“Interstate 70 is closed from Gun Club Road to the Kansas state line.”
When I first moved to Colorado in November 1986, I was always amused to hear that on the radio as part of the traffic report during snowstorms.
After all, we’re talking about one of the four main east-west interstate highways, covering a distance of about 170 miles.
Closed.
It seemed ridiculous to me — until I drove I-70 from Kansas to Denver during a blizzard in January 1988.
It was actually the third day of a miserable drive from my parents’ home in Fairfax, Va., to my own home in Greeley, an hour north of Denver, your basic 1,700 mile drive. It’s actually the longest drive I ever made in my life, especially considering the fact that I was doing it alone.
I had driven to Columbus, Ohio, the first day, and to Kansas City the second.
It was actually a very strange round trip. I had driven from Greeley to Sioux City, S.D., three weeks earlier to cover a holiday basketball tournament, and on to Virginia five days later. I was racing a major snowstorm heading east and as it turned out, I was heading into a bigger one coming back.
I reached the Kansas-Colorado state line around 5:30 p.m. I should have stopped, except that I couldn’t. The reason I was coming back four or five days early from my vacation was that I had to fly to San Fransisco Monday for a job interview.
I stopped for gas at Kanorado, and the storm was getting worse. I got back onto the interstate by about 6 p.m. and as it turned out, I was the last car heading west before the state police closed the highway. My car had both good and bad qualities for the trip.
Good? It was less than a year old.
Bad? It was a two-seater Pontiac Fiero and didn’t have snow tires.
In good weather, it would have taken less than three hours to get to Denver. In this storm it took six.
Visibility wasn’t more than 10-20 feet, and much of the time I couldn’t even see the road. It was probably the scariest six hours of my life, and I swore I would never drive in a blizzard again.
Nearly 35 years later, I still haven’t.
God was looking out for me in 1988, and I thought of that when I saw stories about what was happening on the highways in Ohio and upstate New York. Four dead in a 46-car pileup. Folks trapped in their cars less than a mile from their homes.
If there’s one thing that comes to me from all this, it’s how quickly things can change unexpectedly. I don’t think the answer to that is not to take changes. Maybe it’s just be careful and never assume the worst could never happen.
If there’s one thing I’ll never forget about that night in 1988, it’s what a relief it was to reach the outskirts of Denver — well-lit, roads being salted and cleared, being able to see the roads and the other vehicles.
Things can always turn bad.
But when they turn back, be thankful.
Always.