There's No Place Like Home

It was a pretty exciting weekend, as I got to experience the mountain side of the massive shutdown of the I-70 Corridor. I got to Breckenridge at about 2 on Sunday. The drive up wasn't too bad; a little blowing snow and reduced visibility, but nothing traumatizing. But the winds just kept getting worse, with steady 40 to 50 mph speeds and gusts up around 90 mph.

Conditions on the mountain were nothing to write home about, with really bad visibility, cold temps, and every lift on the upper half of the mountain shut down due to the winds. I got in literally one run: it took me about 25 minutes to just get on the lift, and when I got back to the bottom the line was literally twice as long as before, so I bailed and got up to Jeff and Keenan's condo.

News reports were starting to say that conditions were getting pretty treacherous, as blowing snow was leading to literally zero visibility conditions, and deep drifts were starting to collect on the highways. Scott and Scott, two of the people in the condo, were planning on heading back to Boulder to their wife and fiance, respectively, that night. Only, at about 6:30 or so, they shut down the Eisenhower tunnel, in fact shutting down I-70 from Vail to Floyd Hill.

The tunnel stayed closed almost all day Monday, only opening around 3:30 or so in the afternoon, after many hours of intentional avalanche-setting, stranded car-saving, and road-plowing.

The best part was that, with the winds still fairly high, the weather reports appeared to scare all the potential skiers. Amazingly, even the local Breck station's weatherman was recommending that people stay off the slopes. I can only assume he's been killed by some resort employees and his body buried in a snow drift by now, only to be discovered in the spring thaw.

So Monday was perfect - great powder and no crowds. Cold, to be sure, but you can always dress for that.

Tuesday dawned clear and sunny. The crowds were still pretty small, since most of the non-locals had to head down the hill to catch their flights home. The powder was a little less exciting than on Monday, but it was still a damn fine day to be on a snowboard. I left the resort at about 2:30, and was delayed maybe 40 minutes total by traffic on the ride home.

Compared to Shane's misadventures with O'Hare International Airport, I really have nothing to complain about. I was sure that I've written about this topic previously, but I can't actually find any such post. I am not a religious man, but if and when I found Daveism, one of its precepts will be that O'Hare International Airport is the source of all evil in the universe. You would have to pay me, and generously, to get me to agree to fly through that cesspool of an airport anywhere between December 20th and January 2nd or so.

It appears that Shane has survived his brush with the profane with nothing more than a story about a delay and a missed destination, for which he should count his blessings. He didn't have to participate in any human sacrifices or anything in order to escape.