Into White Air

It was a dark and stormy...day. And really, it was more white than it was dark. Completely white, in fact--total whiteout conditions. And there I was, trapped in my traction-less tin can, contemplating whether I was desperate enough for a bathroom to dig out that oil funnel and empty soda bottle. The wind howled outside, the slits of glass that I could still see out of were slowly narrowing as frost encased the windows, and the windshield wipers had long ago stopped functioning, preserved in ice. The radio hissed and popped with static and I began to dig desperately for my cellphone, praying I still had signal.

Ring...ring...ring... "Oh please answer," I thought to myself, silently begging a voice to appear on the other end of the line.

"Hey." Oh thank God! I pumped my fist in the air.

"Google-traffic.com-mapquest, save me! Russell, I'm stuck on I-70 and have been for hours. I need a new route home ASAP!"

I reflected on how ridiculous the panic in my voice must sound. No, I'm not stuck on some remote farm road in the middle of BFE Colorado, this is downtown Denver for crying out loud. Yet nonetheless, there I was, stuck in the parking lot we call our major East-West highway, 50mph winds rattling the doors on my Camry with no accessible exits, no movement whatsoever, and certainly no bathrooms in sight. What's a girl to do?

The Big One had finally hit Denver, after the mildest winter on record. Starved for moisture, the soil was thrilled that the meteorologists were calling for feet of snow in the metro area. I, on the other hand, had a big event planned for Friday with work--one that we had spent months preparing for--and hearing that the blizzard was going to hit Thursday morning was far from good news. The roads were dry and fast on the way in that morning, but shortly after I arrived I saw the first flakes touch down. Listening to the internet broadcast of the local radio, I heard callers announce the arrival of the storm first in Boulder, then Longmont, then Arvada, knowing it was a matter of minutes until the full force of the weather beat against us in Aurora.

When Elke called to say she had hit a guardrail on the way in, we knew the office was going to be a ghost town that day. The few of us that had made it in--the event team and a couple other stragglers--stared out the window with a growing dread about what lay ahead on our trip home. Then the agonizing decision to postpone the event had to be made, and all productivity stopped as we fielded unending calls from participants wanting refunds. Cancellation emails had to be sent, speakers' flights had to be pushed back, every registrant had to be called, and that poor man driving up from Texas that had turned his cellphone off for the drive? Well, we apologized profusely to him in a voicemail that he will hopefully get before several hundred mile markers whiz by.

The calls got more frantic as we worked our way down the list, and every couple minutes a text or call would arrive from Corey, telling me about a new road closure and how if I didn't leave soon, I might as well camp out under my desk. He had stocked the refrigerator and the wood pile, and was closing the storm doors and booting up the DVD player. I begged for a reprieve from finishing the call list, but I was refused; I wouldn't even be allowed to make them from my vehicle while on bluetooth. So I dialed even more frantically, speaking faster and skipping half of the script that had been written for us to read from.

I slammed down the receiver of my last call and swooped up my coats (yes, coats plural), scarf, and gloves in one smooth motion, shutting off the lights in my office and bolting for the front door. Other employees called their admonishments to "Drive safe!" and "Call when you make it home!" as I sprinted past their doors. I popped my hood up over my head, cinched the elastic tight around my face, and lunged forward out the revolving door. The wind hit me so hard I almost fell back and took a second trip around, but regaining my balance, I forged on stomping my way through the drifts to reach my car. It took my full archaeological skill set to unbury it from the dune of white that enveloped it, but soon I was on my way.

From the first acceleration I felt my car lurch sideways, caught in the ice hiding under the layers of snow. I prayed no one was coming and rolled down the decline and onto the main road, knowing I would never be able to stop if they were. I cursed myself for not filling up with gas on the way in, and grimaced at the little orange fuel light that taunted me. If only it had occured to me to use the gas station restroom while I was there. But how long could the drive really take, right?

