YCGL - Monday, January 30, 2023 - Brrrr

It's -5° out right now, beautifully clear skies out and a high of +5° later and -11° tonight.  Wind chill is -20°.  I can feel the cold air from the window slide down under my desk, competing with the heat from the register.  Luckily, I got all my errands done yesterday and I don't need to be outside the house today for any compelling reason.  Because this week is going to be one of my busiest of the year.  My Aggregate short course starts at 1:00 today and goes through Wednesday noon.  The annual Wyoming Engineering Society meeting starts in Casper at Wednesday noon and goes through Friday noon.  I'm on a committee there that I need to be at. ("How Can You Be Two Places At Once When You Are Really No Place At All" - The Fireside Theater. The title of a bizarre comedy record that came out in my college days.  The next record was "Don't Crush that Dwarf, Hand me the Pliers".  I don't recommend you looking them up on YouTube unless you really have some time to waste, but I've always liked the title.)   I've got a break on Tuesday from about 2:30 to 6:30 when we have our tutoring session, and since it is a 3 hour drive (I won't reference Gilligan's Island here)  I'm going to drive to Casper.  Luckily, the high temperature in Laramie is predicted to be a balmy 19° and the same in Casper and dry.  So, I'm booked for the week.

What an interesting day the 26th was.  I went the play the night before.  Thursday morning, I was going back to the Denver Art Museum so I was dressed basically the same way. While at breakfast, I had a bunch of emails I had to respond to that took about an hour out of my museum time.  One of the nice things about this hotel is that it has onsite parking and they let you park there after you check out.  It’s also in-and-out, which most places are not.  

I dropped my keycard off at the desk and checked out. The clerk was a young woman of oriental extraction who was very polite and very giggly.  After she had checked the bill and all, she said, "You are all done, Mr. Edgar.  Have a nice day."  Then she stopped, shook her head a little and said "You are so cute!".  And then, realizing what she had said, popped her hands over her mouth and said, "I've never said that to anyone before."  

Well, what does a well dressed, stunned, 73 year old man say to an attractive young lady, "Well, so are you.  You have a great day also."  We both laughed and I took my bag out to the car and then  had to walk passed the desk again to walk out the front door.  I stopped and told her "You made my day."  She said, "Did you hear what I did?  I walked back into the snack room and asked "Have you seen Mr. Edgar?  He is so cute!"  I felt all warm and happy walking the four blocks to the museum.  

When I was there in November, I saw two exhibits, "Saints, Sinners, Lovers and Fools" and "Her Brush".  I had rushed through "Her Brush" faster than I wanted to and this was a chance to go back.  In addition, Juhl had recommended that I see Asian and Latin American floors,  Since I had lost an hour, it set me back.  Juhl and I were going to meet at 2:00 for lunch, so I had three hours to see everything.  But I didn't want to rush Her Brush, and the other two floors were permanent exhibits, so I allocated (and used all of) two hours and knew I would do a quick walk through the other floors.  

Her Brush was as good as I remembered, or better.  I've always been somewhat interested in Oriental art but it has never grabbed me.  This is different.  This exhibit and the works seem almost personal, letters written just to me.  In a very intimate way, "Every Picture Tells a Story." holds true here.  The sacrifice and suffering these women have gone through to produce their art is 'on their sleeve', exposed, raw, subtilty intense....  I really recommend looking at the Her Brush Gallery Guide.  Here is a presentation of all the objects in the exhibit.  I wish they would have posted the information panels also.  They added greatly to the information.

As I got on the elevator to go to the Asia 5th floor, I talked to a person who had been  to the 6th and saw the photo display.  So I popped up there and ran into the docent who was giving a tour.  Except I was the only person, and I explained my time situation and she said she would show me her highlights and take 15 minutes.  The gallery was "Other Peoples Photos".  It was a Denver photographer who traded pictures with other photographers, so it was a collection of photos that other people, some very famous and some not, thought were "tradable".  Well, even just hopping from her selections and discussing her and my takes, I was there for 30 minutes and could have spent 'way more, which left 15 minutes for the Asia floor and I'll see the Latin American floor another visit.  Which is what I told Juhl at lunch, "Dang museum has too much stuff and I'll have to come back again sometime...." Which of course is the sign of a good museum!  (And, of course, I don't think I've ever been to any museum and left when I was "done" there.  Usually, I'm kicking and screaming to stay a little longer...)  

