The Rambling Gypsy
Welcome to The Rambling Gypsy Podcast, where Tiffany Foy and friends invite you to join them on their porch for a candid conversation about the quirks and adventures that make up their lives. From Tiffany's eclectic collection of animals to the chaos and joys of raising boys, there's nothing held back as they share their unfiltered perspectives.
With a refreshing honesty and a refusal to sugarcoat anything, this podcast delves into the various oddities and peculiarities that come in life's way. From hilarious anecdotes to thought-provoking discussions, they explore the everyday moments that shape their experiences.
Fortunate to be porching it, Tiffany and friends create an inviting atmosphere where authenticity thrives. They unapologetically embrace their unique journey, inviting listeners to do the same. This podcast is not for everyone, but it is for some; those who appreciate unfiltered, real-life conversations that don't shy away from the messy and imperfect aspects of living.
Join us as we gather around the virtual porch and immerse ourselves in the stories, insights, and laughter that The Rambling Gypsy Podcast brings. Whether you're a fellow animal lover or a parent navigating the rollercoaster of boyhood, this podcast will entertain, inspire, and remind you that it's okay to embrace life's imperfections.
So grab a seat, put on your headphones, and get ready for a delightful journey of laughter, reflection, and unscripted joy. Welcome to The Rambling Gypsy Podcast, where we invite you to be part of our vibrant and unfiltered world.
The Rambling Gypsy
When Waters Rise: Hill Country Resilience
The devastating floods that recently swept through the Texas Hill Country have left an indelible mark on our communities. From Kerrville to Hunt to Ingram and everywhere in between, families have been torn apart, homes destroyed, and lives forever changed. As locals with deep connections to the Guadalupe River, we share our raw and unfiltered experience during this catastrophic event.
What happens when sirens blare but there isn't a cloud in the sky? What do you do when you're separated from loved ones as waters rise unpredictably, cutting off escape routes in minutes? We take you through our harrowing experience of being caught on opposite sides of floodwaters, communicating only through walkie-talkies as cell service failed, and watching helplessly as trees fell and roads disappeared under rushing water.
The unpredictability of nature became our harsh reality. As we explain in this deeply personal conversation, weather forecasts and preparation can only take you so far when mother nature unleashes her full force. We share the moment-by-moment decisions that had to be made to keep our guests and staff safe, even as we watched the landscape transform before our eyes.
But through darkness comes light. The Texas spirit shined brightly in the aftermath, with communities rallying together, neighbors helping neighbors, and strangers becoming family. From chainsaws clearing roads to helicopters delivering supplies, from Pat Green raising a million dollars to George Strait organizing benefits, the outpouring of support demonstrates why you "Don't Mess with Texas."
We've lost family. We've lost friends. And while we may never fully understand why this tragedy struck, we remain committed to honoring those lost by rebuilding stronger, supporting each other, and ensuring their legacies live on. We invite you to join us in supporting ongoing relief efforts through the QR codes and links we've shared.
Hill Country Strong isn't just a saying—it's who we are. Listen, share, and help us keep the momentum going for those who need it most.
https://cftexashillcountry.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4201
The Rambling Gypsy podcast is a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of real Texans doing real sh*t. We're pulling back the curtains on our daily lives - and you're invited to laugh and learn along with us.
Links:
http://www.youtube.com/@TheRamblingGypsy
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https://www.instagram.com/GypsyMammaTiff/
https://www.theramblinggypsypodcast.com/
I put a blessing on it. Too real, that's a metaphoric. We just put the I in iconic, buzzing like I'm electronic. Ah yeah, I put a blessing on it. See me dripping in it 24-7 on it. I'm just being honest. Ah, holy water dripping, dripping from my neck to my crap song Q stepping on it live.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, it's Tiffany Foy, welcome to the Ramblin' Gypsy podcast, and we have been away for a couple of weeks, weeks. We want to talk about the horrible things and floods that have been going on in Texas and Kerrville and Hunt and Ingram and affected all of us in between above Canyon Lake and above the dam, and then it also affected us down below. So, first of all, we want to take a moment and bow our heads, have a little moment of silence and pray for everybody that has been involved. So if you would please join us in doing so, thank you, thank you very much for doing that. We wanted to kind of touch base and talk a little bit about how we were affected here. We obviously were not affected in any way, shape form, um, as the Texas Hill Country higher in the Hill Country was um, we are on the Guadalupe River. Um, I have right there, right, yeah, so it's right here, right behind us right there behind us.
