Bad Water

My throat is still burning. This morning I was taking my morning pokéwalk around the open air shopping center by my hotel here in Perrysburg when it happened. I'd stopped to battle a red gym and there was a water fountain nearby. I drank from this water fountain earlier in the week and it seemed fine, so I started off with a nice long drink. As I swallowed the liquid and it entered my throat I became aware of an acute burning and the smell of benzene crept into my nostrils. I spit out what I could but some had already gone down. My mouth burned and my nose ran as I kept spitting. The guy walking by with his lunch bag looked at me like I was nuts.

Maybe it is a little nuts to expect clean water to come out of the pipes these days. When I leave the Detroit airport and get on I-275 the signs point south to Toledo, OH and north to Flint, MI. That's the same Flint where the water is worse than in a third world country. Clean water is part of our society's infrastructure that we take for granted. Or at least I do. Conceptually the water in a dirty puddle and the water coming out of that water fountain are in two different classes. Or at least they were until this morning. I'm going to be sniffing every water fountain I come across for a while.