Montana February 2010 Part 1

Monday, Feb. 1, 2010
After work, I drove to the UPS customer service center to get the headlamps. The tracking papers showed that they had come in Friday and an attempt had been made to deliver them. But because of the sudden snow storm had been returned to the customer service center. That storm had caused me to sit in traffic at the foot of Signal Mountain for 2 hours as they towed away the cars that had been abandoned by drivers who got stuck trying to get up the hill. I had only gone a half mile during the first hour as other drivers tried to get around the stalled vehicles. Finally, a few of us got our turn to try and go up the mountain. There were cars and trucks everywhere and pointing in every direction, like so many Pick Up Sticks at the start of the game. I slowly inched around each of them, never stopping for fear that I would become stuck also. As long as my wheels were turning, no matter how slowly, I would continue to climb the hill.

We had been stopped for so long that the kids had gotten out and made a snowman on the roof of my Durango. They named him Little Jimmy. As soon as I got home and dropped off Dianne and the kids, I had to pack up clothes for the week-end and go back down the mountain to work, winding my way around the stalled vehicles again. A freezing rain had begun that lasted all night. Little Jimmy not only survived the trip up the mountain, but down the mountain, through the night and up the mountain again in the morning. Many people were amused to see him riding on the roof like he owned the place, A few took pictures.