Speaker 2:But, um, I am born and raised local in New Braunfels. I've experienced many floods on the Gwad. I've learned a lot from how the systems work. I've learned a lot from what can and cannot happen. Whether men can say one thing, things can happen the next. Men can say one thing, things can happen the next. Um, there's. There's so many different ways that you can view this whole thing, um, which you've been born and raised local New Braunfels.
Speaker 3:You grew up with the river right in your backyard, yes, so you're a little bit more conditioned to knowing what to look for and you know when it's going to get to a certain point and you know water levels and all the things. Me, I'm not born and raised here, so, learning as I go, I guess, on everybody else who's lived here their entire life and kind of knows, you know, season after season, how things change and how things go and the repeat of mother nature, and you still it's still.
Speaker 2:Every time it happens, it's a learning curve.
Speaker 3:It's always unpredictable. Yeah, absolutely, mother nature itself is unpredictable, right.
Speaker 2:There's been so many people that have talked about the sirens, and let's talk about that for a moment. With your first experience with the sirens and I'm staring- at one.
Speaker 2:right now, it's literally right there in the backyard yes, and we will do a, a screenshot and we will show you that where the sirens are on our part of the river, there's literally one that is maybe 100 yards from from our location, right here, and when they do the siren test, um, they normally will, they'll send out emails. They'll send out. It's announced on the County website or Facebook or everybody that has has properties up and down the river. So we kind of you get your alerts and yes community bulletin we had.
Speaker 3:I have not subscribed for such services yet.
Speaker 2:So we had, um, they were doing normally and for whatever reason, and I and I still don't know exactly why they changed the date or the time or and I'm sure there was a viable reason and like, I get going and going and whatever. But, um, yeah, we, you, we have to tell the story about how you were out here Three weeks prior to the to.
Speaker 3:To the floods and they were doing their supposedly routine testing. It was not on the normal day of the week that they do their testing.
Speaker 2:They used to do them on Tuesdays. So we were all expecting them on Tuesday, which is the perfect time to do them, because there's really hardly anyone on the river.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very limited traffic. It's just the locals and you know the people that know or work on River Road and at that point you know it happens on Tuesdays Tuesday noon to lunch.
Speaker 2:This was not a.
Speaker 3:Tuesday. This was not a Tuesday and so, mind you, there's really not even a cloud in the sky. But you know, I've heard things about this dam, so the dam can be opened or closed, or what have you, and I don't know the parameters, and I don't know if there's going to be a hey, the dam's breaking or routine opening, or what have you. So I'm at camp and it's quiet at camp. The guys are using the air compressor, though, so the sirens start going off.
Speaker 2:And they were in the tube barn repairing tubes and doing work in.
Speaker 3:Couldn't hear the siren alert go off. And so I'm over here, you know, taking emergency seriously and you know all the things and freaking out about it. I can go and look in on the Facebook page and I'm going looking, you know, on the county website and, you know, trying to figure out is this actually happening Cause there's not a cloud in the sky at this point?
Speaker 2:No, and we have our, we have our group texts, we have with all of us that are here. And then we also have these walkie talkies and I had I think I have gone through every shape, form, fashion of walkies that are, are available and within reasonable pricing and what have you? And we have up and down River Road. You've got minimal to no service from one end to the next and some of them have to be connected to Wi-Fi, some they don't give an AM, some they whatever. There's all kinds of different scenarios but for whatever reason, right where we are located, we have absolutely the worst cell service period. It's absolutely horrible. So I invest in these walkies and we get them and I am at home, yep and, and nick's radioing flipping completely out, panicking.
