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Every so often, it becomes necessary to venture down from the mountains and visit civilization to see relatives and tend to accumulated errands. We tried it again last weekend, and just getting there made me decide that metro-area commuters must be among the most capable people on earth.
Why? Because navigating the roads of the Front Range requires the memory of a Cray supercomputer and the reflexes of a fighter pilot. We live in Salida; my parents live in Longmont.
Getting from Salida to the edge of the metropolis is
simple, if not safe -- just proceed north on U.S. 285
through the ground blizzards of South Park. South Park
apparently gets only one foot of snow each winter, but that
foot stays suspended from October through May. Fairplay
residents will get offended if you accidentally let slip
with the W
word. To avoid offense, don't mention
wind
there -- just say It's snowing sideways
again.
Driving is supposed to be simplified now with the opening of C-470, which eliminates going through Morrison and remembering to turn right first, then to turn left in town, at a place they just changed. Morrison is not that big a town, but it's big enough for me to have been lost in a few times.
So I was heartened when I heard about the new C-470, which heads north just a mile or so past the Morrison exit. We found that. So far, so good. But it stops at I-70. East or west there? Knowing how Colorado highways work, I instantly and correctly decided on west, even though that meant backtracking.
The rest of the journey requires nothing more than an intimate knowledge of the ever-changing street systems of cities I don't live in. Get off I-70 at U.S. 40, and proceed east for a mile or two. There's an obscure turn near Heritage Square which takes you along a twisting, narrow country lane that has recently sprouted acres of apartment houses -- whatever Jefferson County pays the planners who approved those teeming subdivisions along that patently inadequate road, it's too much.
That road takes you to U.S. 6. Go west there, so that
you skirt Golden, another town that may not look big, but
is plenty big enough for me to get good and lost in. There
is doubtlessly a way to go directly across Golden and pass
under the Where the West begins
arch, but the only
thing I can ever find consistently is the brewery, and it
was too late in the day for a tour.
At the west edge of Golden, take Colo. 58 east for a mile to Washington Street. Go north there, and soon you're in the open countryside, with splendid views of mountains, quarries and a manufacturing facility for thermonuclear warhead triggers. Explaining to your children just what they build at Rocky Flats, and why, is quite difficult.
Kids persist in asking questions like Why do they
spend your tax money to build things that vaporize people
who might just be going about their business? You mean even
kids that were sitting in school and behaving themselves
could be killed, just like that, in an instant?
My knowledge of the strategic theory of mutual assured destruction is not sufficient to provide a satisfactory answer.
After that passes, you're on the outskirts of Boulder, which is even harder to explain. Try as I might, I can't ever find a channeler on a Boulder radio station who can explain why a city grown rich on plutonium fabrication and defense research is such a center of peaceful holistic harmony.
Fortunately, Boulder has a new bypass on its east side, 47th Street. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find from the south. This trip, I guessed right the first try -- Table Mesa Road (with Official English, will this become Table Table Road? Or the Mesa Table Road?) will get you from Colo. 93 to 47th Street, a/k/a/ Colo. 157, a/k/a Foothills Parkway.
Then you just have to position your car in the proper lanes for the new interchange with Colo. 119, a/k/a the Diagonal Highway. Get off the Diagonal at the Hover Road interchange, and you're in Longmont.
A lot of people disparage Longmont as a rather boring place where there isn't much to do besides drag Main Street. That might be so, but I think of Longmont as more like the summit of a 14,000-foot-peak (the city is, after all, named after a 14er). It doesn't matter what you find at your destination -- after all that you go through to get there, just arriving is reward enough.
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