when it rains, it pours

Apparently, whatever's out there in the universe following me with a giant raincloud decided that there was more left in store for me. you know the huge deluge that's been through a lot of the NSW east coast earlier this week? Well, Bega was one of those affected areas that's now been declared a national disaster zone. We flooded. It was so bad, my boss was flooded in and his home on the hill became a little island. He had no power and couldn't show up to work until 2 days after the floods.. and then he had to kayak for 20 minutes from his home to get to dry land to get picked up by his colleague to show up for work today. I kid you not.

Someone was watching over me though. I was supposed to have driven up to Canberra on Monday. Wasn't looking forward to that one but I got my stash of mandarins, big bag of Doritos and my 1.5L bottle of freshly squeezed limeade ready in my little Chooq-mobile and planned to drive very very carefully through the mountains in the downpour. It wasn't raining as badly when we had first driven down, and even then, we had to drive through some pretty awesome but scary uber thick fog through windy two-lane mountain roads that included hairpin turns for a good hour or so. I was bracing myself for this trip back, but I never made it. The Chooq-mobile decided to strain and grunt up one of the slopes on the way out of town, flash me an exclamation sign on the dashboard and spiked a temperature that sent the thermostat needle way past the red mark. I had to turn back and it was for the best! If I had lost my common sense, I would've plugged on and either have been stuck in Canberra for the next few days because they closed the road due to mudslides and car-sized boulders, or had broken down in the middle of nowhere halfway up the mountain to then be freaked out by the mudslides and falling boulders the size of cars. Either way, not very good.

My payment for being kept safe? The price was a new engine on the Chooq-mobile. Ouch.

As an aside, I should probably stop planning to visit places. Seems like every place I want to go visit has been struck by a calamity this year. Japan for our honeymoon's now off. New Zealand was our backup, also slammed by an earthquake. Vanuatu was also on the cards, also stuck by an earthquake. Had been planning to visit the Bega Cheese Factory this weekend on my off days.. it's now flood-stricken. Where shall I plan to visit next...hmm?