Speaker 3:Oh my god, the sirens are going off I don't know protocol at this point, I don't know what we're gonna be doing garrett, doesn't you message me?
Speaker 2:and riley, because riley gets the notifications and garrett she's like and and garrett doesn't even care.
Speaker 3:And the ice machine people just came and they heard it and they didn't even get in the driveway and I can't get out and then garrett has the bright idea where, well, if we see the river start rising, we'll just, you know, hop on river road and leave.
Speaker 2:And I said you know it takes mind you, we haven't had a drizzle, and it don't matter, it takes 15 minutes to get off of river road and the whole time you're running parallel to the river.
Speaker 3:So I said, garrett, no, absolutely fuck, not. Yeah. If that's the case, we're going up top to the undisclosed location and we're getting, you know, yeah, as high up as we can get out of this situation. Yeah and he's like no, we'll just run parallel to it. The whole time I was like that's not going to put us any better off than what we already were. But I was stressing out, I was I don't know. I didn't know what to do with my life. Honestly.
Speaker 2:That was your first siren experience.
Speaker 3:And I didn't know protocol. So I did educate myself a little bit. You know, after I heard the sirens and I was like, okay, well, get to higher ground and make sure I have my keys with me on my, with my tile. So you know, if I need to, so I can find you yeah, exactly If you know, cell phone service or whatever goes out or can't reach me on the walkie or what have you?
Speaker 2:the walkie or what have you. So that was a uh, so that was, that was prior to, and then, um, we fast forward to the 4th of July and the rain came. And the rain came out of nowhere and it came hard and it came fast, and we've experienced that here multiple times to where, in 2015, just for instance, we were supposed to have a slight drizzle and the week prior to we were supposed to have a full-on flood. So everybody was prepped, we were ready to go, we were ready for it and we got absolutely nothing. Can you? We were ready for it, um, and we got absolutely nothing. Can you really ever be ready for it? Though? You know, it's something that I I don't think that a lot of people realize is that and I'll have to go back and and my family will know, they've they've been on the river for 52 years that I don't know if it was after the 98, the 2002 or prior to when I they just say there's no such thing as insurance in a flood zone down here.
Speaker 2:So, whatever happens, wherever you're in a flood zone, it is what it is, and so, at our particular place, it's this lower level that we have, and I know the way that the river goes. Obviously it doesn't go straight. There's bends, there's curves, there's ups, there's downs. There's where it flows, where it comes from. We know that Kerrville feeds our water here. Kerrville water when they get. When we're in a drought, when we are starving for water, we need Kerrville and comfort and those areas up there to get rain, because that's what goes straight into our lake and so that's what we know to watch. And when we're getting rain here, we know it needs to come in slow increments. Right, what happened? So what happened in this deal was obviously very, very rare. Kerrville got hit. They got hit hard. Ingram Hunt, all the other places all the way around got hit hard and fast and the river rose.
Speaker 3:Continuously.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was an ongoing and there's no, I don't care how you skin the cat and I know you can agree to disagree with me on this deal, but I've um, I've seen it, I've been a part of it there. Weathermen can only predict so much. We can only imagine, we can only think that this is it. Is it going to go left, shit, I don't know. It may go right, we don't know. We've watched it move, we've been prepared for things to happen and nothing has happened. And then, when they've said we've had a slight drizzle, boom we were flowing at 5 000 cfs for weeks, weeks and weeks upon weeks.
Speaker 2:um, it happens that quick and that fast. Can the sirens help? Yeah, they absolutely can. Can you bank on those? No, no, well, in my opinion, what you do with your actions once you hear the sirens.
