I'm postponing my "I am a big fat geek" post for a day or so because yesterday I forcibly became aware of my own mortality. There's no harm done for two reasons. First, anyone who knows me will say to themselves, "Um, yeah. You're the guy who likes reading for classes. I don't need more evidence of your geekitude." The second is that the geek post will have such power that it will transcend time and thus give today a full dose of geek.
But enough about that, let's talk about death.
When I go to New Orleans for winter break each year, Travis is the one who drives me to Denver so I can get the hell out of this diety-forsaken wasteland for a couple weeks. I appreciate the favor. When he asked me if I would drive him and a couple friends to the airport yesterday (they're in Vegas. Bastards.),<sup>1</sup> then pick them up on Wednesday, I thought, "sure, I'll just return the favor."
In Wyoming, though, spring driving can be kind of sketchy. This is a dry area, so we don't get much snow in the winter, but spring is a different matter. We have this quaint little tradition of getting utterly dumped on during spring break. One year we got about three feet in one day. I'm not exaggerating.
It has been snowing lightly for the last few days, but nothing too bad. Yesterday, I woke up at 5:30 to a light dusting on the ground with a little coming from the sky. "Not bad," I said to myself. "This should be fine." I pick everyone up about seven, and by not-long-after-that, we're on I-80.<sup>2</sup> The road looks fine at first, like it's not really icy at all. The car was doing this odd swaying thing, though, so I applied a little break as a test. We could hear the "skshshsh" of the tires sliding. Not good.
So for the first part of the Cheyenne leg, the road was apparently well-protected by a coating of ice. Then, it switched to packed snow, which, of course, is not any better. most of that leg of the trip we ended up going between 35 and 45 miles per hour. Every once and a while, on the upper end of the scale, I could tell my car was getting a little suicidal and had to back it down a bit. We saw about three wrecks, I think, between that section and the part from Cheyenne to Fort Collins, where conditions were similar.
This isn't the death part. It wouldn't have been so bad by itself. I had purposefully given us an extra hour, anticipating that we might have to slow down. What really did it was the crazy truck drivers.
To start with, they either didn't slow down at all, or they did so in such a cursory fashion that it made no difference. The road was completely icy, and they are tearing past me, incidentally blocking my visibility significantly by kicking up all that snow. Even that wouldn't have been so bad if they had kept their distance, but they didn't. About 75% of the trucks that passed me did so within two feet of my vehicle. A few were within a foot. At one point a truck did this while I was pulling over because an ambulance was coming from behind (from a really nasty crash). I think the truck nearly ran the ambulance off the road. It was Xtreme Driving.
Anyway, We made it to the airport within 3 hours, which was well within my planned time. On the way back, the roads were completely clear, and mostly dry. I had lunch in Cheyenne with a friend I hadn't seen in quite a while. I can only conclude that by leaving at 7 a.m., we simply beat the snowplows to the road. I do the whole thing again on Wednesday, but I don't believe the weather will be nearly as bad as yesterday. I hope.
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<li>1. They're in Vegas. Bastards.
<li>2. For those of you not familiar with the area, the "Interstate Method" of getting to Denver is to take I-80 to Cheyenne, then I-25 to Denver. Immediately out of Laramie on this route is a pass through some mountains that form the Laramie Valley. You climb at a pretty steep angle, then gently descend the next 35 miles or so to Cheyenne. Gently, that is, if you don't have the steering wheel in some kind of death grip.
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