By: Brandon Ross

What is a Tico?  A Tico is a small Korean car that has long since been replaced by real cars.

Where is my Tico?

I took my daughter Callie, son Couper, and the nanny Kio to go play at a kids play zone in town as their school had been cancelled because of the flooding (and yes, we can all fit inside my tiny car). As it had not rained for almost a day the roads seemed fine, but that all changed as we got closer to downtown.  I made it to the roundabout at the river and turned right to get to the bridge as the play area was on the other side of the river. The road along the river was already flooded and the river was over the banks pouring onto the sidewalk. Within moments the brown water covered all of the grass and sidewalk and there was no real way to know where the road was and where the river was. I have never seen a river take over a street so fast.  I took the next turn hoping things would be better, and feeling I was in some Hollywood movie where I had to outrun this thing. Turns out that the road away from the river does not go up as I had thought, and so the water kept getting deeper.  While the kids kept begging me to take them to the kids play area, I was trying to use logic for why we could not go and explained that the bridge that looked like it was floating in the middle of the now giant river with no one crossing it was the bridge we needed to cross and that the reason it looked like it was way out in the middle of the now giant river was because the roads on both side of the river had now become part of the river. They did not seem to care and kept telling me if I took them they would be “soooooo good”. About that time my son suddenly yelled “my feet are wet” as my daughter starting laughing and yelling something about water coming in. Maybe the mind of a four year old does not understand why water would be coming from the door, or maybe he just thought if a little water made his sister giggle a lot would make her roar with laughter, but for whatever reason he opened the door and within seconds my feet were splashing in the water as I pressed the peddles. Then……the car stopped. I turned the key….nothing. I tried again, and again….nothing. I then was explaining to Kio how to steer the car as I got ready to jump out and push the car out of the road and decided to try one more time. It started and I drove straight up onto the curb where we got out and walked, knee deep for me, and waist deep for the kids, down the road till we could get to higher land and get a tuk tuk home. The kids laughed so hard every time a wave of water would flow into the bottom of the tuk tuk.  Four days later my car is still wheel deep in water, on the sidewalk. And since it is raining as I write this I think the car may stay there for several more days or until I decide to just float it back to home.