Bringing back the BOB

Most people who know me know that last February I was driving to Breckinridge and flipped my car on an icy mountain road. Luckily no one got hurt. I attribute that to the fact that we were all wearing seat belts and for this reason when the car stopped in the ditch where it landed we found ourselves suspended from the ceiling. The incident was disorienting and the one truth that I got out of it was that I can plan my life out day to day as meticulously as possible, but in the overall scheme of things I really do not have control. And do you know what a jarring realization that is for a person who had lived up to that point attributing all of the happiness and success in life to the actions of getting there? It was somewhat of a relief to know that I could let go of this insistence to have things always go as I predict, but also completely terrifying at the same time. Because what is there holding me to the ground if all of the sudden my car (traveling 27 miles an hour) could go into a rapid and uncontrollable skid that if we had landed on the other side of the road....Would have ended upside down in the freezing creek. I can't even think about that.

Needless to say, I am not a huge fan of driving long distances in the winter now. But this weekend seemed to be the opportune time to go back to St. Louis. I could sell my car to my Dad and pick up his car (now with no car payment - yippee!), see Vicki (in from Paris) and all of my good friends, and pick up the BOB (back of bike) trailer for my trip. I planned my route out carefully - checking the weather forecast obbsessively the entire week before and finally decided to leave on Thursday and return Monday. It proved to be the best course. Five hours after I left Boulder it began to snow, but I pulled into Columbia with dry roads.

The way back started out with a hideous storm storm from Columbia to Kansas City where all along 70 there were cars (I counted 17 total) flipped over, off the road, in the median, etc. It was a completely ominous expression of what might happen if I sped up to 62 instead of 57. Ryan called and informed me that the stretch of road I was traveling had been proclaimed a "national disaster area" and I would have to say that was an understatement.

But I finally made it through the snow and ice and right past KC the sky cleared and I saw blue for the first time all week. After another 10 hours of driving with no cruise control (a trade off for releasing my car to my Dad) I pulled into Boulder exhausted and relieved to be back. And now my new borrowed BOB is sitting pretty in my garage looking like it is ready to go somewhere soon. Don't worry BOB, you'll get your chance soon enough.