Updates Coming Soon

Hey all. Sorry for the blog silence since Lotusphere, but I took Friday and Saturday with the family to enjoy Disney. My girls absolutely loved it. Flew back tired as hell on Sunday, and had already slated Monday as a day of recovery. Well, while we were gone, the Kankakee River in Wilmington, IL froze over, and the resulting ice jam/flood caused almost everyone on the river to evacuate their homes. One of those homes belongs to my mother and father-in-law.

My mother-in-law was actually with us in Orlando, so we knew she was safe, but we were worried about my father-in-law. Basically the only house that didn’t evacuate was theirs. When they built their home, they backfilled over ten feet high in order to avoid these things. Even so, some water actually made it around the back of the house and got into the garage. Now, check this picture out:

Flood2008-31

That bridge is interstate I-55. Normally, from the bottom of the bridge to the river is over 20 feet tall. If you see the ice, you can see that in places, it’s only a few feet from the road. With all that ice backed up, it pushed up into the low lying area and took out a lot of stuff. It’s the highest they’ve seen it since they’ve been there. If you look through the whole set you’ll see the top of a covered porch that was on the river sticking out. Also, a chain link fence that covered their dog pen was wiped out, and several large stone statues no longer exist. The power of ice is pretty amazing.

Anyway, spent a good deal of Monday walking around and photographing the carnage with my father-in-law. The river was dropping quite a bit during the day, but with last night’s blizzard conditions and rapid temperature drop (50 degree drop in just a few hours) I’m wondering if things are going to get worse before they get better.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. I’ll have some updates soon, I promise! Oh, and I found this picture particularly amusing considering where we were for the week.