It’s currently my favorite, and least favorite, time of the year!

It’s that time of the year where I’m socially obligated to overstuff myself with turkey, green bean casserole, eggnog, and pumpkin pie, and then pass out cold on the living room couch, surrounded by cheering relatives as a couple of random football teams square off on live TV for a few hours. It’s also that time of year where I can almost never get warm no matter how many layers I wear, or how close I curl up against the heater, and I’m just one misstep and/or wind gust away from snapping my tailbone in two! Isn’t winter great?

This winter season is looking to be one of the roughest winters since 2006! It’s not even December yet, and we’ve already had a handful of bitterly cold blizzards starting in early October. Last year, I don’t remember seeing much snow until January. We had a barren Thanksgiving and dry Christmas last year. This year, Thanksgiving has fallen between two major winter weather events. Between Monday and Wednesday it was blizzarding. And it looks like between Friday and Saturday, it will be blizzarding again. 

Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to the rest of the season. I’m totally expecting to live in a frozen hellscape until the middle of May, and I’m not even slightly ok with that. I’d much prefer the milder winter weather of the last several years over what we’ve been dealing with this time around. Maybe when winter actually begins on December 21st, things will have calmed down. However, I’m not counting on that. 

Winter is especially rough on the western side of town. It's amazing what a difference of 25 miles can do! When I lived in northeast Denver and attended school downtown, we didn't have epic snow storms all that often. It did snow, but we only got a snow day once a year if we were lucky, and shoveling the driveway and sidewalks was a reasonable task. Also, the winds weren't absolutely horrendous. Sure, we had our windy days out there in Green Valley Ranch, but I never saw any jackknifed semi-trucks or stop signs folded in half in the five years I lived out there. 

During my first winter living in Littleton, I very quickly realized Littleton was a totally different climate than Green Valley Ranch. Not only did I have to shovel twice as much snow most days, but I also had to help Clarke extract a plastic trashcan that had been crushed and stuffed under his truck by a massive windstorm that hit the night before. We couldn't leave for school until that trashcan was successfully pulled out from under his truck, which took way more effort than it really should've. After that task was done, I had to explain to my 10th grade English teacher that a trashcan made me several minutes late for class. She couldn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes.

As much as I love living in the west after spending the first 14 years of my life living on the plains, I still have my days where I utterly despise it. I'll never not get upset by how much effort it takes to shovel the snow off my walkways. Instead of simply walking with the shovel in front of me, and launching the snow to the side every few feet, I have to pick up my shovel each time I push it through the snow. And, once all of the surface snow is removed, I have to scrape the hard-packed ice off the sidewalk and then sprinkle a bunch of salt everywhere. I also have to use a broom to whack the snow off the trees, because unlike in Green Valley Ranch, there are very big trees in Littleton that are prone to breaking. Big trees that don't belong to the pine tree family don't belong in the mountains, foothills, or plains right by the foothills. They are too brittle to handle the weight of the snow. 

I also wish I had a much easier way to clear the snow off my Xterra. I'm too tall to comfortably sit at my grandma Connie's desk, but too short to reach the snow that often ends up piling up on the center of my Xterra's roof, even if I have a broom. And, before y'all ask, "Why don't you just park in the garage?", half of my garage is currently dedicated to my dirtbike and boxes of books, and the other half is dedicated to my mom's cute little Rav4, which she complains about all the time but refuses to get rid of because it's cute. 

With that out of the way, since I have a mild fear of heights that prevents me from climbing up onto the roof with a broom, my solution to the snow on the roof problem is to just drive laps around my neighborhood until the remaining snow blows off. I would accelerate really quickly and then slam on the brakes, but I have a little storage compartment on the roof that will just catch all of the snow, preventing it from falling onto my windshield where my wipers can then deal with the problem (I tried that method once, and was really confused for an embarrassingly long time as to why the laws of physics weren't working).