Speaker 3:you know the guys were unbothered by the sirens the first time I heard them, where I was ready to spring into action if there was a true drizzle, you know, and you had the same mentality of oh yeah, it's just another siren. You know, similar to people, that you just get complacent because they've been somewhere for so long or, you know, they don't realize the magnitude of what could potentially? Happen, or what's in the path and what's truly coming, or, like you said, what we don't know that's coming. You know all the unpredictabilityability.
Speaker 2:It's almost the same thing with the wildfire you really don't know which direction it's going to go and you don't know, and it can make a wild turn at any given time.
Speaker 3:Mother nature is not to be fucked with, that's the same thing pretty much with all natural disasters it's the unpredictability about it that makes them so catastrophic and so you, you know, detrimental to people and to towns and to little communities. Yeah, you know, and I think that's what happened here is it's a lot of littler communities and a lot of it is and this it.
Speaker 2:We can't even light a candle to what happened. No, in above, above the lake and above the dam, and um, our area down here caught a lot of wrath, caught a lot of of negativity. People don't understand how, how it all works and it's and I get that, um, media and things can be so deceiving.
Speaker 3:Um well, I don't really think I understood the magnitude of what just our little part of the river had experienced, and just here in new brumfels. Obviously I had seen other things about curvil and and whatnot, but when we were here in the moment, obviously I didn't have my phone for almost 24 hours and we were flooding and doing all the things just because we were so hands-on with what needed to happen here, with the water levels rising and making sure that our campers and our guests and the neighbors and whatever.
Speaker 3:So I was really out of touch with everything for quite a couple of days, honestly, and it took me a little bit to process. Once I finally did hop back on my phone and see everything that my family was seeing on social media, to cause them to reach out, and then, when I didn't respond, why they were so nervous and things like that it took me a couple of days to sit back and really be like wow, like we just got a tiny little taste of what everybody else was getting and it was, yeah, and it was wild. It was wild, it was.
Speaker 2:I can't even imagine what what others was, and I want to explain to everybody how quick and how fast this could happen. So everything was already going on in Kerrville and that whole area there and absolutely horrendous and just mind boggling. And it still is like I don't it? It definitely, and I'm going to be brutally honest and you can judge if you want to, but it makes you test your faith and try to figure out why were these little lives taken and why were the good.
Speaker 2:I lost family in this thing, lost immediate family, and it's been brutally, brutally, brutally hard. When that is all happening there and we're trying to explain to people where we are and where we're located, that we're going to be okay and that we're going to be safe because our lake has been so low and that's where all that is going to come, and then, all of a sudden, two days later or a day later, whatever it was, we got hammered and then, boom, we were flooding. It's for a totally different reason. It had nothing to do with what was going on up there. There were so many misconstrued stories that were going out as, oh, they opened the dam and I mean we even had sheriff's department on this side. I couldn't get. This is how quick and how fast it happens.
Speaker 2:My youngest son we all left the house at the same time. He left not the same time, sorry, I left maybe 10 minutes behind him and he made it through. There is one area that's not even it is a low water crossing, but it, it, it, it's um, an area where the water comes from top and goes all the way down, and I kept saying look, if we get through this part, this part, this part, this part, we're golden. But there's gonna be this one area and if we don't get past there, we're done right. And g3 made it.
Speaker 2:But as soon as we hit it and I'm telling you we were five to ten minutes behind him it was over. There was absolutely no way. So I literally have been through all of this and thank god I had these radios. The kids were on this side. I'm stuck on the other side and I am chomping at the bits. There's nothing I can do. I am walking y'all through. This is what needs to happen. You got to get this, you got to get this. You got to grab here. You got to move.
Speaker 3:And thankfully we had the walkies because the cell they would have gotten wet and it would have been a whole situation. And the cell service doesn't work, especially when you're stuck stationary on the road because you can't go forward, you can't go backward. There's a tree down, there's the flooding on one direction and you're the sheriff's department was on my side.
