I love living in Colorado, but sometimes the weather is a bit more extreme than I like. It's snowing here. The intrepid dishwasher repairman who just left my house used to live in Bettles, Alaska and learned some things about driving in the snow. He told me that I-70 is closed between Vail and Georgetown, and the news says so, too.
When I tried to find the Colorado Department of Transportation website, I first tried www.cdot.com and found the Center for Development of Telematics, Telecom Technology Center of Government of India which is kind of interesting.
The CDOT road conditions website confirms the road closures. And I wonder what happens to those people who are in their cars still sitting on the road?
And I'm glad my in-laws aren't among them. Stanley and Cecelia were here for a couple of days to see our new mountain house (a.k.a. their new summer house) and had a flight back to Dallas this afternoon. They decided to leave this morning just after breakfast to miss the worst of the storm, and we're all glad they did -- although the trip wasn't easy.
We got off to a good start when I backed their Hyundai rental car into the stone wall behind our garage and scratched the crap out of the right rear bumper. Oops. Maybe I should have told them the story about backing our car into a fire hydrant in Boston about 15 years ago and poking a hole in the right rear quarter panel before they asked me to get their car out to the main highway. I drove their car without incident in a forward direction, and they drove my Range Rover Tank, and we traded cars at the highway. I followed them into Dillon, where I turned and went into the grocery store since I was out already -- but not before I saw them slide into the intersection on a red light, which made me a little nervous. I spent maybe 45 minutes in the grocery store and when I came out it was basically zero visibility blizzard conditions. I drove back to Keystone slowly and carefully. I even turned on my flashers, which I'm not sure I've ever done before. And I was definitely worried about Stanley and Cecelia. I got home in time for Cecelia to call me and say that they were all okay, but had spun out and off the road about 3 miles short of the Eisenhower Tunnel. A state patrolman helped them, and a tow truck came and towed them to the tunnel, but then they couldn't get onto the road from the turnaround area where the tow truck had left them and had to get a push from a CDOT pickup. By the time they called, the road conditions had improved for them and they made it safely to DIA, and then to DFW, where they called me again. I hope our next time together is just as fun, but maybe a little less exciting on the travel front.
And the forecast for tomorrow is, of course, mostly sunny.