Also, it turns out we really do get hurricanes in Colorado. The trashcan episode was just my first introduction to the fierce winter winds that regularly come rushing down the foothills and into the valley throughout the fall, winter, and spring (which, in Colorado, are basically the same season). I didn't know I could wake up to find that our old lawn furniture had been replaced by a completely different set, until I moved to Littleton. I also didn't know entire sections of fences and halves of trees could be blown down so easily, until I moved to Littleton. On top of that, I thought getting blown away was just a metaphor and not something that could actually happen, until I moved to Littleton. 

I refuse to drive home on Saturday in my Xterra with the high wind warnings now in effect. My Xterra won't fare very well in crosswinds sustained at 50 miles per hour, and gusting much, much higher. I don't have the experience, confidence, or the will to wrestle with that shit. Come to think of it, I don't think I could ever wrestle with 90 mile per hour wind gusts and expect to stay in my lane (or even on the road), no matter how experienced I become, and I'm absolutely not gonna try it. I already had my harrowing driving experience of the week this Black Friday when severe fog rolled in. I couldn't even see the cars ahead of me most of the drive back to my grandparents'. Half of the cars I did see were hanging out in my lane, because they were all speed demons who were passing over the double-yellow line to get a TV for 75% off before it was too late!

I do not need to be screaming an endless obscenities all the way back to safety tomorrow like I did today. I do not need to play a game of "can I make it home without doing some impromptu off-roading" tomorrow. I do not need to play a game of "dodge semi" or "ground-blizzard chicken" either (I already unwillingly played "Black Friday dense fog chicken" with about 10 cars in the span of four miles today). Also, I could avoid having to crawl under my Xterra on the cold, cold ground to rip a massive tumbleweed or some other debris out of my undercarriage, just by staying at my grandparents' for an extra day!

So, I'll wait for Sunday to go home, when the wind supposedly calms down and the Broncos' game has most of Denver at home gawking at their TVs (even though the Broncos have been awful this year). However, I can't trust the weatherman. In Colorado, it's a deadly sin to trust the weatherman. Especially when hell, er I mean, Colorado decides to freeze over about three months early.  

I'm glad my dad gave me all of his old off-roading equipment to me not too long ago. It was originally intended to be a Christmas present, but my dad must've felt compelled to give me the present early. Does he know something I don't? Let's not think about that scary question.

I have enough tow straps to hitch several vehicles together like a team of draft horses if I wanted to. I also have built-in D-rings and a D-ring hitch installed on my Xterra. If I do get caught in one of Colorado's famous surprise blizzards and/or windstorms, I can rest assured that I won't be in the ditch for long. At least, assuming someone in another large vehicle would be willing to pull over and help me out before AAA arrives. 

For the record, I personally am not willing to pull over to help pull out an idiot in a Miata. If you decide it's a good idea to drive the highway speed limit in a rear-wheel-drive sports car while it is below freezing and snowing, you totally deserve to spend two hours in the ditch waiting for AAA to rescue your dumb ass. And, I'll be sure to honk at you just so you can watch me hysterically laughing at you as I slowly go by. However, if you were doing everything you could to safely stay on the road, but still ended up in the ditch, I'll be more than willing to come pull you out, assuming the wind isn't strong enough to blow me over (which it all too often is on the front range during the winter) and I can see 10 feet in front of me. 

But, if the weather is forecasted to be rough, or even on the border of being rough, I'm staying home. Living in Littleton has taught me to always add a minimum of 15 miles per hour to the forecasted wind speed, subtract at least 10 degrees from the forecasted temperature, and add about 3 inches of snow to the forecasted snow totals. Littleton weather is also why I always keep an extra coat, gloves, and hat in my truck, along with various tools and things that aren't really tools but can easily be used as tools (for instance, an old, rusty butterknife can also double as a flathead screwdriver or a miniature crowbar), and of course, my dad's old collection of off-roading gear he had for his Xterra. Still, those are emergency-only tools for if Colorado decides to start blizzarding eight hours early and I'm on the road (which almost happened this last Monday. I'm really, really glad I decided to listen to my gut and stay an extra ten minutes, just to see if something would happen).