Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Hi Helen, it's so great to see a posting from you and to know that you are having delightful weather in the valley. Today, I tried to sneak out of town in order to beat the storm and ended up in the 'eye' of it. I had a few adrenaline-induced near death experiences during my drive to the Denver airport today. The first was on a very wet I-25 where I hit a large, deep muddy puddle at the same time as a car in front of me and an 18-wheeler on the left lane hit it. For a while, I was submerged in dirty water with no visibility for what seemed like an eternity. I continued driving and when all was clear, I was, to my amazement, still traveling in the same direction and on the same road.

Then I turned onto E-470 and proceeded to have my car steered by a 40 mph wind on an ice-covered and snow-drifted highway. On at least three occasions, the wind completely overpowered my steering and was pushing me off the road. So I had to hit the gas and used my front wheels to pull me back into the lane. That was very scary. The people tailgating me all the way to DIA must have been impressed because they wouldn't pass me so they must have figured I knew what I was doing .

Then I got to DIA with blowing snow and 1/8 mile visibility knowing in my heart that no one would take off in that weather. I tried to make it to the terminal but after about 50 yards I was covered from head to toe with snow and just turned back to my car. I was parked 1/4 mile away from the terminal since all the covered parking was full. I could not physically see the parking garage from where I was parked and so that's how I estimated the visibility at 1/8 mile. I found a friendly ham radio operator who called my friend for me and was able to confirm that the flights had been cancelled. So I headed for home.

The ride home was much less stressful. I wanted to kiss the ground when I got home. I'll keep an eye on the weather because I don't think I'm going to try for a repeat of that drive tomorrow.

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