Farmers Market and Kalona Days!

Right know I have decided that my blog is going to be a photo and video blog. Please be creative with your own captions.

More Iowa and the Floods

If you can't tell by now..... I love bike rides. I love to get out and see the country side. That is very easy to do in Iowa City. In about 10 minutes in any direction I can get out of the city. Here are some pictures from my ride yesterday.











One of my destinations was the damn.

At the damn I spoke with a park ranger from the army corps of engineers. She filled me in on some of the details. The water is flowing at a height of 4.5 feet over the top of the spill way. The spill way is 500 feet long. The flow rate of the entire dam is 38,000 cfs (cubic feet per second, for those of you who don't talk about flow rates everyday). The flow rate (Vdot) over the spill way is 16,000 cfs. Average water speed (v) = Vdot/xsec area of water above spill way!

v = 16,000/(4.5*500)
= 7.1111111 feet/s
= 4.85 mph

Doesn't seem very fast?...... that is the average speed over the top. Some parts will be faster then others. So........If we knew the change in height of the spill way we could see the increase in average speed from the loss of potential energy, not to mention how the cross-sectional area of the flowing water decreases by atleast a quarter after the drop. My guess is that the average water speed at its lowest potential on the spill way is about 25 mph. Something I do not want to get caught in! The water in this video is noisy. You can hear the rush!!!!!

To the immediate right of my helmet is one of the well heads that I sandbagged for two days. The picture was a little awkward, I used my head to block the sun (pun intended).



Once again, this is Burlington Bridge. They don't expect the flow rate out of the dam to decrease until Friday. Lets hope that we don't get any more rain.

It just keeps rising!

While you watch this video.....chant to yourself the theme from "Jaws!"

So it has been a week since I last blogged. The reason I have not posted is because I have come home exhausted everyday from sandbagging in our community. However, the neighborhood that I helped sandbag succumbed in the end and the water is 7 feet high in their houses. However, our efforts were not in vain. I am sure this lent the homeowners a little more time to move out their possessions. Below is a house that I worked on for two days. It is now an aquarium.

This is what the Iowa River looked like last Friday as it went underneath the Burlington bridge. Usually, this is a very calm river.



This is my room mate Josh by the Burlington Bridge.



One of the buildings on the left side of this aerial picture, is El Dorado Mexican Restaurant. I had dinner here in January with my Mom. Back then we were having the same problem. Inundated with snow. Somethings never change, H20 phases do.


These next few pictures are down the street from El Dorado and the Coralville Strip. This, by the way, is the business center of Coralville. Usually, this street is very busy with cars.




This is a view of the road on the way to the art and music side of campus. I would say the clearance is a little less then 14' 5."



I didn't work on Thursday or Friday. I took both days off with no pay as did most of my office to help sandbag. We sandbagged the well pump heads for our city. That was an amazing effort. If it were not for every volunteer working with urgency we would not have clean water to drink. We would be 'up the creek' like they are in Cedar Rapids. This is my friend Michele Bowen running on a pile of sandbags.


This is my room mate Josh and I at one of the Well heads . The water had already surrounded this well head and we were working feverishly to get it secure. They believe we should be okay and that the water will be safe. They were using a frontloader to get us on and off of the well head island. It was amazing. Josh has a picture of us on the frontloader. I will have to wait until he gets back from his National Guard duty. He was activated that evening for flood emergency detail.


This is Dubuque street. This is the main entrance to the City. It requires a lengthy detour to get downtown.

Josh and I made our own detour. All of the roads were closed, we were both tired and didn't feel like biking an additional 9 miles to get home so we forded a flood and a meadow.


We have another picture of me with my bike loaded in a row boat crossing a stream. We used almost every form of self propelled motion to get home.

Josh emerging from the Meadow. It was a sea of weeds.


Well, this flood has broken all of the records, even the great flood of 93'. It is truly of biblical proportions(whatever that means)!

What a bitter sweet experience this has been. There has been destruction in IC and CR. Mostly in CR. People have lost everything. I have witnessed my community come together and work in a way to preserve our way of life. Every day this week I would reach a point where I didn't think I could lift, pass, or throw another bag. Somehow if I stayed a little longer I was given strength beyond my own. I have a good feeling in my heart. I volunteered more then 33 hours this past week.

My arms are scratched. My fingers, wrists, and forearms are sore. I am exhausted and I feel invigorated. In the spirit of Shoe Less Joe Jackson, I really do think Iowa is Heaven. This is a great place. My heart and prayers are with those that are suffering. May God bless them and all of us.

Odyssey of a Sandbag

Yesterday....instead of the last hour of church we sandbagged for our neighbors that live in the flood plain of the river. We had so much fun. Here are the pictures and video.

Afterwards we went over to Melissa's house for Travis' going away party!

Bike Ride, Dam, IC under water, and Arts Festival!

So, this happened last friday. So I put on my padded biker shorts and Lance Armstrong jersey and charted a new course for my biking adventure. The quest was to go explore the flooding in IC and up at the Coralville Dam. I found the most gorgeous country road, Newport Rd, it is a cross road between Prairie DuChein and North Dodge. It was gorgeous with green rolling hills. The corn in Iowa is about 3" tall.


I came around a turn....... and there was doe feeding her fawn.

I try to make sure that I am in most of the pictures that I take!!!!


This is a rode that is flooded in IC, this is the first day of flooding.....It will only get worse from here.

The wise man built his house upon a what?


This is up at the reservoir. Last year at this time we had a beach partiy here. As you can see it is a little flooded. You can see the brown roof of the park pavillion!


This is on top of the spill way. The blue line on the sign marks how high the waters flowed over the dam spill way during the great flood of 93'. These 100 year floods every 15 years are going to kill us.

Spill way!!!!

'Where the sidewalk ends..........?'


This next picture is on top of the dam. It was gorgeous.


This is what 12,000 cubic feet per minute looks like coming out of the damn. They are supposed to increase the flowrate to 20,000 cfm by today. They hope to avoid water going over the spill way. However, with the amount of rain we have had, the officials expect similar water levels to the 93' flood. From what the locals say, the city is more prepared this time in the event of a major flood.

Later that night I went to the Iowa City Arts Festival. They had a free concert. I ran into lots of people I knew. That was nice because I actually went down all by myself. I had a great time.


I ate this vegetarian/all natural curry. It was really good. I then cooled off with a cherry-limade Hawaiian shaved ice.


This was a fantastic day!!!!!

Memorial Day and AK-47s at the BBQ

The other day I rode my bike through a cemetery. I was just gazing at the tomb stones. I saw one that recorded the death date of an Army Lieutenant on June 5th 1944. This date stuck out to me. I could not remember what was significant about it until I looked it up on my computer. This young freedom fighter died on D-day. Wow! I was very touched. He was buried next to his brother and his parents. All three of which survived him.


Today with the Day off I got a really bad sunburn. I did take a minute to remember all of the veterans and soldiers who gave their life in defense of freedom. This is a cemetery near lake Macbride, NE of Iowa City. I biked 20 miles to the the lake with a few of my friends.......


Everyone else from the branch then met us there. We played ultimate frisbee for a couple hours........


Then we went to the beach at Lake MacBride, had lunch and went swimming. I then turned around on my bike and rode 20 miles back home by myself. My friends decided to get rides back for themselves and their bikes.

We went to a BBQ. My roommate Josh brought Oksana (his AK-47). I was surprised at how little it kicked. About the same as a .22 caliber rifle. It was fun.