What I did on my vacation....

The plan was to shut down the hotel and restaurant after an Easter Sunday Brunch until Memorial Day weekend for a few weeks of vacation and a few more weeks of backbreaking labor spent redoing the kitchen, spring cleaning and a general reorganization of things before the big summer season. Our two-week vacation involved driving back to KC to spend some time with family and friends, then a few days fishing and relaxing at The Lake of the Ozarks, then back to KC for a second week of visiting and sprucing things up around the unsold house before heading back to Hot Sulphur. Everything went smoothly and as planned, until we got in the car to leave.

Thursday, April 16, greeted us with the biggest single day snowfall of the winter. This being our first winter in Hot Sulphur, we’d never experienced a snow like this – any synonym for “pounded” that you can think of would aptly describe the inundation of snowflakes that occurred. I would estimate we received two feet of snow in a little less than an hour. Two days prior to this, Julie spent the day in the backyard raking, arranging rocks around a soon-to-be wildflower mound, i.e. readying the outside for spring; she received a nasty sunburn on her back in the process. 48 hours later, we are bundled up to the gills in our LL Bean parkas, walking the dog along the river in a snowfall so thick and so heavy, we literally couldn’t see 10 feet in front of us. It was beautiful and spectacular, but quickly reminded us that all is never as it seems in the mountains of Colorado. We’d been lulled into a false sense that the winter was behind us – foolish flatlanders we were still. This blast of December in April also made us all the more excited about leaving it behind to head for the comparatively tropical respite that awaited us in KC.

The Friday morning of our departure dawned clear in Hot Sulphur, the snow having dumped it’s last on us for this winter. (Long time Grand Countians are now laughing at my Midwestern naiveté. They know we’re liable to get snowed on in the middle of the summer. In fact, in 2008 it snowed above 9000’ every month of the year, July and August included.) We headed east and not long out of town you could see the dark clouds that awaited us ahead. Twelve short miles from home, on the eastern edge of Granby, the snow started. By the time we got to Winter Park, 20 miles further east of Granby and 2000’ higher in elevation, that pounded by snow thing was happening again. On to Berthoud Pass – a stretch of road that can be daunting on a clear summer day to those not acclimatized to mountain driving. Try maneuvering it in a blizzard so profound that my windshield wipers couldn’t wipe the falling snow away quickly enough for me to see. Near the top of the pass, elevation 11,000’ and also the Continental Divide, the snow was a foot deep on the roads, and the only way I could see where I was going was to stick my head out the window and look for the guardrails. Once at the top of the pass, the downward decent on the eastern slope of the divide saw an instant decrease in the snowfall; still coming down beyond anything that we’re used to in Kansas City, but decreased enough that I could see through the windshield. 20 miles later we’re on I-70, heading east, still snowing hard, and now you’ve got semi-trucks to deal with. You know, 80,000 pounds of screaming steel, most often piloted by drivers whose IQ’s barely approach the number of wheels on their rigs. The west-bound lane of I-70 was already shut down by two of these cowboys who’d jackknifed their trucks after finding out that when you drive a big truck real fast on snow and ice, and then slam on the brakes, your ability to stop in a timely fashion is greatly diminished. Who’d be expected to know such a thing?!

We stopped briefly in Denver, where it was snowing slushballs – falling globs of slush the size of golf balls that sounded, when they hit your car, as if a group of 20 gloved pugilists were working on your vehicle like they would a taunting sweat bag. Again, we can smile at this because we are in the process of leaving it behind for a few weeks. As we head further east, the slush turns to rain and fog; hard rain and heavy fog, all the way to Salina, KS. Somewhere along the way, maybe between Colby and Hays, KS, we hear a noise beneath the car that sounds as if we’ve run over a rock, and it has hit the bottom center of the car. Nothing seems amiss, and on we drive. When the rain stopped and the wipers finally went off, I began to hear a noise that sounded a little like white noise that you would hear if the radio were on, but not tuned to a station. Not being able to discover the source, I again went back to the matter at hand, i.e. eating up ground in an easterly direction.

I’ll make this brief, because it isn’t interesting and I can’t make it funny. The bad rock under the car noise and undetectable “white noise” noise was a failed transfer case in the four-wheel drive transmission – those are $1400 at your local auto repair shop. It was a long first day of vacation.

Day two finds us at our unsold home in KC. In mid-March, I received a “feedback” email from a realtor who showed the house, which simply said “sump pump is broken, basement is flooded.” It being a buyer’s market and all, his clients decided to pass on our house and look for one without a flooded basement. I’m cool with that. (We find out that the pilot light in the heater has gone off, and there is no heat in the house. This causes the water in the pipes to freeze, and the pipes to burst, including the exhaust line on the sump pump. When the weather warms, and it begins to rain, the sump pump is doing its intended thing, pumping water away from our foundation; except the water isn’t being pumped outside, it’s being pumped right through that ruptured pipe back into our basement – “sump pump is broken, basement is flooded”.) In having the situation remedied from 700 miles away, the repairman tells me that we also have several copper pipes that have burst, and they will need to be repaired before the water can be turned back on. I decide to tackle this myself when I’m back on vacation, and begin to do just that upon our Saturday arrival.

Two hours and seven trips to the Home Depot later, I’ve got a new sump pump and four new pieces of copper pipe installed. It is time for the moment of truth that all amateur plumbers dread – time to turn on the water and check for leaks. I turn on the main valve, and quickly head for the repaired breaks; all looks good, no leaks. But I hear running water coming from upstairs; lots of water like the sound that a big, pretty waterfall makes. I quickly turn the main off and run upstairs, and am quick to detect the source of the waterfall sound, as water is pouring out of a recessed can-light fixture in the kitchen, out of the center of the ceiling in the family room, and down a wall in the dining room. It splatters as it hits the bare hardwood floor, and the sound of the splatter resonates throughout the empty house. I’m thinking maybe there are more broken pipes than I’ve accounted for. On the bright side, I’m in Kansas City, and I am actually able to get a plumber to 1) answer his phone and 2) show up as promised – sober to boot! Six large holes cut in our ceiling and a $600 plumbing bill later, and we have running water again. However, we still have six large holes cut in our ceilings and walls; another not so appealing feature in a buyer’s real estate market.

The final indignity occurred Monday morning, April 26th. It stormed and rained heavily Sunday night/Monday morning, this on top of already saturated ground. Remember that new sump pump I installed? I commented to Julie at the time, “never has one of my home repair projects gone so smoothly.” I hooked it up right, measured everything right the first time, plugged it in and tested it – Bingo, it worked like a champ; I saved $250 in plumbing labor. However, a real plumber – the ones that charge $250 to hook these babies up - would have known to make sure the float switch was unobstructed. Float switch, unobstructed? What the hell is that all about? It’s about the little ball that, when the pit is full of water, floats to the top of the sump pit and turns the pump on; if the ball isn’t able to float free and unobstructed, the pump won’t turn on and the basement will flood - again, only this time worse than before. All of the new padding that had been installed from the first flood had to be ripped up and replaced, not to mention the cost of drying the basement out with big blowers and dehumidifiers. Thank God for insurance, but damn those high deductibles.

So, as vacations go, this one wouldn’t rate high on the list of providing quality rest and relaxation; starting out with the ultimate ride piloting the white knuckle express down
Mt. Snowdeath, and finishing with an infrastructural nightmare that made us long for our 106-year old Colorado money pit. Between our places in Hot Sulphur and Kansas City, I’d better be getting some big-ass Christmas hams from plumbers this year, as I certainly don’t expect to be getting any from blog-reading semi-drivers; not that there are any.