A Tree Falling in the Forest

With the recent heavy rain some poor souls in our neighborhood have had water issues in their basements and patios. Thankfully, we have not had any issues beyond our dog jumping on the bed with wet paws.

One neighbor had it particularly bad. Her patio area is one foot below grade level and has a brick wall on all sides. Unfortunately, the drain was clogged and it filled up like a swimming pool and began filling her basement with water too. Being a neighborhood where people not only know each others names, but also work to help one another, everyone came out to help like Amish farmers raising a barn. With buckets and siphon hoses they worked to empty the water. Every so often, someone from another area in the neighborhood would stroll by with a suggestion or story of personal woe.

My self-appointed role in this process was to find a solution to the cause and unclog the drain. First, I reached in as far as I could down the drain. Then I tried using a drain snake, but it kept getting tangled because the pipe was so large. Then I tried running an air hose down the line to loosen the clog. Then I tried running a water hose up the other end of the line to loosen the clog. No dice, it wouldn't budge. I ran out of ideas (short of digging up the line), so I had to give up.

What surprised me the most was how appreciative our neighbor was for my efforts. All the while, I am thinking to myself, "I accomplished nothing, other than making a lot of noise with my air compressor." The most frustrating part of the ordeal was running out of ideas. I can always come up with more ideas for fixing stuff. But now the stench of failure is all around.