First off I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Melanie and I are in Denver with her family this year for Christmas. Last year we had everyone from both of our families at our house for Christmas and this year it is Mel’s family's turn.

We drove out to Denver from Indy on Saturday. We had some things to haul back to Indy so we elected to drive out instead of flying. What an experience that turned out to be. We left Indy at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning and figured we could make it to Denver in 15 hours or so. Wrong! If we hadn’t ran into freezing rain, snow and blizzard conditions we might have. We were making great time until just before Kansas City. We first hit the freezing rain and things came to a crawl. By the time we made it to the other side of KC the snow was falling heavy. When we stopped to get our toll road ticket they told us that I-70 was closed west of Topeka. Great, now what do you do?

Being the electronics guy that I am, I fired up my laptop and hit the web searching for alternate routes. By the time we hit Topeka, (quite a while later because we didn’t get over 40 mph) I had it mapped out where to go. We took state highways around the I-70 closure and then got back on 70 past all the mess. It only took us over three hours to go around 50 miles, but we didn’t get stuck in Kansas for an extended period of time.

We finally got into Denver at 1 a.m. which is 3 a.m. our time. The trip only took 19 ½ hours, but we made it safe and sound. The dogs sure were happy to get out of the car when we got here. It was one of the worst storms that I have ever driven through and I’m just glad we escaped safe and sound. Hopefully everyone doesn’t have any problems traveling this holiday season.

We are getting ready to head out for Christmas Eve dinner at Mel’s cousins so I will wrap it up. I did get lucky today as we did some last minute shopping. We pulled up at a Best Buy and there was a Monster Energy drink truck out front handing out free Monster to everyone shopping. I grabbed a couple and headed in. Just after we walked in they announced that they just got a shipment of Nintendo Wii’s in. I jumped in line and grabbed one. At least I know what I’ll be doing Christmas afternoon.

We are staying in Denver for a couple of more days and then driving back through Iowa to visit my grandparents on our way back to Indy.

Hope everyone gets what they want for Christmas because I already got what I wanted a couple of weeks ago.

Merry Christmas to all.

TJ