Snow Day

They said there was a storm coming. Over and over again they said it. On the television, the radio, online, everywhere. A big storm’s coming; you better get ready.

Except they’ve said that before, hundreds of times. And they’ve always been wrong. Well, not always – there was the blizzard of ’03 which buried parts of the foothills under 12-15 feet of snow; they did predict that correctly. But all the other chicken-little warnings either haven’t come to pass at all or have been a fraction of what we were told to expect. As a veteran of 3 ½ Colorado winters I’ve come to learn that when the weather service says “Expect a foot of snow”, we can anticipate an inch or so.

To be fair, our house is located in an area which seems to be remarkably well protected from the brunt of Colorado’s winter storms. Known locally as “The Banana Belt” we’re sheltered by the mass of Mt Evans which means the nasty stuff tends to blow right around us. Quite often the worst driving conditions of my commute don’t happen until I’ve dropped a good thousand feet or so towards the plains. Many of Colorado’s world-famous ski resorts are approximately the same height as our house yet they receive five or ten times the amount of snow. But even so, the weather predictions have a tendency to be almost comically unrealistic.

The “big storm” was supposed to hit us on Saturday night so it was with a weary cynicism I headed for bed after noting an almost immeasurable amount of snow on the deck. Up at 5am to accommodate the world’s most irritating dog who’d refused the opportunity to pee at bedtime and still there was virtually no snow.

“Useless b******s,” I grumbled. (I grumble a lot in the mornings) “I wish I had a job where I could be wrong about absolutely everything and not get fired.”

Pre-coffee grumpiness aside, I was really quite pleased. You see I was leaving for a conference later that morning and as the airport is a good 70 miles away, I didn’t fancy having to battle the elements all the way there. Back to bed with a clear conscience and another couple of hours between the warm sheets. 7 a.m., the alarm went off and I hopped semi-cheerfully out of bed only to discover the long-awaited storm had finally got started. Oh boy; had it started.

There was still only 3 or 4 inches on the ground but it was coming down thick and fast so I decided that although my flight would almost certainly be delayed, it still made sense to set out for the airport sooner rather than later. Of course, it never entered my head the flight would be cancelled altogether so I learned about that from the radio when I was only a couple of miles from the house. I’d to drive another mile before finding a place safe enough to turn around and giving thanks once again for 4-wheel drive, pointed Angus homewards.

Like a kazillion other people due to fly from Denver, I had to call the airline to find out what they had in mind for the rest of my day. I expected to be on hold for an hour or more so when a pleasant voice came on the line after about five minutes, it caught me completely off guard and with a mouthful of toast. Yes, the flight was cancelled but not to worry, there was room on a later flight scheduled for the evening, presumably by which time, somebody would have shoveled the runways clear and jump-started the planes.

Which left me with almost a full day to kill. Me, who never has enough time to do the things I have to do, much less the things I want to do. Me, who has a dozen projects to start “whenever I get some free time, even just a few hours would do”. A whole Sunday with nothing planned, nowhere to go, no chores to do.

And I couldn’t get motivated to do anything.

I’m not sure what the psychology of all this was but it seemed my head was already in travel mode and my brain wasn’t ready to do anything else. My exercise gear stayed in the bag. The pile of photographs didn’t make it into the new album. My drumsticks stayed in the daypack along with my practice pad. And the bills stayed unpaid. Oh, I did allow nutso-dog to drag me around the neighborhood for an hour or so, but most of the day was spent mooning around the house or standing at the window, listlessly watching the snow come down.

When the airline left a message to say my new flight had been cancelled too, it came as no big surprise. Nor was it any great shock that it took a whole lot longer to get through to the reservation center this time. I took this in my stride and calmly accepted my fate. I didn’t get bad tempered until I accidentally pressed the phone too close to my face while holding it wedged in my shoulder, and disconnected myself after being on hold for 26 minutes.

Then I got really bad tempered some 35 minutes later when I finally got through and found myself conversing with an infuriatingly chirpy automated robot. I’m not sure if the deficiency was on my side or his but the conversation broke down when he asked me for my confirmation number and was then unable to understand my response. So he asked for it again. And again. And again.

I learned a couple of things during this exchange. One is that regardless of how many obscenities you scream at United Airline’s telephone robot, and no matter the volume, it will still respond with “I’m sorry, I’m unable to find that confirmation number. Could you please give it to me again?” The second is that Dear Wife is probably right when she says I should go back to the doctor’s to have my blood pressure re-checked.

The conference was at a ski resort high above Lake Tahoe with a breathtaking setting in one of the world’s most beautiful valleys. But I’m afraid I barely saw the view as it was the middle of the night when I finally arrived. I spent the following day blearily participating in what was left of the conference, and before I knew it, it was time to go home. I’m told it was very nice though. And they had more snow that we got.

Would it have been too much to ask for my flight to have been cancelled in this direction?