Travails

We travel a lot on this team. We're fortunate in that the majority of miles that we travel are aboard Alaska Airlines 737 jets.  These are fast, comfortable miles, and Alaska's a well-run airline so it's a pretty low-stress way to get around. But winter travel isn't always easy, and we can't always get to where we want to go in a timely manner.  Take the past few weeks, for example.

My company has a little office in this building in Kodiak. The door to our little office is buried in snow. Kodiak rarely gets any snow at all. It usually just rains all winter. Every once in a while they'll get an inch or two. But usually no inches. Just rain and some occasional ice. Kodiak has a few snowplows, but not very many. Things pretty much came to a stop in Kodiak when this blizzard blew into town. And it was pretty clear that my flight back to Anchorage wasn't going to happen, either.

When I'm not traveling with the UAA Ski Team to ski races, I'm usually flying around roadless areas of Alaska for my day job as an appraiser. We had a nine-day break at home between our last UAA racing trip to Steamboat and Minturn, and our current trip to Aspen and Soldier Hollow. I planned to use that time to make trips to Kodiak Island, Sand Point, King Cove, Cold Bay and Cordova for work assignments before loading up with the team and hitting the road again the following week. But it didn't quite work out the way I planned. Just an hour or so before my flight was scheduled to depart Kodiak, a blizzard swept across the island and cancelled all the remaining flights that day. The following day's flights were cancelled, too. And the next day's. By the time I escaped Kodiak Island and made it back home to Anchorage three days later, I'd long since missed my opportunity to travel to Sand Point, King Cove or Cold Bay, and with the UAA Ski Team's Colorado/Utah racing trip just two days away, I dared not try to fly to Cordova and back, considering that the weather there was marginal, too. So it turned out to be a fairly unproductive work week.

After three days, this jet came to Kodiak Island to take me home. I gave it a big hug!

Anyway, it was on to the next thing - our UAA Ski Team racing trip to Aspen, Colorado and Soldier Hollow, Utah. Everyone made it to the airport and everything was looking good until we got to Seattle and our connecting flight had a mechanical problem which took about six or seven hours to fix. We had a nice time getting to know the Seattle airport, but instead of arriving in Denver at 7pm as planned, we arrived after midnight. When we arrived at the rental car agency to pick up our three rental cars, they didn't have the four-wheel drive trucks we'd reserved, so we needed to pick through their selection as best we could, selecting a front wheel drive minivan, canceling one of our reservations and replacing it with a separate reservation at a different rental agency for a truck that wouldn't be available until 11am the following morning. That got us out a little later than hoped on the road to Aspen, especially as we knew there was a storm scheduled to blow through the mountain passes later that day.

Hannah and I brought snacks.

So off we went, departing Denver at mid-day, up the pass to the Eisenhower Tunnel in our two four wheel drive rigs and our one front wheel drive rig with summer tires. Naturally, I drove the minivan with summer tires because I prefer adventure, and it was Hannah's unlucky day so she came with me. All the skis and equipment were packed in the back of the van. 

Uphill. In stop and go traffic. On summer tires in a front wheel drive minivan. It wasn't looking promising.

By and by, we approached the Eisenhower Tunnel and the traffic jam that preceded it, as they were intermittently closing the tunnel and the road for snowplowing. It was snowing heavily, and the road was getting slick. As long as we were driving relatively fast, I was confident I could keep that minivan going through the snow. But if we stopped on an uphill, I knew that gaining momentum again from a stop would be hopeless. The traffic was slowing to a crawl and there was one last highway exit available before the last steep section of road going into the tunnel. Hannah and I had to make a decision.  Hannah said we should go for the exit. I agreed.  We bailed, and pulled off to see if the tire chains I'd brought with me would fit these tires. They didn't.  

Mexican food in Dillon, Colorado.

A Colorado DOT guy pulled up as we were standing around trying to decide what to do next. Really nice guy. He told us that the tunnel would be closing again soon, and that we could try to continue but if we were to get stuck and unable to continue, and blocked traffic, a couple of things would probably happen. The State Police would give me a $650 ticket for having inadequate tires, and the car would get towed, and it wouldn't be cheap. We were tempted to risk it, but it seemed the better idea to retreat back down the pass to Idaho Springs and buy some tire chains at the local NAPA store before continuing on. 

Hannah and I can tell you that cable-chains don't give you as much traction as chain-chains.

Meanwhile the rest of the team, in their four wheel drive cars and winter snow tires, continued on toward Aspen.  By the time Hannah and I got back in line to go over the pass, the traffic jam was many miles longer, and it took us several hours to inch back up to where we'd turned around earlier. 

We started getting carried away and had to remind ourselves to leave a few crickets for the rest of the team.

We'd had nothing to eat since breakfast and it was now late afternoon, so we scrounged around in the back seat and found a bag of maple-flavored crickets that my friend Chris had given me a couple months ago when I was traveling with the UAA alpine team in Yukon Territory, Canada. Ever since I tried Chris' maple crickets I've liked them, but Hannah and I can tell you that they taste even better when you're marooned on a Colorado highway in a Rocky Mountain snowstorm. 

This is a picture of Maggi squirting water into his right nostril. And if you look really carefully, you'll see it's coming out of his left nostril!  This picture has nothing to do with this story. I just really like this photo, so I'm including it here.

When at first I offered Hannah a cricket, she was pretty skeptical about eating any kinds of bugs, regardless of how much maple syrup had been drizzled over them. But after her first cricket, we were both digging pretty deep into that bag and I had to remind Hannah that no matter how snowbound we were there on that highway, we had to save some bugs for the rest of the team!

This is Hannah's hand.  And those are dried crickets covered in maple syrup.

By the time we got over the pass, through the tunnel, and down the other side to Frisco, it was around 6pm and the rest of the team was already in Aspen. We'd have been happy to just keep driving and eating insects, but it seemed prudent to stop for a little more "traditional" food at a Mexican restaurant in Dillon. We still needed to get over Vail Pass, and as we were only about a third of the way into our drive, there was no telling how long this day was going to last. 

Siggi was a little unsure about the whole cricket thing when we arrived in Aspen, but he was a good sport.

After dinner we pressed on, driving slow with the tire chains on, all the way past Vail before taking them off again.  There was time for all sorts of fascinating discussions and interesting debates. Stories were told; theories and ideas were explored.  By and by, we rolled into Aspen at around 11pm. Our drive, which is typically about a 3.5 hour trip, had taken about twelve hours.  It was a wonderful adventure, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Sometimes it's more than just the ski racing that makes these trips fun!