Quilt Retreat

     “The keys are locked in the car.”

     “What!? How did that happen?”  Bad news, good news, bad news all in a 10-minute period.

     First, a snowdrift blocked the road, and the Dakota wasn’t running properly.  Then a snowplow came along, before 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning.  He was headed for the highway that surely would be cleared by now.

     Then the call on the cell phone.  The keys were locked in the car.

     “Is the car running?”

     “Yes.” 

     “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”  Which wasn’t too quick because the Dakota was running poorly when I shut it off to use the snow blower and now it wouldn’t start.

     I set off afoot across the neighbor’s field as the quickest way back to the farm.

     It all started months before, perhaps years ago.  The Goodwife always thought the farm would be a great place to hold a quilt retreat.  For those of you who are ignorant (blissfully ignorant) of quilts, quilting, and quilt retreats, a quilt retreat is like a camp where quilters go to spend a day or up to several days with like-minded folks working on quilts.  It requires room and board, so a big place with room to spread out quilts and room for dining and sleeping is necessary.

     She got the idea of having her sister and her sister’s friend come to the farm to try things out.  They were quilting novices, so they would be learning a thing or two as well as the would-be quilt retreat hostess.

     Their airplane touched down at DIA on a Thursday, early in the afternoon.   The Goodwife was there to meet them.  I was in Kansas at the time.  Plans were for me to meet them at the farm on Friday.

    I had been keeping an eye on the weather as it was still February and still winter storm season.  Spell that blizzard.  Sure enough, the weather folks were calling for a blizzard to hit the area on Saturday following some very nice warm spring type weather on Thursday and Friday.  Not at all unusual behavior for the high plains.

     I had been in phone contact with the girls.  I lobbied to have them follow plan B.  In light of the weather forecast, number one daughter offered to let them use her Denver residence for their activities instead of going to the farm.  They would have no trouble getting to the airport for their return flight on Sunday.  Both ladies had important things to do scheduled for the following Monday.

     “It’s going to blizzard.  I can’t guarantee them we can get them to the airport on Sunday,” I explained.

     “I’ll see what they say,” responded my better half.  When my phone rang hours later, she said cheerily, “We’re at the farm!”  I exercised my self-control and didn’t say what I was thinking, something about the futility of talking to a brick wall, coupled with some barnyard vulgarities.

     “Okay,” I sighed.  “See you tomorrow.”

     As if recognizing my disappointment, she added, “It is so nice and warm, how can it blizzard?  The girls really wanted to go to the farm.”

    Yeah, yeah, I know.  I checked out the snow blower, started it up, and ran it up into the back of the Dakota using a couple of eight-foot 2x 6’s for a ramp.   I snubbed it down and got ready for the next day.

     Friday was a beautiful day.  The trip from Kansas was warm and full of the hope of spring.  When I reached the farm, I laid in enough firewood for two days. I checked the water jugs in the basement.  If the power went out under duress from wind and snow and shut down the pumps necessary for the farm water supply, there would be enough water to get us through a couple of days.  But how could it blizzard?  It was so nice that Friday evening.

      Sometime late Friday night or early Saturday morning, the wind ramped up out of the north and made the trees moan and the power lines wail mournfully.  When I got up at six a.m. Saturday, the snow had just begun.  Soon the wind-driven flakes turned to horizontal sheets of powder racing across the yard. 

      By noon, the drifts were getting fair sized.  The power stayed on and the wood stove helped keep the place warm.

     Then Murphy’s law stepped through the ropes into the ring and elbowed the referee aside.  The sewer system backed up.  Three girls in the house and a backed up sewer.  It drained ever so slowly.  It was miserable.  I thought I had prepared for every contingency.  Of course I hadn’t.

     By evening, the snow had stopped, the wind abated a little.  I ventured out and started the snow blower.  I blew snow for thirty or forty minutes, enough to make a path around the house.  I reloaded the plow onto the Dakota and resolved to rise early on Sunday morn and dig a path through any drifts blocking our way to the state highway.  Those girls had to get to the airport on time.

