Wampum

The reticent woman car camping adjacent was soaked. She asked for towels and a blanket and mentioned she been in a vehicle accident earlier, when the inner rain bands first got here. Her car, with it's Dean sticker, wasn't in sight. A few minutes later Gracie said "she's flooded out", so MB went out into the rain squal to help. She drained and moved the tent, staked it down and came back in. Stomach cancer, up for tests, an accidental camper, now wet, cold and disoriented, her car and clothes somewhere else, and rail thin.

MB scrounged up dry clothes -- a mix of overs and unders, girl's, men's and women's, and took her back to the crash site in the truck. A half hour later MB called -- the bridge -- three feet above the stream when she brought me back from a closed Dulles -- was under fast water. She was going to try the back route ... No joy. Just passable but for the debris -- logs.

Later she called -- dry clothes and food and the woman was feeling better but still not making good choices -- her family at Myrtle Beach not called, no keys, no dry shelter. The rain was torential. We'd water coming in, an electrical fault that took out A/C on one side of the rig, and the water pump failed, and as the eye passed over the wind reversed to resemble a nor'easter and gusted. I took down the VSAT dish and we secured the lashings that had worker loose or failed and reanchored the woman's wandering, now water anchored tent.

The storm is passing, just gusts of wind, and the chorus of sirens from Reston.