Come Hell or High Water

In Dante's Inferno the further into hell Dante and Virgil go the colder it gets, and those suffering are trapped in a frozen lake; as of last night I find this totally accurate.

Stephen and I have been pretty busy so we planned to take a break on Saturday and go snowboarding at Copper Mountain. It usually takes us about an hour and a half to get there and the same to get home. Steve's finals start this week so he had decided to take his stuff to study and ride half the day and then go inside and study while I was riding in the afternoon. So, yesterday morning we got up early and left for the mountain expecting to get there at 9:30am; unfortunately we ran into traffic about half way there due to emergency work being done on a bridge on I-70 (although when we finally passed the bridge no one was working on it, ahhh, frustration). So we sat in the car and yelled at other drivers with our windows up and called Stu so we didn't go crazy, and finally got to the mountain at 11am. Steve, being the responsible guy he is, didn't even get his board he just went to a bar at the resort and studied all afternoon while I snowboarded. It had been snowing and the powder was freaking awesome, but we wanted to leave by 3:30 so we could get through the pass and off the mountain before it got late and dark and the roads got bad.

After I had one last run we headed back to the car, and were surprised by the amount of snow accumulated on it. We packed up and got on the road at 3:30. As we merged onto I-70 we were surprised at how much traffic there was, but then again this was the first good powder of the season and a lot of people were in the mountains. We were also surprised at how slow traffic was moving, we crawled along for about an hour and realized it was because all 18 wheelers were being required to have chains on and they were pulled over, slowing traffic. We continued to crawl up the mountain toward the Eisenhower Tunnel as it got dark and the roads went from bad to worse. Since Stephen's finals start this week there was no way we were pulling over and trying to stay the night in case it got really bad and they closed I-70 and he couldn't get back for finals, then we realized that wasn't an option there were no exits until we got through the tunnel to the other side of the mountain and at the rate we were going that was going to take all night.
Both of us had headaches, probably from sitting in traffic and breathing fumes, so Steve chugged a bottle of water, hoping that would help. Thirty minutes passed and he started mentioning he had to use the bathroom. The road continued to get worse; people were sliding all over the place and spinning out. The Subaru proved her worth and I'm so glad we got her before we moved; we never got out of control but we were going about 5 or 10mph and inching our way up, not even daring to try and switch lanes. We were in the far left lane of the divided highway so were were next to the divider and had no place to pull over, which was becoming a big deal as Steve's need to go to the bathroom became more urgent. Let me explain the significance of this; on road trips Steve NEVER has to stop for the bathroom, I think he only goes in the morning and at night, so for him to be complaining that he really needed to go was big. Unfortunately we were in the worse possible place for him to need to go the bathroom, on an icy highway, in the left lane, on top of a mountain, in a snowstorm.
Cars were stuck all over the place and we didn't want to try and risk anything, but it was becoming an emergency. I pulled out one of our empty water bottles and told him to go in it and we'd just throw it away when we got home, for a minute it seemed like this plan was going to work. Unfortunately that morning he'd decided to wear his old snowboarding pants since they are warmer, and those pants aren't exactly easy access, so to use the bottle while sitting down he's have to take them down to mid thigh. As Stephen was considering the dilemma we finally began to get close to the tunnel, which also means street lights. At this point Steve was wiggling and squirming, wishing he could cross his legs. I even told him that if he needed to pee his pants I wouldn't judge. About the same time we got to the tunnel which is very well lit and traffic picked up to about 25 or 30mph, so we made a plan. No water bottle, we'd switch lanes in the tunnel and be ready to pull over on the other side and he could get out and go. In his excitement Stephen had confused the tunnel, there are two we go through on the trip one is only a few hundred feet, the Eisenhower is a few miles, and very well lit. We made the lane switch and got behind a minivan going 25. Finally Steve couldn't stand it and got back in the left lane, trying to get around the van; we'd reached a pee or die situation. But as were coming round the van the end of the tunnel came into sight, we began to freak out, "we're not going to make it back into the right lane!" As we emerged from the tunnel there was a spot, in the median where there was no divider, we pulled in. It took only a split second for Steve to jump out and begin to relieve himself. Let me paint this picture for you, there are three lanes of traffic pouring out of the tunnel after trying to get up the mountain for 2 1/2 hours, my husband is standing in the snow with the tunnel back lighting him, and in his hurry hadn't closed the car door so our dome light was shining bright. I was laughing so hard I couldn't manage to reach up and turn it off and Steve is standing in the open door sighing great sighs of relief. Two separate cars rolled down their windows and cheered for him as they went by.

It took us another two and a half hours to get home. Which were complicated by running out of washer fluid and the wipers freezing over, so I leaned out and tried to spray them with a can of deicer which all came flying back, soaking my face, which can't be good for you. As we got near the bottom of the mountain the snow lightened up and we could talk instead of having to solely focus on the road, which made the rest of the trip a little better. We discussed what we want to name our kids and whether or not we'd move back to the south to raise them.

We finally got home, at 8:30pm and saw that 10-12 inches of snow had fallen in Broomfield throughout the day. I took a hot shower and scrubbed my face then made popcorn and watched Seinfeld. Our trip to Copper and back, which should have been 3 hours total, had taken all of 8 hours and on our way home we'd hit a top speed of 35mph.

Getting back to Dante, I think hell could be a frozen tundra of highway, with no bathroom.


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