I should be en route to Aurora for a remapping session. From there, Steve and I should be continuing eastward to Nebraska, and eventually Wisconsin. Instead, I'm curled up at home wearing sweatpants and down booties, with the Pasta Cat lounging under my computer screen.
Which, should you wonder, is far more pleasant than the way I spent yesterday.
When I left the house around 7:30 a.m., there was snow on the ground and falling lightly from the sky. I've walked to the bus in much worse conditions, and the roads seemed pretty clear, so I didn't think much of it. The bus came promptly, sparing me a long and chilly wait. I turned on the iPod and opened my book, wondering briefly why my newspaper hadn't arrived. Then I heard the driver say something to my seatmate about two feet of snow.
I turned off the iPod and listened to the conversation. Apparently, we were in for a blizzard. Steve had mentioned that we might have to rework our midwestern driving plans, and that we'd be following a storm, but I hadn't fully processed that this meant BLIZZARD, and HERE.
Nevertheless, the bus ride was fairly routine, and we reached Denver only a few minutes slower than usual. I emerged from the station into a frenetic snowglobe, and realized that it might have been wise to stay home.
Most of my office-mates had made the same mistake. Around 10:30 a.m., the boss called us to the front and said he was shutting things down. A colleague, who deserves a gold medal for his effort, offered me a ride home, since the busses were sure to be running slowly and having lots of problems.
We got in the car just after 11. It took us over 90 minutes to get from 18th & California to I-25 and Market Street, which is maaaybe a mile. Astonishingly, the HOV lane at the Market Street exit was closed. As a result, it took us another three hours to get to US-36 (after we spent 45 minutes on the exit ramp, from which we escaped only after extricating a woman with Texas plates and a baby in the car from a snowbank). Much of this time was spent directly behind a line of six enormous snowplows, moving no faster than we were. As we sat in the immobile traffic, we could see a steady stream of cars moving - not fast, but moving - in the stinkin' HOV lane from which we'd been barred.
Some time after 4:30, we reached the Turnpike. From the exit until Sheridan, we were sort of moving. Then we reached another parking lot. It took us several more hours to get past the Church Ranch exit. We had only 2.5 miles to go to reach our goal, Highway 287. But there we sat, 2.5 miles from hope, for two solid hours.
Happily, the person with whom I was trapped would make my Top 5 list for People I'd Want To Be Stuck With In A Blizzard. He's funny, calm, and has a fascinating lifetime's worth of great stories. We had a full tank of gas in his trusty Subaru, and were warm and safe and fairly relaxed about the whole thing. Unhappily, we did not have a drop of water in the car, and our only food was a handful of gingerbread crackers. Oh, and the ginger Altoids I keep in my purse.
Around 7 p.m., even without water, my bladder was protesting mightily. And so, with no alternative in sight, I hopped out of the car (which had not moved for hours), dropped trou on the side of US-36, and peed in a snowbank. Which was up to my thighs, making it nearly impossible to squat and resulting in one chilled behind. Much relieved, I climbed back in the Subaru and resumed the wait.
We were in frequent cell phone contact with our families, who were able to provide slightly more information than the radio. Despite the fact that we could just about see the end of the line ahead of us, all we managed to learn was that a bus was rolled somewhere ahead of us, and our stretch of 36 was closed. Kicking ourselves for not getting off at Church Ranch, we waited, and waited.
At approximately 9:00 p.m., when we'd been in the car for ten hours, a National Guardsman knocked on our window. He told us to turn around and drive the wrong way, back to Church Ranch. This maneuver was much easier than you might expect, and soon we were moving! Actually moving!
From that point, we had clear, if slow sailing. We made it to Sheridan, and then North to 120th. We eventually reached 287, our long ago destination, and I waved as we rolled past my wedding site. Finally, just after 10, we reached a King Soopers parking lot, in which Steve and the Volvo were awaiting me.
The rest of our ride home was beautiful. The roads were nearly empty, the snow was still falling softly, the wind had died down, my seat was heated, and my husband was by my side. We weren't sure what to expect on our street, but it had seen enough traffic to be passable. Our driveway was another matter, buried under three-foot snowdrifts. We pushed our way in, and I immediately set water to boiling for some desperately needed homemade mac 'n cheese. Meanwhile, Steve spent a solid hour digging out the driveway, so that we could put the car in the garage.
Today, we woke to about two feet of powder, in which Steve is now skiing. I'm going to try to write the rest of my damn holiday cards, then snowshoe over to my friend J's house (J, incidentally, was ON the bus that was blocking our stretch of the Turnpike, but somehow managed to get home two hours before I did). We'll leave for Wisconsin eventually, but for now, the highway's closed to the Nebraska border.
I have never been so happy to be home. Over eleven hours to go 35 miles. Whew.
