So after arriving in Boulder, taking a nice walk in the rain, cleaning up and eating whatever appeared before me I had one important task left in my day. Anna, my girlfriend who I had not seen in over a month,was coming in on a midnight flight. Given the conditions and some reports of road closures I decided that I would leave at 9:00 and wait for Anna at the airport. I ignored my hosts’ advice to stay put.

I started running into road closures right away. I discovered that all the major roads leading in the direction of the airport were closed. This involved choosing a potential route, running into a roadblock, turning away and checking the map on my phone for another route. The city was out in force. Even the dog catcher (animal control officer) van was deployed to block a street. The end of one attempt was not marked by a roadblock, but rather by fast and deep water that had already claimed three vehicles. I didn’t stop for pictures since I was quite aware of passing time. A police officer, upon hearing my destination, simply wished me good luck.

Arriving in Boulder was supposed to be the beginning of a nice, relaxing break in my trip. It was 10:30 and I decided to head north, back past Lucy and Ole’s place to Diagonal Highway that I had biked into Boulder on earlier that day. This worked. Diagonal Highway did not go towards the airport, but did get me west of the city and away from the city. After navigating a bunch of side roads, and only one more road closure, I made it to the highways that took me to the airport, arriving at my destination just ten minutes before Anna’s flight landed. After a happy reunion, the return trip only took an hour or so with no turn arounds thanks to knowing where the good roads lay.

I arrived back at Lucy and Ole’s place exhausted from all the day’s driving and biking and quite ready for sleep.

Until this outing I hadn’t quite grasped how widespread the flooding was.