Speaker 2:The sheriff's department was on your side, I'm I'm on the other side of gushing waters. They are here water. I know exactly how the water is going to go. For the most part, the sheriff's department had their rigs pushed down. They were new to this. I kept saying look, here's what's going to happen. When this stops coming off of the mountaintop, the water is going to start rising from the river and they're like really seriously. And I said, yep, boom. Next thing we know, five minutes later, they're backing up their rigs and they're like, holy shit, that happened so fast.
Speaker 3:Well, that's what you don't see is, yes, you see the runoff coming off the mountain, so like when behind us we had waterfalls essentially coming off the cliff, because there's so much water coming so fast. Well, some of that's getting absorbed into the ground, but there's also underground runoff.
Speaker 2:That's happening, that'll filter underneath layers of soil all the way down and fill up the river after all of the waterfalls. So what was blocking me from getting to you guys was from completely the other side, yes, so it was coming down and it was gushing and it was going straight into the river, which is where we needed it to go. But as soon as the rain stopped because it came so hard and so fast then the water on the road started receding. So the officers and the whatnot thought okay, perfect, everything's looking really good. Well, once that stops, the river rises.
Speaker 2:And so I kept radioing the kids and I said look, we're just beginning, this is nothing. And I said watch, what's about to happen. You guys don't stop what you're doing, make sure that everybody is out. You guys were so quick, so fast. Y'all listened to everything that I said. Y'all listened to everything that everybody else around us that could get here to y'all. Yeah, we couldn't get half of our guests out. On certain areas there was trees down we had taken and thank God we are so close with the sheriff's department, right, and God bless all of our first responders and we were radioing them. They had grabbed ahold of some of our staff's walkies that we have got Just to be able to communicate on both sides of the road we had grabbed our chainsaws, our skidster, our buggies, that we have our UTVs.
Speaker 2:We were taking people to higher ground.
Speaker 3:I will say that's one of the things about being in a town that's this close and you know this is such a tight-knit community. You really see everybody pull together during times like that. You know there's lack of communication. You really see everybody pull together during times like that. You know there's lack of communication. Honestly, it felt, and it was such a weird eerie feeling after the majority of it had hit and you went back into town and there was a lot of people just at their soccer games and living their normal life and just doing whatever.
Speaker 3:But on River Road especially, anybody that was impacted hey, can I borrow your chainsaw? Hey, do you have extra gas to put in my? You know, whatever do you, can we, can we help get this tree out of the road? And you really get to see a lot of the good in people during times like that, because you you do see everybody at their worst, so you get to see everybody come together. You get to see the communication that happens, the neighbors coming from one side of the street to the other. You know, hey, I don't have electricity over here, but this is what I do have. I mean, we had the store open for anybody that needed to to grab a water bottle, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was pretty wild because you guys, I still couldn't get to y'all for hours on end and we still had guests that there was nowhere for them to go, because they both into the road are completely blocked, so there's nowhere for anybody to go. So all we did was push them up to higher ground, as high as we could get them to, where they were stable and where everybody I mean at that point there's nowhere for you to go right, you gotta ride almost like a single file.
Speaker 3:You gotta ride the way. As soon as the road did open, everybody could file out in an orderly fashion. But right, I mean, there was no point in getting stuck on the road when there was, you could there was a tree down here a tree down here, yeah, one on power lines, not to mention the flooding on either side. So even if you were able to get past the tree, there's not really a whole lot that you can, and there was three maneuver through.
Speaker 2:So it was boom, boom, boom and boom, and in between that there was just water gushing and rising yeah.
Speaker 3:So you think in an emergency situation, you can be prepared for something such as flooding, but there's a lot of other considerations that you don't think about like the trees down or the power outage, or the lack of self-observice as much preparation as you think that you can have, you can never have enough.
