March 23
The river has been holding steady for a couple of weeks just below the end of the gangplank. It looks like it's starting inching upward. I called up EAUSEINE on the Minitel. It's due to rise 40 centimeters by tomorrow.

March 24
The Seine is 3.65 meters above normal this morning. The end of the gang plank is submerged. I managed to pull out a 12 foot plank to span the gap and get to shore.

March 25
The Seine is at 3.89 meters. I propped the plank a little higher on the steps. It is now stretched to the limit and the water is lapping at the base. I had an inspection by a guy from the Port Autonome today. He's heavier than me and I noticed he got his feet wet when the plank sagged in the middle. Well at least that is some consolation. The Quai in the center of Paris is closed because of flooding. More rain is forecast.

March 26
The Seine is at 3.96 meters today. I put one cinder block under each end of the plank. My bank is starting to turn into a floating junkyard. All the odds and ends I piled along side the Yolkswagen luggage rack are starting to get submerged. I guess I should have sorted out the good stuff from the bad while I had a chance. Now it's all turning into junk. Inventory: 10 plastic ferns (to plant in my tires so they look healthy during the winter!), 20 old paint cans in various sizes, shapes and stages of rust, full of possible valuable primer, sealer, varnish and God only knows what else since the labels are not always legible. (That partly explains why I haven't thrown them out yet.) 8 old paint brushes in various sizes, shapes and stages of petrifaction, despite the fact that they've been soaking in a can of white spirits for about 5 months (well, until it evaporated anyway.) A cast iron barbecue grill missing some pieces. Miscellaneous buckets, cartons and metal poles. Half a dozen inner tubes ranging in size from thin bicycle tires to huge tractor tire tubes. A large green tarp attempting to cover the whole eyesore, now draped into the river.

March 27
The Seine is at 4.20 meters. I put a second cinder block under each end of the plank. This cannot go on much longer, or the whole thing will topple like a pile of Lego blocks. Fortunately, the river is now high enough that I can scull my little row boat over to the floating junk pile. Wish I had thought of doing this yesterday while it was sunny. It's now or never, even though it's raining. I actually maneuvered the boat onto the sidewalk which is about a foot under water. I've never rowed above my sidewalk; it's kind of cool. I wonder if the fish are inspecting my garden. "Hmm. Bob's been planting some new petunias. They're kinda tasty. This grass is getting pretty seedy though. Hope he re-seeds it this spring." I tossed all the inner tubes higher on the bank. Those tractor tire tubes are heavy and cumbersome, sort of like lugging big blankets. The rest of the stuff I managed to load into the row boat before the rain really picked up. That's when I realized that leaving it in the row boat was about as good as any other place I was going to find. I covered it all with the green tarp to keep the boat from filling with rain water. I rode on top of my green covered junk filled boat over to the gang plank tied it up, came aboard and went to sleep.

March 28
The Seine is at 4.54 meters. My extension plank is floating. I think maybe(?) I can just put weight on it and it will rest on the cinder blocks before submerging too far. Fortunately for me, this is not the case or I would probably have gone for a swim. No way to get to shore except to take the row boat. I also notice that a section of my of my gangplank has started to float also. I remember that I never actually screwed the wood sections to the metal frame - since I was so proud of building the whole thing with no screws showing. It hasn't been a problem because the sections are wedged in and gravity has been doing the rest. Unfortunately the buoyancy of water beats out gravity in cases like these. I decided to check on the piece which is even further under water. Bad news. My gaff went straight down. There is nothing there, just the empty frame of the gangplank.

March 29th
The Seine is at 4.81 meters. I am getting tired of shuttling back and forth on top of my junky green ferry. It's time for some serious work to some real scaffolding to get me to shore. I've got a monster plank for emergencies like these. It's 25 feet long, 2 feet wide and 4 inches thick. It also weighs about a ton and a half. But now it's time. The water is up; the junk is gone. I can just float it into place. ...... Four hours later. Like I said, it was just a matter of floating it into place (and videotaping the procedure.) There were really only two main problems. 1) It is too long to swing around into place and line up between the railings of the gangplank without lifting it out of the water. 2) It is too heavy to lift out of the water. Nevertheless we (Malissa, Raquel and I) did it. It is not something they actually realized they were going to do today. But that didn't stop them from making all sorts of ridiculous suggestions about how to do it, never mind that I, with all the experience, the one who has done this thing once before, had everything completely under control and would have eventually stumbled across the one slightly obscure configuration which actually worked - and that is exactly the method I used last time as near as I can remember. Well, at one resting point between some of the maneuvers, they insisted that we hoist one end out and up the sidewalk steps to give us the extra room to swing the monster plank around. "Do you have any idea how heavy this thing is?" After they had lifted it up a couple of steps (both of them I might add), there did turn out to be a solution after all - though it was clearly not the one they were suggesting, which would have positively required a hernia operation for one of us. In fact, the solution we finally ended up with, could not actually be described in any rational way. I'm pretty sure at some point we passed beyond Euclidean geometry not to mention Newtonian mechanics. It was a lot like playing with those little brain teaser puzzles with metal pretzels that you try to twist apart. Suddenly the pieces move into position as easy as pie and you have no more idea of the answer than when you started. Once we had it lined up in position on axis with the gangplank floating between the railings and finished the discussion about who actually deserved to be credited and taking pictures, it was merely a question of raising it into position on the stout crossbeam I had lashed above the railing. "How are we going to raise it into position?" I wondered. "Why can't you just lift it up. We did! " "Because you only had to lift one end. Most of it was floating in the water. Now it has to come completely out. Plus I have got nothing to stand on. OK?" " Well, maybe you could just walk across on it while it's floating." I actually entertained that idea for a second because it would be so cool - and also it would save a lot of work. It didn't take much more than a little testing step and a slippery lunge back to the gangplank railing to relegate that idea to the junk pile. In the end I managed to lift, and wedge and coax the monster plank out of the water with a rope I strung through a knot hole. What made the difference in the end was 1) the knowledge that those two women had managed to lift out the other end by themselves and 2) I was probably going to need a hernia operation no matter what. I think I'm going to leave this architectural marvel up until Easter. Maybe I'll never take it down.

March 30
The Seine is over 5 meters. Water is splashing against the bottom of the monster plank. Come on. I put the plank as high I possibly could. I've got another board coming from that plank back onto the gangplank. I'm walking across 35 feet of water. This has got to be enough!! I've checked the flood records on the Minitel. This scaffolding should cover anything but the "Flood of the Century" which last happened back in 1914. I wonder if we are due? I can't believe that a whole day's work could become obsolete this fast. Realizing that the boat has risen so much, the ropes tying it to shore might be getting stretched to taut. I checked but found they weren't too bad. I guess strain doesn't really change that much even though the angle does.

March 31
The Seine has stopped rising! The Minitel is saying that it has crested. In a way I'm disappointed that we're not going for a new record.

April 1
The Seine is at 4.60 meters. My jury rigging is safe. Had a little accident today while I was adjusting the end on the bank steps. I was practically standing on the end when I stepped on a very slippery spot and slid right off the edge. I hit the plank with my butt and still kept sliding in. I finally caught on to the edge and pulled my self back. Basically I got one side wet all the way up to my waist. I still can't figure out how I could get in that deep when the water was only a couple of feet deep that near the bank. One thing I did realize dripping back to the boat to change, with water sloshing inside my right boot, this water is freezing cold! It dawned on me how dangerous it would be to really fall in. Even Olympic swimmers cannot make it across a pool of ice water before their coordination is destroyed into helplessness. I decided to be a little less cavalier about bouncing on the middle of the plank like it was a trampoline from now on.