Colorado Flood Experience Part 1

The last time I checked in we were about to list the house. A lot has happened since last Wednesday, but I still haven't gotten used to seeing this:

I read somewhere when I was trying to figure out how to get the house ready that when you put your house on the market, you can no longer think of it as yours. I know the context of that was in terms of decor, taking down family photos (which we didn't really do) and sort of un-personalizing everything. But once the sign went in the ground and the listing surfaced on the internet, a feeling of sadness came over us as we realized we were actively trying to sell our house to someone else. Of course it isn't ours anymore.

We put the sign in the ground and drove away immediately after. We were heading to Colorado for about 5 days for a Running Coach Certification course I've been wanting to do for a long time. And this is where I would get some perspective on "house" and "home."

Fast forward 8-9 hours and we arrived in Arvada, CO where we were staying with some of my family. We had a nice dinner with them but then the focus quickly sort of turned to the weather that seemed to be turning into a problem. Rain, rain, rain. It's kind of blurry now so I don't remember how serious it got that evening, but by the next morning it was bad. My class wasn't scheduled to start until 1 p.m. in Boulder and all morning we watched the news and the flooding that was developing. I hadn't heard anything from the instructors at about 1145 and was about to get ready when I got a call from Lorraine Moller, one of the instructors. She said they had been evacuated from the Newton building and to standby. She called back shortly after and gave me an alternate location to go at 3.  It was a Newton employee's house, still in Boulder.

That afternoon was Dave's first glimpse of his chauferring job that weekend. Getting me there was fairly painless. I got a warm welcome when I walked in the door from several of my classmates who were already there. We all quickly became comfortable around each other and were having a lot of fun in this cozy little setting, curled up with blankets and watching the lecture on a flat screen tv. I kept looking out the window, but honestly wasn't thinking too much about the flooding. By the time Dave came to pick me up at 7, he had a hell of a time getting back. He was frustrated. Then, we had an even better time trying to get out of Boulder and back to Arvada. 2 hours of running into road closure after road closure and turning around to try something new, going further and further out of our way. If we had been returning any later I am fairly certain we would have gotten stuck somewhere. I think my aunt was a little worried when I called and told her we were having problems getting out. Water was rushing everywhere. At one point, we were trying to go down a side street to go further east and all these cars were turning around in front of us. When we got up there, there were no cops or police cars so we decided to creep along and see why we couldn't go that way. All of the sudden, someone was blasting a huge spotlight at us from a house....blinding. I guess that was a resident trying to tell us "bad idea." There were so many road closures that we started seeing ambulances, in addition to cops, blocking off roads.  

Between my aunt and uncle's navigation, my handy little smartphone (that thankfully still worked even though every single person in the immediate area was probably using theirs), and sometimes driving on the opposite side of the road to avoid flooded roads, we got back. That felt good.

For the next couple of days, Dave drove me to class the long way due to all of the road closures. There was only one open road into Boulder. In the evening we would watch the news and see all the destruction in Longmont, Lyons, Boulder and other areas of the state. Sad and heartbreaking. Families evacuated out of their homes, over 1,000 people unaccounted for and fatalities (up to 7 now). Fortunately, for them and us, my aunt and uncle live in an area that was not severly affected along with my cousin who goes to school in Golden.

I also felt very fortunate that despite the weather, we were able to complete our course. Despite everything going on, it was an absolutely fantastic experience. The instructors invited us to return and retake the course during one of the later dates if we would like, but we had a great group of people in our class and I really enjoyed getting to know them a little bit. I'll post more about that later. Here are a few photos of the area just across the street from where we were still able to do our drills for class. The water was up to the road. In the grand scheme of it all, this was minor.

It really felt odd to have such a great experience in the middle of chaos. We also had a wonderful time with my aunt, uncle and cousins.

I felt guilty that I got so much out of that 4 days when so many people lost so much. And when we drove up to the house, I felt so grateful for our home...even with a sale sign in front of it.

Here are ways to help & support the victims of the flooding.