Where the Sidewalk Ends

It's been raining a lot lately. Of the 2.5 or so average inches of rainfall we get in a year, most of it must have come this past week! Across from where I work, there's a wadi. Most of the year, it's a rocky-sandy expanse, apparently wasted real estate. Everyone knows better than to build there. Because when it does rain, the wadi comes.

I always thought that "wadi" was just the dry spot, but when the water flows down from the mountains, it's the wadi, and the verb is "comes."

There is actually construction of a new road going on in it now, and we've all been curious what would happen when it rained. I heard a rumor that they dammed it up closer to the mountains to protect the construction efforts. The first time or two it rained, not much happened, so I thought that the damming had been successful, and I was disappointed.

But yesterday showed that there are some things you just can't stop.

Before we started staff meeting yesterday afternoon, the dry area was starting to fill.

I asked Andrea, "Does it fill increasingly? Because I feel like it's more full now than it was a few minutes ago." She wasn't sure.

This is the answer to my question.

 And this.

 Seeing a wadi for the first time must be a little bit like seeing snow for the first time. Except it's more like snow in Georgia, because the local people always seem fascinated by it. Traffic was snarled up and people were coming, coming, coming, just to see. Families will line the banks, just watching. Or sometimes barbecuing. The yellow Jeep guys really wanted a front row seat. He kept edging out into the water. What you're looking at is normally a big parking lot. Below is normally a road.

As we walked last night, Andrea wondered what my goal was. "I want to see where the sidewalk ends," I told her. And this, folks, is where it does.