Thursday, December 21, 2006

Blizzard of 2006

At 7:12am on Wednesday morning I woke up to my phone ringing. I didn't have to be at work until 11:00am and my alarm was set for 9:00am, so I didn't answer. For the next 2 hours my phone rang incessantly. I tossed and turned, defiantly silencing the calls, while stubbornly trying to stay asleep. Finally, at 9:05am, I got up. There was about 6 inches of snow on the ground. All the phone calls were my crew members asking me if they should drive out to the airport or not. Bad Idea!



A quick call to dispatch revealed that Denver International Airport (DIA) was shut down, but they still wanted us to come in - just in case it stopped snowing. Yeah Right! It was supposed to snow for the next 20 hours and I-70 was already closed in some areas. The thought of being stranded with 5000 panic stricken travelers at DIA gave me shudders. Last time that happened I thought there was going to be a mutiny! A wise man chooses his battles in life and this was one I was not going to back down on. After some negotiating dispatch agreed with me and canceled all of our flights. Still in my underwear I jumped up and down on my bed like a 12 year old when he found out school was out for snowday. I went back to bed, while Molly "swam" in the snow.



At 4:oopm I was still in my underwear! When Jo got off work I followed her home and we shoveled the driveway. There was about a foot of snow on the ground and it was coming down at a rate of 1 inch per hour. The neighbor's kid and I built a pretty rad snow cave in the mountain I had moved from the driveway.



Jo just started a new job as an EMT and had to be at work at 7:30am this morning. There were 30 inches of snow in Boulder and her street hadn't been plowed so we got up at 5:30am to get her to work. By sunrise it had stopped snowing, but the state was a disaster - literally!



Highway 36 looked like a scene from the movie independence Day. There were vehicles strewn everywhere with a windy, half-plowed lane snaking through them. The police marked abandoned vehicles with police tape to indicate they had been searched for occupants. Trucks, busses, 4X4's, Cadillacs, and even a Hummer were littered all over the road. At one point I passed a front end loader with a 8 foot bucket moving snow.







My '97 Tacoma was awesome in the snow. I never got stuck once and the snow line was over the bottom of the doors in some places. I spent the drive back from Jo's work helping stranded motorists get unstuck on highway 36. At one point I even helped a newer style Tacoma out, proving my point that the older, narrower bodystyle is better. I hate the new Tacoma - it looks like a Chevy! He was embarrassed to be helped by me and I was sure to rub it in!

1 comment:

OB said...

The pictures give so much more meaning to the story. great shot of molly. Cheers - ob