.  The six or seven homes built in the middle of this same arroyo flood plain are demanding the village do something, while some of us are left wondering why they were allowed to build homes in the middle of the 50-100-500 year water flow at all.  

It will be verrrry interesting to see how it all turns out.

If you have read this far, you may wonder what this has to do with our traveling adventures.  Well, it goes like this:

1. People have short memories, and selectively short in many cases.

2. Statistics can be manipulated to fit the situation.

3. Mother Nature and history both tend to repeat themselves; because of #1 and in spite of #2

4. We are beginning to pack for our upcoming trip.  Due to #3 it's like starting all over again, as if we have never done this before and not just two months ago.

5. In the middle of December, March and 65 degrees sounded like springtime and lovely weather, not the rainstorms back east and cold wind we have been told to expect on portions of our trip. 65 degrees as a high can be be calm and sunny (lovely!) or gray and rainy (miserable).  This also makes choosing clothing more of a 'take everything' proposition.

6. The Packing Corallary says if you 'take everything' in clothing you will also 'take everything' in supplies and provisions.

7. We do not need or want to 'take everything', but that requires that we know what will be needed.  

8. See #1-7 again.

<Sigh>  It will be verrrry interesting to see how it all turns out.