Beach town day

Sunday was a reminder of why we moved here, about what we love about beach towns.

I was down at Middles Beach KAPping the Corona Pro surf competition. (Click on the picture to see more photos on our website, www.PuertoRicoSurfPhoto.com.) There was little/no surf, but it was still a fun party on the beach. Even driving through Jobos was fun. It wasn't so crowded at noon that cars and people blocked the road so traffic was actually moving, slowly but moving. But that's how traffic is in a beach town. Fun music poured out of a couple of bars, people were carrying coolers and umbrellas to the beach. It reminded me of great beach weekends at South Haven and Grand Haven on Lake Michigan. Those beaches are why we wanted to live in beach town in the first place.

When I got back home, power had come back on so I didn't have to put the no-electricity Plan B for opening Ola Lola's into affect. I got to take the dogs swimming and spend a little more time on our nearly empty, uncrowded stretch of beach. AND THIS IS IN OCTOBER! A big part of me didn't want to give up the beach to come open Ola Lola's. But Lola's is very much a part of the beach...

We interrupt this idyllic scene with a reality check. Last night we got hit with the second-worst flash flood since we've been here. Lots of rain and lightening and thunder. We thought we were okay when the rain stopped and the little bit of water in the yard started receding. They must have released water from the overflowing retention ponds up on top of the mountain into our little river because the water came up so fast. Literally all of a sudden our yard, bar, the road, everything was full of brown muddy water. A friend of ours was nearly swept away in her car in the dark.

Now it's morning. One of the "good" things about these floods is they don't last long, a couple of hours instead of days or weeks. We were up pretty late cleaning up and we have a lot more to do today. All the people and all the animals are okay. The bar survived it. Now I just have to wash every beer bottle and every glass we own. We cleaned all the water and mud out of the bar last night and started drying it out. We're okay. It's just not how I'd planned to spend the first day of our weekend.