Snow Day!

Today, I was supposed to spend the morning at IBM Boulder talking with some folks from our Printing Systems group, and then drive to Denver Airport for a 2:30pm flight home. But that’s not what happened.

Last night, the weather started to turn nasty — freezing drizzle (which convinced me to try a restaurant within easy slipping distance of the hotel instead of driving anywhere), followed by several inches of snow overnight. I knew it’d take a while to dig out my car, so I called my contact at IBM to let him know I might be a bit late. He was planning to leave right after our meeting to go to the airport for vacation, but in the meantime, his airline had called him and suggested that he switch to an earlier flight (which impressed him, since he was on a non-changeable ticket!), so my need to be late and his need to leave early left us no time to meet — so we decided to try again another time, and I decided to go to the airport and see if I could get an earlier flight, too.

It turns out Hertz hadn’t given me a brush (I was lucky — there was a scraper), and so it took me a very long and cold time to dig out, but I eventually succeeded and set out on the road. Traffic was slow (apparently, they don’t plow roads in Colorado, but at least they sanded some parts), but not impossible, and I made it to the airport in a bit over an hour. United put me on the 12:40 flight, giving me just enough time to grab lunch before boarding.

Boarding was easy — there were only 20 people on the plane, so I had plenty of room. Which was good, because we sat at the gate for a while waiting to be de-iced — but eventually, we took off, and now here I am at home, where the weather is much better. At least today.