v30.6: The Sinkhole

Morning folks,

-slurp-

We make decisions that affect our lives every single day.  Sometimes these decisions seem fairly trivial and non-impacting but sometimes a trivial change can cause a not so trivial result.  As some of you know, we started the task of emptying the water out of our pool on the weekend.  We were able to use the pump to get some of it out, but the rest we had to siphon out with a hose.

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I found a nice little drain pipe under the deck that seemed to go under the pool.  After examining it, I determined it was used to take the water from the pool and somehow push it to the road; at least that is what it looked like it was doing.  I began the siphon process and the pool started to slowly lose it's water.  Everything seemed to be going fine, the water was draining and was nearly empty and then last night we heard a loud crash in our backyard.  It woke me from a dead sleep so it took me a minute to figure out if the sound was real or just something in my dream.

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I decided to get up out of bed and go and check it out.  Initially I took a quick walk around the house looking out windows, starting in the living room and making my way around the house.  I got to the patio door leading to the back deck and when I threw back the curtain I couldn't believe what I was looking at.  There appeared to be a huge hole where my pool had been and parts of the deck around the pool were broken away.  I guess the pool had been resting on the lip of the deck for the last day or so and finally just gave way.

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I turned on the backyard light and carefully stepped outside into the cold night air.  The rubber mat felt like ice on my bare feet.  I got to the edge of the deck and looked down, way down.  There was no sign of the pool, at least not in the darkness of night so I decided to go back inside and grab a flashlight.  By this time my wife was up wondering what was going on.  I told her that it looked like the pool had disappeared into a huge sink hole in the back yard.  I grabbed a flashlight and we both head back into the back yard to check things out.  Sure enough, once I pointed the flashlight down the hole there was the pool resting nicely on the concrete slab it used to sit on.  The pool itself looked perfectly fine other than around the edges where it was twisted and distorted.

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My wife and I stared in amazement, we couldn't believe the pool and concrete slab would just fall like that.  What if it had done that while we were swimming in it?  Granted it didn't look like it fell that far, maybe 10 feet, but what kind of damage would have occurred if it had been full of water?  Pushing the thought from my head I decided to grab a piece of wood from the edge of the deck and drop it into the hole.  The wood fell and made a pang noise as it hit the metal side of the pool.

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I felt my wife's arm around my waist and her warm embrace and I put my arm around her and we both stood and stared down into the hole.  Just then, up in the sky we heard a cracking sound.  We both looked up and saw a bright light shining right above our heads.  It was as if the air had torn open and we were looking through it into an unknown world.  The crack began to widen and my wife's embrace turned into a grip of terror, we began running toward the door back into the house.  Then another "tear" in the air began right beside the first, cutting off our escape.  We wrapped our arms around each other and closed our eyes.  We could see the light through our eye lids as it grew brighter and brighter.  The wind had picked up and it swept around us.  I opened my eyes just a crack but only saw blinding light.  The light intensified to the point where there was nothing but light and then... SNAP.

-slurp-

My eyes opened as the morning sun hit my face.  I hate waking up.  I got up out of bed and peeked out my bedroom window, the pool was still there, just a dream.  I turned back to the bed and there was my wife sleeping soundly.  I made my way toward the bathroom, flicked on the light and muttered, "I hate Tuesdays".

-slurp-

Cheers,

Al