Trishie Tales #2 by Rob DeWaters
Tricia was a true gamer. She could find the thread of fun in almost any situation and make whole cloth from it. One very memorable example of this occurred in February of 2020 – the good part of 2020 – before the pandemic arrived.
I took Tricia with me on a ski trip to Colorado where I lived before I moved to San Francisco. We landed in Denver at 6pm and planned to drive two hours to Vail and spend two nights at my sister’s house before heading to Aspen for the rest of our trip. But, a major winter storm was approaching and we were pressed to get over the two 11,000-foot mountain passes before they closed. I was anxious because getting shut out would present a lot of setbacks – like missing the fresh snow conditions that I was eagerly anticipating. Tricia was less concerned about “timing the storm” as I was and already content to be in Colorado on a ski vacation. In her outlook, she’d already won.
After a really long wait collecting our ski bags and getting our rental car, we were heading west on I-70. An hour later, I start to see the overhead road signs alerting to “Hazardous conditions ahead – temporary closures may occur.” My stress was becoming palpable. Tricia, already playing the role of DJ, notes my emotional state and starts to tell a story of skiing with her family growing up in Connecticut. She weaves a pastoral tale far removed from the current situation and lowers my anxiety.
Fifteen minutes later, the highway warning signs flash, “Closure ahead. No westbound traffic.” Our plans are about to go majorly sideways. Tricia grabs her phone, opens Google Maps, and looks at our options. She calls out some route that I’ve never heard of in 30-years of driving in Colorado. I ask for more details which she assuredly provides and we decide to exit the freeway for a quick meal in the hopes that the conditions might improve. Well, they don’t. So now it’s decision time – do we take the southwesterly detour which will add at least 4 more hours? Or, do we return to Denver, get a hotel, and miss a day of skiing? We agree to soldier on with the detour. I loved her gusto for adventure!
And so, begins the next chapter of our drive.
It starts out easy as we backtrack east to lower elevation before connecting with the route which will flank the two mountain passes to our west. All is rolling along smoothly for an hour-and-a-half until a steady snow starts falling. Having no familiarity with this road, Tricia provides regular updates like “three more miles this” and “twenty miles that.” The snowfall intensifies as we gain elevation heading westward. By 11pm we are in a full-blown white out with hours to go. I’m feeling tired as I’d been up since 6am. Tricia resumes the O’Connor family ski tales in between navigational and DJ duties. She again succeeds in calming my nerves and holding my attention so I can stay awake.
Before long my fatigue is a real factor, but we both know I’m the stronger driver so I stay behind the wheel. Tricia suggests opening up the windows to jolt ourselves awake with the intense cold blasts of air and stinging snowfall. Um, OK, whatever you say honey. Strangely, it works and we plod ahead sometimes at 10mph with visibility less than 20 feet. This continues for two hours and is the most white-knuckle winter driving I’ve ever experienced! Tricia, now selecting individual songs instead of hour-long DJ mixes, picks back up with “this one time when the family drove to Vermont in a blizzard…” She was unflappably supportive in some very pressing conditions.
Eventually we reach a point where I recognize our location, but it is still an hour away from Vail in good conditions. Which we don’t have since the snowfall is just as intense as it was three hours ago. However, our road trip repertoire now includes playing a new game where we open the windows and simultaneously emit primal screams to shock ourselves awake. The Doppler Effect of this passing automobile must have been something. Except there is not a living soul around us. Just the silence of a Colorado blizzard and the occasional piercing screams from two Californians on vacation.
Our last segment of the detour is a long descent down mountainside that I know has a steep drop-off one side. The road is unplowed and is covered by what seems like a foot of fresh snow. Tricia, observant to a fault, says, “I guess these aren’t the fresh tracks you had imagined you would be getting today.” Zinnngggg!
We finally reconnect with I-70 and complete the twenty-minute drive to my sister’s house. It is now 4am and what would have been a two-hour drive from the airport has taken nine hours. Loading onto a chairlift in five hours is the LAST thing on our minds. So, we bring our bags inside and collapse. As fate would have it, the fresh snow landed heavy and wind packed and we didn’t miss any epic conditions.
Thankfully the rest of our ski vacation was wonderful and without any challenges like the start. By the end of the week, Tricia had indeed woven many more threads of fun into beautiful whole cloth. What a gamer!