The car wheel
hit a hole in the road one evening, and Vito, who was driving at the time, said
the tyre “literally exploded”.
It
transpired not only the tyre but also the wheel had been damaged beyond repair,
so the tyre shop kindly lent us another while we waiting for the replacement
to come in. Two days later the same thing happened to the borrowed wheel, causing me to miss a lesson. What caused these
tyres to explode? Roads like this,
and
holes like this.
The entire area is a
disgrace, and that was before the floods began on Friday L
Friday was an M.O.T. day for me.
You know the kind of thing, eye test in the morning, and dentist in the
afternoon etc. Vito took the day off to be
my chauffeur (otherwise I’d still be circling Rome looking for a place to
park), and warned me that our first port of call, was best described as “the
back of beyond” in terms of distance to our place, and we’d have to leave
really early. So 7.30 Friday
morning found us steering through driving rain, a solid grey mass of sky
stationed menacingly above us. The
fields we passed had become reservoirs, and the roads were literally
awash. Vito, still fuming over the
unexpected expense of a new wheel this week, had plenty to say about the roads.
“Look, look, they how they made this road.
There’s no drainage, none!
Look,
can you see how all the water goes to the centre barrier and not to the outside
and off the road? How can they build a
road like that, where the water flows back to the central barrier and not to
the outside edge of the road?” He was
right too; water sloshed back and forth across what was left of the tarmac with
nowhere to escape. At one point the heavy
traffic drew to a stop and Vito looking ahead, noticed a vast lorry driving in
the opposite direction in the lane by the central barrier. “Wait for this” he
warned. I looked up. The lorry was hurtling down the road, spewing
up water from its heavy tyres as it went.
There was a wall of water higher even than the lorry itself, working its
way along the barrier a bit like a Mexican wave. As the lorry thundered by, the car got
hit with an avalanche of water, slamming onto our car and making me giggle
with almost childish delight. Don’t
think I’d have found it so funny if I’d been outside the safety of the car
though. Then on reaching an area near Spinacetto, Vito took a detour from the blocked main route (he knows Rome like
the back of his hand and we dip and dive all over the place, but rarely sit in
traffic jams) and I suddenly heard him yell, “Look!!!” I followed his pointing finger to our right.
Literally a waterfall cascaded down the bank
on the side of the road and then over it.
And yes, we did have to drive though it.
It took us nearly two hours to reach our destination. That appointment duly
dealt with, and with a good few hours before the next, we made our way firstly
to Marconi to pop into a shop there. By
this time the streets were heavily under water.
The cars were parked in the middle of the road as getting out at the
kerbside required wearing flippers and a wet suit.
As
we picked our way through the water to try and find some dry patches Vito was muttering,
“welcome to the Lake District, more like Cumbria every minute”. Then we moved on to Via Ostiense stopping at one of our favourite
Chinese restaurants for lunch. Usually
this place, situated across the road from the university is packed at
lunchtime, but the torrential rain had obviously put people off that day. This meant we could actually get a table by
the outside wall that looks over the Tevere (or river Tiber to us). Looking out I couldn’t believe how high the
river was, trees were literally up to their necks (?) in water,
and a steady
stream of flotsam and jetsam flowed down the centre of the fast moving, filthy
river.
Under the window of the
restaurant was a pile of debris,
which our waiter assured us, hadn’t been there
a couple of hours before. We even saw,
what the waiter reckoned was a motorbike being swept down towards the sea. Later in the afternoon, having visited the
dentist we began what almost felt like a swim home. On reaching Tor De Cenci we found the water
had now risen really high in the road, and easily reached the doors of the car
as we ploughed through.
We were glad to finally get home to the warm
and dry. Since then the media has been
full of tales and pictures of the far worse damage than mine show done by the
water to the roads everywhere, and as a consequence also to a lot of cars. I wish everyone reading this safe driving J
The borrowed tyre |
Roads like this |
Holes like this |
Water sloshing back and forth |
A waterfall |
We drove through it |
Needed flippers at the kerbside |
Trees up to their "necks" |
![]() |
Flotsam and jetsam |
Debris under the restaurant window |
Water almost up to the car doors |
No comments:
Post a Comment