Standing Ready

Predicting Colorado weather has to be the most thankless job around.

If you’ve lived here for any length of time, you know what I mean. Whether it comes from the mountains meeting the plains, or some weird cosmic vibrations out of Boulder, or just the cumulative atmospheric effects of too many disappointing Rockies baseball seasons, Colorado weather is weird.

This is where the Four Seasons isn’t a hotel, it’s a 24-hour period. Where the morning’s T-shirt may turn into the afternoon’s parka. Where a school-closing storm can be followed by a perfect day to walk the dog.

Given that, is it any wonder that we get a little cynical at proclamations of snowy doom?

By the time this appears in print, we’ll know for sure whether the latest Snow My Goodness really was the storm of ages or just the usual shoveling and muttering of Colorado’s annual welcome to spring. This region has had some epic snows and everyone has their favorite to talk about:  the Christmas Blizzard of ’82; the roof-busters of 2003; the 2006 storms that piled on like a network TV show, claiming a regular Thursday slot. But we’ve also seen enough doom-and-disaster prophecies go bust to reflexively roll our eyes anytime a TV personality uses the words “Snowmageddon” or “Snowpocalypse.”

But here’s the thing. For all the sarcasm – we still prepare. We may not believe, but we prepare.

Why? Because the potential cost of not doing it is just too darned high.

We’ve learned that from tornado warnings: head to the basement, because even if the last 12 ended harmlessly, there’s no guarantee on the 13th.  

We’ve learned that from wildfires and floods: get out quick when the warning comes, because the longer you linger, the harder it becomes to leave.

And over this last year, a lot of us have learned that again and again from the pandemic.

By now, most of us can recite it like a mantra. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Keep at least six feet away. And when something slips, like a party on the Hill or a burst of Memorial Day impatience,  we see the curves rise and get a fresh reminder of why it’s important.

It’s been tedious, even for the dedicated introverts among us. Constant vigilance is tiring and there’s always the temptation to say “Forget it, I’ll be OK just this once.”

But we know better. As the old adage goes, it’s better to prepare without need than to need and not prepare.

So we do what we need to do. For ourselves. For our neighbors. For our community.

Sometimes the predicted danger melts away like a seventh-inning chance at Coors Field, and we share a laugh at the hype (and maybe a quiet sigh of relief). But when the preparation and endurance pay off – that’s when we come out the other end with gratitude and another story to tell.

So whether today’s landscape looks like a typical Longmont March or a remake of “Nanook of the North,”  thank you for being ready. For yesterday’s warning. For tomorrow’s. And especially for the ongoing one that we’re finally starting to push back as hope rises and the shots roll out.

That’s how we make it through. Not panicking, but not foolhardy either. Eventually, that caution and care will bring us out the other side and we can return to a slightly less stressful existence.

Well … everyone except the weather forecasters, anyway.

Riding the Dips

“OK, Missy, get ready!” I shout to the small figure in the passenger seat. “Got your hands up?”

“Yeah!”

Just the slightest touch of gas and VROOM! VROOM! Our Hyundai rides through two dips in Gay Street like a champ, popping up and down in the world’s shortest roller coaster.

“Wooo!” our voices echo through identical smiles.

Now that’s a ride!

I’ve mentioned before that when you travel with Missy, our developmentally disabled ward, even simple things can be a lot of fun. But even before we met, I knew about riding the “ripples” in north Gay Street.

For those who don’t get up that way much, there’s a series of drainage channels that cross the road in that neighborhood. As a kid, I used to think of these dips in the road (as opposed to the dips on the road) as “reverse speed bumps,” especially after seeing cars new to the area creep through them at 5 mph or less.

I was an adult before I knew those things were built to hold water. But I was still a teenager when I learned the twin secrets of the dips:

  1. You went through them more smoothly if you applied a little more speed, not less …
  2. …except for the ones at each end of the run, which would smack your undercarriage like Mike Tyson if you didn’t watch the road.

The result: a combination of brains and nerve, learning to pick out which spots were opportunities and which were threats.

There are worse life lessons to have. Especially these days.

Let’s face it. A sense of proportion isn’t much in style. Everything has to be the end of the world, with or without ancient Mayan calendars to prove it.

I’m not saying it’s new. I was, after all, a child of the ’70s and ’80s, when we all got warned about the razor blades that could be slipped into any Halloween treat without a wrapper. (The real danger, then and now, was generally from cars not seeing you on a darkened street.) But it seems to have hit a fever pitch over the last decade or so. Maybe even an apocalyptic one – anyone else noticed a theme to the popularity of the Hunger Games, zombie fiction, the “Revolution” TV series and so on?

Now obviously, this isn’t a world of cotton candy. Real dangers are out there, real problems need to be solved. But when we over-fortify our airports for fear of dying in a terrorist attack (odds: 1 in 1.7 million) while seeing people step outside to watch a tornado (odds of dying: 1 in 60,000), something’s a little out of whack.

It’s time to learn from the dips. Scout the ground. Learn where the dangers really are. And learn which risks are actually opportunities in disguise.

Missy reinforced that last one for me.

When my wife Heather asked if we could become her guardians, I was terrified at first. What if Heather’s health failed? What if my job went away? What if we couldn’t hack it, if we ended up screwing up a life so dependent on the lives of others?

But eventually, after a lot of talking and a lot of thinking, we took the plunge. No holding back, hit the gas.

And what looked like a canyon turned into a sweet spot. Ups and downs, yes, like a small roller coaster, but no damage. No regrets for taking the ride. None at all.

I’m still glad we drove ahead.

Because if we hadn’t, I’d feel like a real dip.