a inundação grande

this morning's drive began at 7:30am with the idea being to leave lisbon early, beating the traffic, and arrive in alcobaça at around 8:30am to get a nice early start to the day.

well last night was like monsoon season in bangkok- pouring rain and lightning so bright i could see it behind closed curtains and closed eyelids. this morning it was still bucketing down and after an hour of driving in heavy traffic we still were not out of lisbon.

we found a road closed so we took a detour to the highway and were faced with the above- the road was turned into a brown river which no cars dared to brave. another hour later and we were finally leaving lisbon.

total elapsed time, three and a half hours. all was not lost, however, as i exercised my thumbs with the blackberry and irradiated my brain with mobile phone calls to get a lot of work done on the way. the miracles of modern technology!