Juhl and I had a good lunch at a nearby Epic sandwich shop but we both had to get going by 3:00, so I got back to the hotel (sadly my friend wasn't at the desk), checked my mail, did some work with my financial advisor, checked the roads home and left Denver at 4:00.  When things go smoothly, it's a little over two and half hours to drive home.  Outbound traffic at 4:00 was surprisingly smooth and I got out and had smooth sailing until Fort Collins.  The wind started to pick up before stateline and was really blowing and cold by Cheyenne.  Still, there was no snow, so turned toward Laramie.  The ground blizzard hit about 5 miles west of Cheyenne.  40-60 mph gusts and heavy ground snow.  Looking up, it was still blue sky.  About 4 miles further, my Chevy Sonic overheated.  

That was a first, so I pulled over once I had an opening between the trucks and pulled out the manual.  It said, "Pull over and stop and keep the engine running.  Don't open the hood if you see steam blowing out."  Well, with the wind, you couldn't tell if there was any steam, so I just sat and idled until the engine cooled down.  I went through a mental checklist of things that could be wrong and nothing normal stood out.  So 15 minutes later, I pulled out and started driving at 35 mph, which was as fast as I wanted to go because of the snow.  Even the truckers were driving around that speed.  Three miles further and the heating light came on again.  I pulled over, thought some more and checked the weather, WyoRoads and Google map.   At this point, its about 15° and 60 mph winds and its just not comfortable to be out.  Luckily, I had thrown my heavy down jacket in the back seat, so I did a walk-around and didn't see anything.  Google map showed I was three miles from an overpass that I could stop under, and now, WyoRoads showed that the interstate had been closed after I got on it.  I drove under the overpass and was out of the wind enough to be able to open the hood.  Everything looked fine, I poured a bottle of water into the reservoir, which topped it, and noticed the snow on the grill.   I think what happened was the blowing snow packed the radiator and didn't allow the air to flow through the grill.  Once I stopped out of the wind and blowing snow, it had a chance to melt the ice and cool the water.  Anyway, I didn't have problems with overheating after that.

But, by the time I got back on to the highway, the snow had covered the highway and in a number of places I couldn't see the lane lines, so I was driving 15 mph using the reflectors and the rumble strip to keep me on track.  The truck lights ahead also helped.  We got about 10 miles further and finally, everything stopped.  I had trucks in front, beside and behind me.  I knew we were on the open stretch between Granite and Buford and just get ready to hunker down and wait it out.  Now WyoRoads indicated that the road was closed and it estimated that it would be between 12 and 16 hours before it opened.  That wasn't comforting but I also know that they need to get the traffic stuck on the road out ASAP and clear before they open the road again.  I had some food, my down jacket, I could turn the car on and off to heat it up, and I had radio reception and listened to the UW Women's Basketball Game.  It was OK.

I caught the BB game two minutes into the 2nd quarter, and we were behind by 18 points already. That really didn't help my mood any.  Coach had just taken a time out and the girls came out and scored.  And then played some defense.  By the end of the half, they were behind by 9 points.  And by the end of the game, they won by 9.  And the trucks started to move.  We crept along about 10 mph for a couple of miles, the road surface was covered but the trucks ahead packed it down enough that I didn't have problems with traction.  We finally got to the Lincoln Monument at Happy Jack (I-80 follows US30, the Lincoln Highway, and Happy Jack is the high point at 8300 feet.).  And it was clear sailing down the canyon from there.  In all, the trip took just over 2 hours longer than normal, but it seemed like forever.  

But "Alls Well That Ends Well".  At least for now....