Speaker 2:Are you going to just come out and stop? Absolutely not. We have done so many different things. We have put in quick releases for our pumps. We have quick releases for the electric. We have run timing to see if we've got two guys. How quick can we get at least some of this out? What are our priorities? Boom, boom, boom. Basic fire drills that we have done down here. You can do all that you want to do, and I know that's so hard for everyone to understand and I know that it's hard for me to understand. I don't understand so much of this, but at the same time I do. But at the same time I do because I've been here, I've been do, but at the same time I do because I've been been here, I've been, but it's, it's never going to get any easier. No, it's never going to go away. This is thing, these are things that are going to happen.
Speaker 3:These are, um, it just makes you reflective of of your life and your people around you and extra thankful for what you do have and and honestly thankful for the, the opportunities that we have to to serve others in different ways. You know, with cleanup efforts and with you know, just overall, everybody can do a little bit of something. I think so, you know, and that's it's been really cool.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've I've seen a lot of of communities and states and and what have you come together. But when they say, don't mess with Texas, wow, it really is. Don't mess with Texas, because we literally will put everything aside and come together.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that was the name of. One of the benefits is Texans for Texas right and I don't think. I've heard something that's more spot on, more perfect, you know, than reaching out to your families and your neighbors and your community, and there's been so many tremendous people that have come out to help, and it's been so many tremendous people that have come out to help, and just an abundance of support that's been out poured.
Speaker 2:It's been amazing. I've had so many people come up and ask us you know, what can we do? What can we do to help? I feel like the bigger people have come together and have brought in. You've got Pat Green, who lost his family, and my gosh has done a tremendous amount, raised a million dollars. You've got Rich O'Toole that has jumped up and they're going all over and I could just keep on listening and I could keep on listening and keep on listening and they're going all over and I could just keep on listing and I could keep on listing and keep on listing.
Speaker 2:We just did a big benefit this last weekend, did great, raised 58,000 plus, and it's still going. And we have George Strait that's coming and doing his big deal. We have Robert O'Keefe that has got this huge deal, that's going. Robert O'Kane that has got this huge deal, that's going. Um, what we want to do is start a continuous benefit, but not started until next year. Right now I feel like they're everybody has got it handled. Everybody is just coming together. There are our helicopters, for heroes have been going.
Speaker 2:They're cooking all over the place, jake and the guys are just doing, yeah, just doing amazing, and um, I think we keep it going. We will never, ever, ever, um. Let these littles in the families and everyone that has been affected by this ever be forgotten. Yes, you're lost and yes, we miss you. And will I ever understand this? Probably not, Probably not.
Speaker 2:I'm going to try to, as everybody else is try to process it. Try to process it as best as we can, but we will continue to pray. We will continue to try to process it as best as we can, but we will continue to pray, we will continue to move forward, we will continue to build, we will rebuild, we will become stronger, we will try to figure out how to make something really good out of this, and let's do it for honor the legacies of everybody and for everybody that was affected in this and, um, yeah, so you guys, we will be posting a QR code.
Speaker 2:Um, that is for the whole country. Strong, um it. It goes directly to a great foundation. We'll post all the information on this episode. I'd like to give a shout out to Carissa Bartas. She made these shirts. She is selling these. We will put a link also. You can get these. These also go every bit of it. She is working day and night and we love you and thank you for doing this.
Speaker 2:This is one of our, our OG customers and clients that comes and stays out here with us on the Gwad and so, um, she's, she's good people. There's so many good people that are that are doing, doing what we we know how to do. So, um, as much as we would like to laugh about the things, about the, the sirens going off, often, us damn near shitting ourselves, and us getting in and trying to to recoup what we could recoup, um, the moral of this episode and the moral of this story here is that, um, they are lost, but they will never be forgotten and we will keep this legacy going for you guys, for our Texas family, for our Texas Hill Country family, and we will always be Hill Country strong, and we love you guys so much. So thank you very much and let's keep doing what we do.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, let's do it, cut, cool it I put a blessing on it.
Speaker 1:See me dripping in it 24 7 on it. I'm just being honest. Holy water dripping, dripping from my neck to my crap song to you stepping on it.