Rain, Rain, Go Away

We've had an overabundance of rain here since the beginning of May. It has rained something like 20 out of the 31 days in May, and this is the rainiest June on record. It is supposed to rain for at least the next 7 days as well.

I fully support rain and all of it's political, emotional, and spiritual ideologies. I do not, however, support flooding, transportation debacles, and personal safety concerns arising from too much rain, something I shall now dub Over-Rain.

Yesterday afternoon, we had severe severe rain. It usually doesn't just lightly fall here in Texas. We get flash floods (gulley washers), severe thunderstorms, and all manner of nasty weather along with Over-Rain.

I had a heckuva time driving home the past several days from the Hotel where the training was taking place. I live next to downtown Dallas, so driving around this area is a congested maneuver at any time, but there were any manner of washed out vehicles and accidents alongn the route.

My biggest concern is for the 6 people from my training class who have been stranded in Dallas because their flights were cancelled. Fortunately, during the pre-training phone calls I had with people a couple of weeks ago, I gave people my cell phone number. I'm glad they had it handy. I first received a call last night from a person whose flight to Oklahoma City was cancelled, and we were able to work out his renting a car and driving home. Thank goodness he has a company purchasing card!

The second set of people to call are from the San Antonio area. Their flight had been cancelled, and they were standing in an extremely long line of people at the airport to see what their options were. While they were in line, I called my contact in Atlanta who booked all the travel arrangements for us for the training session, and talked through some options with her. She tried calling the hotel that we had used for the training session, and wasn't able to get through. I had an inkling that the hotel had lost power. A couple of hours later, the group of people called me back to say they were all 3 booked on a 7:05am flight out of Love Field...a totally different airport from DFW, and not at all close to each other. We talked through their options, and they decided to rent a car at DFW, drive to find a hotel near Love Field, and get a couple of rooms so they could get some rest before getting up god-awful early for their flight. I asked them to call me back when they landed in S.A., but I haven't heard from them yet. I'll try calling them in a little bit. I've been hearing planes flying overhead all morning, so flights are obviously leaving Love Field...I just don't know if S.A. is able to receive flights because the entirety of Texas is underwater. At least one of these 3 has a company purchasing card, so they won't have to pay out of pocket for the car rental or hotel. Whew!

And this morning I got a phone call from one of my fellow facilitators. He was back at the original hotel along with a participant whose flight we knew was cancelled yesterday afternoon. Being the problem solver that he is, he had worked with our contact to see about renting a car. But when he learned from both his wife and AAA that his drive back to Tampa, Florida would take him 20 hours because of flooding along the most direct route, he decided to stay another day in town and take another flight in the next couple of days. He also told me that the hotel's power was indeed out for several hours.

It must be so frustrating to be stranded in an unfamiliar city, and without your luggage no less, because they had all checked their luggage, and it is now 'somewhere', but not with them.

So, here in a bit I need to make some follow up phone calls with people to see how they are faring.

...and it just stopped raining here...for now...