A wee bit of rain and the town shuts down.

Last night, two of the professors at IBI (Joan and Steven) had a group of students to their house for dinner.  After class, one of my classmates and I rode the train out to Castleknock.  Did I mention it had been raining all day?  The 20 minute train ride was uneventful.  The walk from the train station to the Singleton's house, however, was a whole different story.  It wasn't so much a "walk" as a "wade" through the river of rain that had drowned the street.  By the time we got there, we were completely soaked.

Fast forward a couple of hours.  Dinner was gorgeous (that's the Irish way of saying "delicious"), and I was enjoying the dry sweat pants Joan loaned me.  She even offered to let me stay the night so I wouldn't have to go back out in the rain.  But I had a paper to finishing writing and figured it'd be better to go home.  A friend dropped me off at the train station around 9:15 PM.  The train was waiting at the platform.  Perfect timing.  Right after I sat down, the driver came in. 

Him: Train's aren't running.  The line is shut down.
Me: What?
Him: We've been sitting here 2 hours already.
Me: Uh, ok.
Him: You'll have to take the bus.
Me: Where do I get the bus.
Him: Blanchardstown.
Me: Where's that?

He gave me directions and finally found the right bus stop.  There were about 8 other people already waiting.  After 30 minutes, I took out my notebook and starting writing a rough draft for the remaining part of my paper.  After an hour, I trekked back to the Singleton's house.  It was about 10:20 or so by the time I made it back.  Joan was very kind to let me take her up on the offer to spend the night.  She even had a toothbrush for me.  Needless to say, I'd wasted precious paper-writing time. 

I figured things would be pretty much back to normal this morning.  I mean, this is Dublin.  What's a little rain?  The train ride back to town took over an hour.  Only 4 of us full-time students were able to make it for class.  Someone said that the average rain fall for October was around 40 mm.  We got almost 90 mm last night!  That's about 3.5 inches. 

I apologize for the long story.  It reflects the length of the past couple of days.  Oh, the pleasures of procrastination and catastrophe.