Thursday, October 30, 2014: It’s been a long night Sam. I’m not sure how much you understand American baseball. Last night was Game 7 of the World Series, baseball’s championship. The San Francisco Giants versus the Kansas City Royals. Up until this point, probably one of the best World Series ever played. It’s fun to watch when you don’t have a rooting interest. My Los Angeles Dodger friends were all rooting for Kansas City because San Francisco are arch rivals. No love for the Giants with them. Last night was the last game. Winner take all. In fact it was a nail-biter right through the last inning. The Giants were up 1-run and had to get 3 more outs to win the championship. The Royals were not going quietly. They had 2 men on base with 2 outs and that is all I knew until today. I had no idea who won the game last night until a few hours ago. Imagine this scene: game on, surround sound on, it’s loud, people cheering for one team or the other, then a loud scream, ”HOLY SHIT, THE MASTER BATH IS FLOODED!!!”
So, I run in and as I get into the master bedroom I am ankle deep in water. The master suite is upstairs. The carpet and padding underneath soaked up as much water as it could and still I was ankle deep in free-flowing water. It turns out the main water line supplying the master sink had ruptured. With the baseball game on and all the noise in the other room, one could only guess how long water was gushing out all over the master suite. Immediately I shut off every water valve upstairs, including the hot tub. That stopped the bleeding, so-to-speak.
Right below the master suite, my office. Water is going to take the path of least resistance. In this case, all that water became good friends with gravity and made its way down. I ran downstairs to the office as fast as I could, not that it mattered much. Upon entering the office, there was this big bulge in the ceiling right above my desk. It was a slow drip at first, then CRASH! The ceiling literally caved in right on the desk. It was like a waterfall. The computer, phone, light, printer, laptop, all destroyed. After a call to the water restoration guys, we started to pull up all the saturated carpet tossing it out over the banister and onto the roof of the garage. The idea was to let the frame and bare floors of the house dry out as fast as we could to avoid mold from growing. The carpet, walls and ceilings can be replaced.
By the time the water restoration guys got to the house it was 11:30-ish at night. These guys were rock stars. 4-hours later they had stripped the flooded rooms down to the bare frame and floors. They had these industrial fans blowing in 4 different rooms. The blowers were there to circulate the humid air from the water logged wood. While that was going on, these industrial sized de-humidifiers were sucking all the water/humidity out of the air with hoses connected to the de-humidifiers draining all that water vapor into the bath tubs. They mentioned that I could not sleep in these rooms because those machines will dehydrate me, like being exposed to desert conditions. They were not kidding either. Behind closed doors those rooms will be around 105-110 degrees. They made mention that after the first 24 hours, a bar of soap will look like shriveled up bacon after all the moisture is sucked out of it with those machines. If there is humor in a situation like this, that would be funny to see.
If there is any good news in a situation like this, they told us that it’s hard to say and obviously no guarantees, however if we stored all the electronics in the office closet it will save them from the heat in those rooms with the machines. At the same time, the de-humidifier may dry them out enough to actually save them. We’ll see.
As for the game. It’s 4:15 in the morning. I have had no sleep at all. Might as well put on a pot of coffee and take advantage of the adrenaline rush from the last several hours. So, all the TV channels are talking about how the game ended last night. 2 outs in the 9th inning. Giants up a run and need one more out to win the World Series. The Royals have a man in scoring position on second base. This guy is fast and any ball hit in the outfield almost certainly will score the tying run. And that is exactly what happened. The baseball was hit pretty hard, it got out of the infield and as the Giants outfielder charged the ball to make a play on it. The Royals guy on second base was rounding third trying to score. The Giants outfielder got to the ball and threw it to home plate. The throw was an absolute strike, like it got shot out of a cannon. The Giants catcher protecting home plate catches the baseball just as the Royals runner collides with him and tags the Royals runner before he can touch home plate for the tying run. The San Francisco Giants win the World Series for the 3rd time since 2010! Much to the chagrin of all my Dodger fan friends, they will always remember where they were when Game 7 of this World Series was being played.