Dodging sliding vehicles left and right, I made my way to the highway, unnerved by the fact that no one else was in the 500ft double turn lane with me, when usually it's backed up. Merging onto I-225 North, I fought my way towards I-70, patiently counting the minutes as they slowly ticked past. I knew it would be slow. It's okay. At least it's a steady 25mph. Wait--why are we stopping? No! No, you may not merge in front of me Mr. RTD bus! No! You neither Mr. UPS semi! Arrgh! But the other lane wasn't moving either. In fact, we hadn't moved for several minutes now, and there were no exits for another 2 miles--a mile until the I-70 junction, and then a mile until the first exit off that. Why oh why didn't I use the restroom?

The highway was littered with abandoned vehicles. Some on the shoulders, some simply left in the lane they had stopped in. A few still had passengers on cellphones, looking dejected and hopeless. As we sat there, drivers began to step outside, trying in vain to de-ice their windshield wipers before giving up and re-entering their idling vehicles. Traffic would crawl forward 6-8 inches at a time, every few minutes, and after more than an hour of frustration and a growing need to find a restroom, the RTD bus moved out of my line of sight and I could see the problem. Well, the first problem anyway.

The I-225N to I-70E junction is a two-lane bridge that goes up and over I-70, curving West, before settling down and merging in. On this lovely March day, four semi-trucks had SIMULTANEOUSLY wrecked with four passenger vehicles. I repeat, SIMULTANEOUSLY. I sunk lower in my seat and closed my eyes, summoning my inner Buddhist to meditate the need for a bathroom away. That's when I dug furiously for my cellphone, requesting my free On-Star assistance from the mapping center of CBRE in Tempe. Sadly the news wasn't good.

"Wow. Google shows 70 in red, or worse, dashed red, the whole way to your house. Call in the chopper for an airlift."

Ugh. Time for the funnel? No! I can do this! All I need is a distraction...yes...a distraction. What better distraction than photography? Good thing I always carry a camera. Time to document my epic struggle against the elements.

I'm sure the cops putting out the flares thought it was a good distraction too, despite the face they made at me when they saw me taking their pictures. But see the chaos ahead? Semis jackknifed everywhere! Oh, the madness!

I finally inched past the FedExAltima (it was now one vehicle), slipped by the van t-boned into the King Soopers truck, and gave my best look of pity to the drivers of the Bronco and the what was left of the Ford Taurus as they surveyed the damage to their vehicles. Safely on my way West, I breathed a sigh of relief. Wait...are those brake lights? Again?

And wasn't this supposed to be a three-lane road? Oh--the left lane is now an ice soup. It had already been 2.5 hours and I was beginning to think that sleeping under my desk would've actually been pretty luxurious compared to this. I could've flown to Phoenix in the time it was taking me to commute home, and my endurance was fading. The constant battle was wearing me down and I could feel my pulse weaken as I lost interest in going on...even in photography.

But no! My parents didn't raise a quitter--"Work hard, be proud," my dad always said, and I could not surrender now! Not when I had fought so hard! The authorities closed I-70 completely--would I let that stop me? No! I sat through 4 lights at 38th & Kipling before my turn arrived, but would I let that stop me? No! Snow doesn't scare me--I'm from Alaska gosh darn it, and if I have to pee in a funnel to survive until the very end then I will! But not yet. First, let me take a photo of the cars all getting snowed under and laugh at the man on the sidewalk that got soaked when the plow lumbered by him.

And after fielding calls from worried co-workers, fighting on past the closed McDonald's that was supposed to be my salvation from hunger, and lurching up 25th Place and spinning into the driveway, I was HOME! I had taken on the very nastiest of Mother Nature's bad moods and shown her I wasn't afraid. Jackson leapt through the snow, more thrilled about it than I, and after a sprint down the hall to the bathroom I was in soon in pajamas and wrapped up on the couch with a fire crackling before me.

The next morning dawned bright and clear and the only remnants of the vicious storm were the sparkling crystal flakes mounded gently upon the earth. The sun erased the cold and the roads steamed with evaporating snow. Corey shoveled in a t-shirt, and the neighborhood was filled with sounds of children sledding in their yards and water gurgling down gutters. I had been given the day off of work, although from the look of things, it was an unnecessary precaution. March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, they say; bring on April!

p.s. I plan to sell the rights to my epic journey for big bucks someday, so don't steal my story or I will sue you.

