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Friday's Foaming Rant: Oh, Colorado's calling me

Published: Oct. 27, 2006
Brrrr . . . .
Brrrr . . . .
Photo: Patrick O'Grady

Oh, Colorado's calling me
From her hillsides and her rivers
And her mesas and her trees.
When blizzards snap the power lines
And all the toilets freeze
In December in the Colorado Rockies.
— "Colorado," by Christopher Guest, Sean Kelly and Tony Hendra, from "Lemmings"

Nothing says "Colorado" quite like riding your cyclo-cross bike in bibs and short-sleeve jersey on Wednesday, then huddling sweat-suited in the snowy darkness on Thursday.

Colorado Springs got its first real winter storm in years yesterday, a heavy, wet dumper of a blizzard that closed roads, highways and schools, snapped tree limbs like breadsticks and cut the power to nearly 20,000 homes and businesses, including mine.

It wasn’t at all bad, since we were semi-prepared for evil weather. Having lived for six years up a steep hillside outside Westcliffe, Colorado — where I once spent an hour and a half shoveling a spot to park the truck, then burned another hour snowshoeing up to the house — when someone with meteorological authority starts talking about blizzards, I pay close attention.

Thus, we were armed with a giant pot of beef vegetable soup that I’d brewed up the day before, some leftover buffalo enchiladas in red chile sauce, the remains of a fiery green-chile stew, plus coffee, tea and several bottles of a stout California red for medicinal purposes (antifreeze). And if that didn’t see us through, we had four-wheel drive and firearms. A guy with a relaxed attitude regarding the private ownership of removable property can get pretty much anything he needs with a little mobility and a lot of boom.

But I wasn’t expecting the power outage. We got ’em all the time in Westcliffe, where the electricity clicks off for 90 minutes whenever a Preble’s meadow jumping mouse farts near a power pole. But Colorado Springs is a city of sorts, with its own utilities department and everything. Civilization ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, a notion reinforced by a casual glance at any daily newspaper.

The DSL modem was our canary in the coal mine. A series of power blips unhooked our information lifeline a half-dozen times in an hour, and then the whole shebang flatlined. Boom, boom, and out go the lights, to a soundtrack of squealing sirens.

The good news was, I didn’t have to read any Internet babble about the 2007 Tour de France (and de Belgium and de Britain) and which doper might have the best shot at winning next year's three-week round of two-wheeled Monopoly without landing on the "Go to Jail" square. The bad news was that with 20,000 of our friends and neighbors juiceless, it was probably gonna take a while to get us all booted back up into the 21st century.

"Do you have another heat source?" asked a utilities spokesperson. Um, no. Plenty of combustible furniture, but a shortage of fireplaces and chimneys. Damn these modern dwellings. In Westcliffe we had a cast-iron Lopi stove and big trees full of wood standing idle all around the place.

Then I remembered the little indoor-safe propane heater I’d bought some years back. And the portable dead-car jumper-slash-power source. And all the other stuff that went along with mountain living and the occasional industrial-camping expedition: a candle lantern, a few kerosene lamps, a pair of battery-powered lanterns, a battery-powered radio, the two-burner propane camp stove. Your basic high-country emergency kit.

Finding everything took the better part of quite some time, rooting through various closets, vehicles and the garage, which looks like the aftermath of a car bombing at a bike shop. But I finally got everything assembled and organized, and as the sun began to dwindle we settled in for an evening of enjoying old media via candlelight, just in time for the power to click back on.

Shoot. Does this mean I have to read the 2007 Tour stories now? They ever figure out who won the last one? No, don’t tell me. I want it to be a surprise.

Was this another powerful tale, or did O'Grady leave you cold once again? Direct your meteors of logic to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, city and state or nation. — Editor