Omaha water frenzy

This past Saturday (Aug 7) I went to Omaha. It’s a 2.5 hour drive. I left a little before 7 AM. I wanted to do a bunch of shopping so I went to the Old Market district. I first stopped at the Farmer’s market. I ran into a girl I graduated high school with. We talked for a couple minutes. I didn’t expect to see any one I knew (besides my family, which I’ll get to).

About 40 minutes after I got to the shopping area, rain fell. Rained for about an hour, downpour at times. I didn’t have an umbrella with me cause I never checked what the weather would be like. Later I found out some locals didn’t realize it was suppose to rain. A local told me there was a small chance for rain before 6 PM (like 20%).

I went to eat at an Italian place. It was delicious. I haven’t been to an Italian place in years. Since the time on the car meter was close to expiring, I decided to drive around. I was trying to kill some time before checking into the hotel. Check in time was 3 PM. I tried to go at 1 PM but they were strickt about the 3 PM policy.

I saw a sign that pointed where Creighton University was located. I decided to check it out. I toured that campus back in 2004. I was accepted to that university. But too expensive. So I walked around the campus again to see if any buildings looked familiar. A couple did. Creighton is a beautiful campus! There was a soccer scrimmage game  so I watched that for a bit. There was baseball practice so I watched a little of that.

I went back to the hotel just before 3 pm. Tried to check in. Apparently I put in the wrong dates. Luckily they could switch stuff around and got me in. I was a bit upset with myself. I quickly showered and got dressed. I didn’t have any down time because I had to drive to my cousin’s wedding. The church was a lot closer to the hotel than I thought. If I would have known that, I could have relaxed a little bit more and put on make up.

But I did get to talk to some family members before the ceremony started. Talked to them more after it was done. The reception was semi far away from the church. So I saw more family, talked to family more at the reception. Saw both sisters, niece, 2 nephews, 6 aunts/uncles, and 11 cousins. Oh my grandma was there too. Had some drinks there, ate food, watched people dance.

One of my uncles suggested I stay at his place. He lives in the Omaha area. I said I’d have to go get my bag from the hotel.

Once I stepped outside I saw rain was falling heavily. Rain fell hard the entire way to the hotel. So hard that my wipers had a hard time keeping up. I couldn’t tell which lane I was in. There were areas of water on the road. Took me 30 minutes to go 9 miles (14 km). Omaha was in a flash flood warning. There were ponds of standing water on the roads with no where to go. It was intense driving in the heavy rain. Tense cause I don’t know the streets of Omaha well. Tense cause it was dark out. When I got to my hotel safely, I messaged my uncle to tell him I was not gonna drive in the weather again. No one expected that much rain to happen.

There was a video of people trapped in an elevator with water up to their chests. The area where my hotel was had the most rain or worst water issues. The only thing that happed to my stuff was my front car license plate got bent. I was so worried my car would flood. Or engine get flooded.