NSFW: Executor of the Estate

First, a few definitions...

Garage/Yard Sale: almost always hosted and attended by middle- to lower-class families, either socioeconomically-speaking or level-of-refinement-speaking, these fun events are a chance to offload all the junk around your house to early-rising-on-the-weekend strangers who will haggle with you over 50 cents-worth of McDonald's Kid's Meals toys and smirk haughtily at your collection of beer-themed bar mirrors that your significant other is forcing you to sell, causing you to tell her that yes, that bike works perfectly, secretly knowing that the instant she climbs on it the devil bike will suck her pantleg into its chain and then the handlebars will wrench to the left uncontrollably and she will crash, hopefully into a a cactus.

Estate Sale: a chance to dig through all the earthly belongings of some dead person whose vulture-like family has already claimed everything good.

Which do I prefer? Well, they both have their merits, but typically I'm more of a garage sale fan, if for no other reason than their garages don't smell like death. Usually. However, as we waited to take possession of our new house, we visited a lot of estate sales, hoping to score some furniture. With the exception of one desk that was very nice and very cheap (but required disassembly and a long trip up a winding hall and and stair...not to mention we didn't need a desk), most everything was as old as the person who had just died, and thus not of interest. Then one day we hit the motherload. Not in terms of things we would like to buy, but in terms of THE MOST AWESOMELY CREEPY ESTATE SALE EVER. Yes, dear readers, the few pictures I covertly snapped do not begin to describe the awkward hilarity we were faced with from the instant we stepped inside...

But first, let me set the stage. We pull up and see a street lined with cars--people flooding in and out. It's an older home, but in a nice neighborhood, and decently maintained. We walk up the steps and through the door, and see a kindly 80+ year old woman manning a checkout desk. Then we look directly behind her and see a large cardboard box with a bright yellow sign on it:


Yes, you read that right. It says, "Porno $5.00 each". Muffling our adolescent giggles our eyes darted around the room looking for something, anything else, to distract us...and we saw these:

They're like a Bob & Cha Cha mug if it came from Fascinations! And, as Corey loves to point out, you can drink out of the nipple--it has a little hole in it. Even more awesome is that they are sitting next to figurines of praying children... Desperate to escape from the room o' porn being staffed by the grandmotherly type, I raced down the hall and ducked into what turned out to be a bathroom:

The embarrassment quickly became a sqwicky unease as I looked around and saw that they were literally selling EVERYTHING, including his prescription medication (25 cents a bottle!) and miscellaneous small utensils both ancient and somewhere between barely and not-at-all functioning (displayed on a card table half in and half out of the bathtub, for your...convenience?). Not clear was whether or not the mirror hung in the shower with a bandaid (resourceful? tacky? you decide...) was for sale, because I think it was the only unmarked item in the house.

At this point, it became much harder to take photos without being seen by the swarms of people who somehow all found out about this sale. Thus, there are few other photos. We also saw canned food from 1976 (for a half-assed bomb shelter), several firefighter's suits (Corey wanted one for Halloween 2009 but that would mean wearing something that came out of this house, and that certainly wasn't going to happen), a large gun rack (obviously!), the tiniest shower I have ever seen (inside an unfinished part of the basement that had no door, but since you wouldn't be able to lift your hands over your head to shampoo in that tiny thing anyway, probably not much worry of someone entering that room during your 12-second shower), an orange velvet sofa, and lots of playboy calendars.

Upon exiting the house we all shuddered involuntarily, as if our bodies were trying to shake off the stale air of the late, lonely, old man's house. We supressed our mirth as best we could until we made it into the car, and then all our pent-up laughter burst out as we watched a woman roll up her car window, suffocating her yippy dog, whose head had been stuck out of it. Just then, someone rolled up in a truck with a trailer and strode into the house, obviously ready to take home some large "treasure" he had found inside. I'm hoping it was the orange velvet couch and the entire box o' porn...