finally i got my chance to ride the bus into belmont. this opportunity came courtesy of some foul weather, too rainy to take either the bike or the bike. with rubber boots and umbrella i trudged towards harvard square to catch the 73 bus into waverley square, that familiar transport that i must've taken at least a few thousand times when i lived in belmont but worked in boston/cambridge. on the bus i saw a young asian man with green-dyed hair, sporting a matching green skirt, and wearing a head-mic. i wanted to ask him about his outfit but decided against it. people like that just want attention.

short of walking to belmont (which would take about an hour), riding the bus is the second slowest mode of transportation. normally it'd take me 40 minutes to get from my house to my parents (15 minutes walking to harvard square + 15 minutes bus ride + 10 minutes walking to my parents' house), but midway through the trip, in front of the star market, the bus came off its overhead electric track (these buses run like trolleys) and the driver had to get out and re-align the prongs. the whole trip ended up taking me 50 minutes.

i'd wanted to be in belmont on a seriously rainy day in order to see the water barrels in action. i was not disappointed. the blue barrel was already at capacity and water was pouring from the overflow like a stream. it wasn't coming out fast enough because the top of the barrel was flooded as well, the water dripping behind the barrel.

first i attached a garden hose to the overflow spigot. it was way too long and the flow became blocked. next i found a length of shopvac hose and tied it to the spigot with strings. the far end of the hose fed into a serious of gutter downspouts directed away from the house. that worked okay, until i found a shorter length of garden hose (6ft) and used that instead.

i even had time to shoot a mini-movie using the HD video feature of the canon SX230. that static sound you hear is the noise of the rain hitting my umbrella. you can also hear the neighborhood cardinals singing in the background.

the double barrels was inching close to capacity as well. the second backup barrel still had some room but moments later it filled up and water became to come out from the overflow, funneled to the center of the yard through the sump pump hose. the first barrel attached to the second barrel through a coiled length of sump pump hose, but later we switched to just a short segment of downspout for a more direct channeling.

in my second video, titled "double rain barrels," i'm advancing my digital filmmaking repertoire with some text overlays. i sort of like this video editing stuff (using imovie v9.0.2). definitely a different way to tell a story.

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