      At four a.m., as I was staring out the west window, the Goodwife admonished me that it was too early, go back to bed.  At five a.m., I could wait no longer.  By the time I had dressed, built a fire and downed a cup of tea, it was six o’clock. 

     The Dakota fired right up, but when I drove a little over a half mile and ran into my first drift, it started running rough while I got out to inspect the depth of the drift east of the trees of the abandoned farm stead just west and south of the farm.  When I backed up to get enough room to turn around and unload the blower, it died.  It restarted, but wouldn’t run unless I held the throttle down a ways.  So I shut it off and started up the snow blower, which ran a lot better than the Dakota.

      I had made one laborious 30-yard pass pass through a two-foot drift when something caught my eye on the south horizon in the early morning sunlight.  It looked like a snowplow.  It couldn’t be, a snowplow on a county road before 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning?

      I pulled the snow blower back towards the pickup and looked again.  Slowly the shape came up from the bed of the Lickdab and climbed the incline into my view.  Sure enough, it was a county snowplow.  He was headed my way.  I tried to start the Dakota to get it out of his way.

     It wouldn’t start.  I got out of the pickup to be out of the way and to watch the drift-buster. The plow driver ripped through the drift and pulled up beside the pickup. Then he backed up to where I stood.  He asked if I was going to get through that drift with my little blower.  I said that was originally the plan, no longer necessary thanks to him.  He was amused.

     I asked him if he was going on north.  No, he would back up and go west on 3N to Highway 71.  That would be great.  I explained to him my predicament, of needing to get to the airport.  He assured me that if I could get this far, he would have the five miles to 71 cleared.  He turned his plow around and went south to 3N where he turned and went west on that road.

     I called the girls.  Get going.  The snowplow has cleared your way.

      I reloaded the snow blower and was struggling to get the Dakota started when the phone rang.  “How on earth did the keys get locked in the car?”  My set of keys was still in Kansas.                           One of the girls left the right back window down a couple of inches when they arrived Thursday.  Jenny had gone out to start the car to let it warm up.  She grabbed the scraper with the brush on one end to brush some of the snow out of the back seat.  Fortunately, the open window was to the south, so not a lot of snow got inside.

     When she got out and shut the driver’s door, out of habit she hit the door lock, and all the doors locked.  When she got around to the right rear door and tried to open it, she realized what she had done.  She felt terrible.

     When I arrived after my ten-minute walk across the wheat field, they had tried but failed to get a door open.  The sister-in-law could get her bony arm part way through the partially open window.  She could get a stick on the right front window switch, but she couldn’t grip and push hard enough to activate it.   

     I allowed that if she could get the stick on the switch, I could get my fingers through the window and onto the end of the stick and provide enough power to operate the window switch.  She did and I did.  The right front window opened and we were once again into the locked Aurora with the engine running.

     The girls loaded up their stuff and got ready to take off.  I bummed a ride with them back to the Dakota.  It eventually decided to start and I limped back to the farm.  I loaded up and followed the girls about 45 minutes behind them.  After three miles or so, the Dakota straightened out and ran right. 

       When I told the Dodge mechanic about the Dakota’s strange behavior, he explained I hadn’t let the engine run long for the computer to adjust to its new environment.  It last started in sunny warm Kansas, 2000 feet lower in altitude.  The colder higher altitude threw it for a loop when I didn’t give it time to adjust.    After the three miles, it got things set right.

      For the two girls, the ordeal wasn’t over.  They got to the airport, got on their airplane, and then security came and got Jenny.  She was randomly selected for extra security checks, but the security people failed to do the checks before she boarded the plane.  So they took her off the plane to do the check.  Sister-in-law couldn’t abandon Jenny, so she got off, too.  Their seats went to someone else.

      They got on a later flight.  With the snowstorm, the sewer problems, the car key episode, and the security fiasco, Jenny thought maybe she wasn’t supposed to make that trip.  They did get home safely and made their Monday appointments.

      As for me, I had a new key made for the Aurora, and I stowed it between bumper and license plate.  Twice burned, I finally learned.