Pray for me, I drive 285

Said a popular bumper sticker around these parts when we moved in. The reason behind these pleas for divine intervention, was the love-hate relationship many locals have with the picturesque, but overly trafficked and at times, deadly stretch of road known as Colorado State Highway 285, which leads southwest from Denver into the southern parts of the Rocky Mountains, before ultimately making its way down into New Mexico.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when SH285 was nothing more than a meandering mountain trail and old-timers tell how it used to take the best part of a day to drive down into town for supplies. Not surprisingly, they only made this journey once a month or so. Nowadays, it’s possible to do the same journey in under an hour, a fact, which has encouraged many people to, like us, make their homes in while making their living in the metropolis of Denver. In fact, the 50 miles of SH285 between Denver and Bailey, the route on which I commute daily, now serves one of the fastest growing commuter belts in the country.

According the 2000 Census figures, Park County where our home is situated, experienced the nation’s 5th fastest growth during the 1990s. Park County residents can also lay claim to the nation’s 5th longest average commute (44.8 minutes). I’m guessing these people work on the west side of Denver because I make my way to the south east of town each morning and would love to talk of a commute so short.

Sitting in a car has never been my idea of fun. Oh sure, like most people, I’ve daydreamed of roaring around the mountain roads of Europe in an open topped, sports car, with a supermodel in the passenger seat. However, I’m also well aware that for most of the time, those roads are choked with tour buses and nose to tail traffic, much the same as the roads here. I spend 2-3 hours a day driving to and from work, but the bulk of that doesn’t involve tearing up the highway, but crawling along at a snail’s pace, beside everyone else.

I consider commuting to be time essentially stolen from me. I’m not earning money, I’m not practicing a hobby, I’m certainly not getting fit – I’m just, sitting there. Book tapes help pass the time and if I listen to “intellectual” books I can even tell myself I’m improving my mind, but it doesn’t alter the fact; I spend a large part of my day wishing I was doing something else.

When we first moved here, I worked in downtown Denver, a drive shorter than my current one by only by about 3 or 4 miles. However, I could usually complete the journey in a good 20 minutes less. Curiously, the traffic into the center of the city moved faster than that heading into the sprawling office park where I work now. However, driving home that summer was a whole new adventure due to the fact the Colorado Department of Transportation was engaged in the painfully slow act of widening large stretches of SH285. You know, to accommodate all these people who like us, were in the process of moving in.

To make matters worse, my little car, which had served me well on the pancake flat, ruler straight roads of Phoenix rebelled when I asked it, not only to pull me up a twisting turning gradient, climbing from 5,250 to 9,000 feet ; but to do a large part of it in stop and go, low gear mode. To be blunt, it didn’t like it and expressed its displeasure by overheating every few days and leaving me stranded by the roadside for 30 minutes or so while the radiator bubbled and fizzed. If the summer heat was a problem, the ice and snow of winter made it throw up its hands in horror. OK, it’s a car; it didn’t have hands but work with me here.

I moved to Colorado in April and even though winter was almost done, we still had a few heavy snowstorms and the little car just didn’t know what to do. As it happened, the very first snow we had, 3 days after moving in, left me completely stranded. The roads were clear but I was unable to get out of our driveway. That didn’t tend to happen in Phoenix. Another winter was fast approaching and we knew the little car would be unable to continue the daily commute once the bad weather really kicked in. So, we shopped around and eventually cleaned out the remains of our savings account by investing in a 15-year old Toyota with 4-wheel drive, big chunky tires and battle scars. Now this is a vehicle for the mountains. His name is Angus, by the way.

I’ll admit, I got a bit of a disappointment the first time I drove in snow when I found my wheels mysteriously spinning and Angus slipping all over the road. After all, the little car had handled the snow better than this! A lesson I learned that day was to check that both the front hubs were turned to 4-wheel drive, not just one. I’m not sure if there’s a term for what I had; 3-wheel drive doesn’t sound right, but for the record, it’s nowhere near as good as 4-wheel, or even 2-wheel drive.

We looked for a car with a stick shift, working on the theory that they would be more reliable than an automatic of a similar age. That certainly made economic sense, but we didn’t allow for the fact that clutches installed in the late ‘80s require a lot more effort to pump than their modern equivalents. What’s the problem there? I hear you ask. Well, as I slide, kicking and screaming, into old fartdom, one of the symptoms I’m experiencing is an arthritis sort of discomfort in my left knee. My clutch knee. Regular shifting when changing gear isn’t a problem, it’s the constant up and down motion required to move along in heavy traffic. Oh, I don’t like heavy traffic at all.

There will come a time when I will figure out a way to live up in the mountains without having to commute down into Denver on a daily basis. As yet, I don’t have a clear idea as to how I’m going to do this, but winning the lottery will probably be involved somehow. In the meantime, “Pray for me, I drive 285”.