Pinapple express

I'd never heard of it. The pineapple express?

It sounds nice, doesn't it? I mean I love pineapple, and I'd rather take the "express" in most instances. Who doesn't like efficiency, right? The name conjures up images of flights to Hawaii, intra-island transportation, tropical drinks.

But it turns out the pineapple express is nothing but a whole shitload of rain, all at once. Poor San Diego is a mess.

I know, I know, we should be glad it's not snow. And the pineapple express did not bring cold temperatures, coming as it did, from the Pacific Islands. But let me assure you it did bring precipitation. To the extreme.

I happen to work in the Mission Valley area of San Diego. Aptly named because it is a river valley where the very first California Mission was built back in 1769. In fact, I work on San Diego Mission Road, the mission itself sits majestically two blocks away.

But accessing the Mission de Alcala, or most anything else in Mission Valley, including my office, was a hell of a hard thing to pull of fthese last two days.

Here's what I encountered on my way into work on Monday morning.

(Although I was attempting to access it from the other side, over where the grass can be seen.) I found another way into work and vowed to take an alternate route on Tuesday morning.

And I did. But my plan B sucked

Okay, so my photo sucks too. But you can see that poor deserted car up ahead in a small lake that was Qualcomm Way just the day before.

It was this yahoo who stranded her there about an hour earlier and made the news paper.

How embarrassed is he?

Here's another Mission Valley view.

Note where the water is in relation to those traffic lights!

The pineapple express was so powerful it made both San Diegans and San Diego institutions do things they very rarely, if ever, do.

Unfortunaly my day yesterday entailed a lot of driving, Pineapple Express notwithstanding. First, it entailed finding a non-flooded road to access my office, then leaving early to pick my kids up in Balboa Park, which is downtown, next dropping one off in Pacific Beach, so to the north on the coast, then heading up to Mira Mesa for an appointment for the other, which is more to the north, and to the east. Not the day you want to be hanging out on the So Cal highways.

But, as always in life, there was a silver lining.

Please note the double rainbow

Welcome back, sunshine.