Rain over night. Rain this morning. Heavier rain this afternoon. Really heavy rain early this evening. What do you do when the rain is so heavy and intense that even the locals are shaking their heads in disgust and saying it has been a long time since the weather has been this bad for this long?

I sat at the kitchen table and looked out at the weather, the waves and the grey skies, I got up to date with my list of boring computer chores, chatted indoors, drank hot drinks and just enjoyed sharing stories. What else can you do when not even a bird is out and about in this weather? Stay indoors. Well that lasted till about 2pm when we ventured for a drive to Greymouth and then Hokitika to do a few errands, look at a couple of stores and grab a few items from the local Mitre 10.

The adventure of the day started as we were driving back along the roads heading to Ten Mile Bay. There was water cascading from every creek on the hills, all the rivers were flooded and full to the top with brown flood waters. Paul and I headed along to arrive at Twelve Mile Creek as it burst over the road with a mass of flood water, rocks and debris. It continued to flood over the road, blocking all traffic. As we got out and walked towards the blocked road even more water started to cascade across. Then it burst its banks and huge amounts of rocks, water and debris engulfed the bridge in front of us. Crazy intense and totally out of control this small creek had become. It was impassable. We were told that the same had happened at 17 Mile Creek as well, so some traffic was blocked from both directions. We were lucky as we could turn and head back to home, but not before I took pictures and watched Paul clamber over and through the flood waters to check on a house just past the awash bridge and creek. I have to say it was not the last I saw of this, as we left I took picture and video footage of the raging flood waters, then we grabbed gumboots and head torches and were back at the flooded creek to wade across to check on the property just across the blocked road. After ascertaining it was safe and un-damaged, and with our boots full of freezing cold water, we headed home for a hot dinner and to pray the rain fall and storm were now heading north. (All the best to the rest of the islands above us.) This storm is intense!! Good luck, for once maybe the West Coast will be bathed in sunshine while you all have a wet weekend. I am not holding my breath as we are getting strong winds and big swells, I have been warned!

Dinner eaten, the rain is easing. I am looking forward to bed, my hot water bottle and a good sleep. Cuzzie battled through the West Coast rain today with no big leaks, so I am happy with my first attempt at the leaks. More work to do tomorrow after I have helped to rescue, restore, and rebuild a water storage tank and its pipework system to the nearby house. Oh what a day. The air was filled with some very colourful language this evening and a swear jar would have been filled by now if we had one in the house. No lake adventure tomorrow, paddling on the lakes has been postponed till after all the repairs have been done!

A hot water bottle is needed as the temperature drops to under 5 degrees tonight! Oh the joys of winter.

My smiles today:
Rain that was so intense it made me feel I was in Fiordland again.
Walking in the rain in my jandals.
Filling my gumboots full of freezing cold flood water.
Laughing at very colourful language and it was not coming from me for a change!
The native whistling frogs in their pond next door. They are intensely noisy, but way cool.

My thoughts today:
I stumbled across this today in a book store. It made me think, it made me feel, and I related.
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…” Timothy Leary.

Good night from Red (Ma Te Wa)