Houses on the Highway

If you've ever driven in the mountains, you know that certain things are inevitable: snow in spring, curvy roads ahead and RVs. What you may not have encountered, yet we did, is a house blocking the road.

Yes, a house.

A trailer home to be precise. It was being moved to its final destination where it would perform its duty as the bellwether for horrible weather conditions. What? We all know that Mother Nature abhors trailer parks: that's why they are forever being flattened in any sort of weather event. Tornado, fire, or flood: there's a trailer home involved somehow.

In our particular case, the trailer home was busy blocking traffic. Lots of traffic on the two lane highway we were taking as we headed towards Glenwood Springs on Tuesday.

We had just passed two halves of a trailer home not 10 minutes before. They were huge and trundling along on their giant flatbeds, courteously staying in the right lane, out of our way. Some folks didn't want to pass them for their own reasons. I imagine that fear was among those reasons since few people want to be squashed by houses. The Wicked Witch of the East taught us well that to be caught in the path of a falling house is a Very Bad Thing.

That being said, we were in a bit of a hurry, trying to make up for lost time. Getting out of the house with twins and a 6.75 year old is a long an involved process that, realistically, should be started the night before. However, when The Man says, "No, no. We'll do it in the morning!" and exhaustion has left you without two braincells left to rub together, you will agree. Then the following morning you will be kicking yourself and wondering why this scene keeps repeating itself. Yes, you'll still need all the bathroom items, but for goodness' sake! Pack everything else the night before! Geez!

Awake Me says, "Exhausted Me, take note!"

Exhausted Me responds, "Yeah, yeah. Zzzzzz."

So there we were, traveling along, passing the Half a Homes and we came upon the Lumbering Behemoth and its Blocker Vehicle. You know, the one with the big sign across the back warning you of the W I D E L O A D you are about to encounter. The vehicle that is blocking the passing lane.

Why? Why is it doing such a ridiculous thing?

Because apparently the driver of the extremely Wide Load, carrying the full size trailer home (No Half a House here!) is incapable of keeping to the right side of the road and making use of the breakdown lane, but is instead straddling both lanes. And fishtailing a little back and forth, just to make things more interesting.

A little frisson of fear to go with your car ride is always exciting, no?

Except that now we are behind these vehicles and we have Places To Be. Behind us are another 50 cars filled with their allotment of people that have Places To Be as well. Yet here we all sit, behind The Behemoth, watching as it swishes back and forth across the lanes like a drunken bowler. We sit in the Passing Lane waiting for our chance to...you know...pass. To our right is a guy in a little sports car that looks like he's thinking about making a break for it and pass on the right.

This is a Bad Idea.

He appears to come to that conclusion as well as we watch The Beast swish alarmingly over to the right side of the road and into the breakdown lane and then swish back again to the opposite side of the road.

Eric is frustrated and is saying not very nice things about the drivers of the vehicles in front of us, their parentage and their driving skills. Eventually, we go through a tunnel and The Beast proves to us that passing it would be impossible as it takes up the entire road through the tunnel, leaving about three feet on either side.

Eventually - a very loooong eventually - we reach our exit and zip away. Fortunately, no one was injured by falling houses.

This time.