Houston, we have a problem...or two.

PART ONE:

Our street is basically in a river valley...or something like that. I wish I could explain it properly. There is a tiny creak that runs down the middle and then the land just goes up on both sides. This means that in front of our house there are two huge gullies. Our driveway is on a land bridge-type thing. So backing down can be precarious. Jonathan had a close call once in the summer time when it was dry, so despite almost backing into the gully he was about to pull out.

A few weeks ago in November, my dad had an even closer call. It was a rainy day and the ground was COVERED with leaves making for slippery footing. We had to use my car to pull it out. Well...give it time to get traction and pull itself out. Sorry some of the pictures are blurry...

Just a picture of all the leaves before we used the leaf blower to get rid of the slippery leaves.

PART TWO: Our neighbor has the same creek situation that we have. Except that one of her gullies is dammed up to form a pond. So gully on one side of the drive way and pond on the other. The week of Thanksgiving had a bad start for a elderly couple visiting from Tennessee. Their daughter lives in our neighborhood, but on a different street. The couple accidentally made a wrong turn and somehow (we still have not figured out exactly how) ended up in the pond in the process of turning around in the cul de sac. I was out with the missionaries at the time, but my parents just happened to be at my house and my dad just happened to be outside and heard a strange noise and went to discover that the car was in the pond. My mom called 911, and thankfully the pond is shallow and the car never completely submerged. But holy cow...WAY too many emergency personnel: Two canine units, two ambulances, firetruck, tow truck, wrecking truck, about fifteen police cars, scuba divers, and two news vans. When I got home the ambulances, canine units, and firetrucks had left, but that was about it. Three police cars were in my drive way, so I had to park on the street in front of my car between a few other police cars. They were the last to leave, so I couldn't pull my car back up until 11:45. All in all a very exciting night. It was hard to take pictures because it was dark.

The three police cars in the driveway. Notice the diagonal stripe on the left? That's another car in the driveway across the street.

Next morning...the car ran over those bushes (driving forward).

The dirt on the side of the pond is from when they were pulling the car out with the wrecking truck. Took two tried because the first try snapped the chain.

See the tire tracks?

This is from my driveway. It starts at the right on the pond and spans to the left down the street. You can see a bunch of cars parked on the street. One of those is my car, but the rest are all police cars. And there were still more down the street that couldn't be seen from where I was.

One of the news stories: http://www.wyff4.com/news/25901992/detail.html

Video from Channel 4: http://www.wyff4.com/video/25914515/detail.html