Scenes Around Boulder (Mom's Photos)

Photos by Evelyne McNamara

Thug Life

No, I haven't gone ghetto, I'm just still giggling over a question on my recent statistics exam that involved squirrels on campus choosing the thug life.  Seriously.  (And if you've seen the size of our campus squirrels, you would be worried too)

I've got 5 minutes to try to play catchup on the blog again so let's see what I can accomplish!

My mom came to visit in mid-October - her first time in Colorado.  We did the best whirlwind trip of the entire area that we could and she took a gazillion photos.  I'll add a separate post with some of her best, as she's an amazing photographer.

I've made my first couple presentations to the lab and managed to not flub it too badly.  I've got enough public speaking experience to know how to create appropriate slides and talk confidently…you don't realize how much of a skill that is till you work with younger folks again.  I've already ridden the scientific roller coaster of my special project area being written off as too expensive and then finding a way to possibly make it work after all.  Funding…the quintessential research problem!

I've run two 5ks since I moved to Boulder…as if training at altitude isn't enough, racing is its own bundle of pain!  The first was the weekend after the flood…I was entered already so I figured what the heck.  Even though I was trashed from dealing with all the cleanup, I managed 2nd place woman and 1st in AG (and I could have called it a PR but the course was definitely short).  The second was last weekend and I suffered plenty as it was "hot" out (70 in Denver at 9am??!!) but I got the AG win again.  I'm not that fast, I'm just lucky most of my AG is out having babies or something.

I flew home this weekend to surprise Jeff and my family.  I bought the tickets months ago, before the flood, but it turned out this is the weekend Jeff is loading up the moving cubes and then moving to our house in AZ next week.  So I get to help a bit with that!  AND I get to run at sea level for the first time in 3.5 months.  Tomorrow I run my last 20-miler before heading back to Colorado and then we edge on in to taper for this marathon!

Boulder Life Goes On

Flood or not, Boulder sunrises are still awe-inspiring

My friend Melinda and I went to an apple farm.  The goal was cider donuts but we got to enjoy lovely views and visit with lots of farm animals too.

Much to my excitement, we got our first snow of the year, hours after Jeff came to visit.  It lasted about 5 minutes but still it was awesome.

The rest of Jeff's visit weekend was decidedly NOT snowy.

 I got chased by a cow on my long run that week.  But it was a Scottish Highland cow so it's all OK.


We got our second snow of the year.  It barely lasted till I could take the dogs to the park and play with it that afternoon.










It was OBVIOUSLY all gone by my long run 2 days later.




The boys and I found Walden Ponds, right across from the agility practice field, this week.  Can't beat these views.






And of course, in the midst of all of this, science happens.  All day, every day.

Catching Up

You know I've been bad at posting when Blogger asks me for my password.

To sum up what happened after the events in my last post…the landlord made headway in cleaning up the apartment and the dogs and I lived in the tiny space upstairs.  I used an ex-pen to block off the top of the stairs when I went to work every day and they happily greeted the construction workers when I got home every afternoon…they said the boys were always quiet all day!

After week 1, I had pretty new tile floors installed.  Things appeared to be nearing completion.  I chatted with the workers when I walked my dogs on Monday of week 2 and they said everything looked pretty good for finishing up.  Then I came home from work that day and my downstairs drywall was all ripped out, all of my belongings and food in the kitchen covered in white dust.  Um, OK.  And my router was removed from the wall, along with the plug it goes into…ok so that will make working evenings difficult.  But it has to go up from here right?

Next day I came home and the rest of the wall and insulation was ripped out, you could now see into all of the neighbors' homes.  So much for security!  But still we went on, I assumed it couldn't get any worse!  Day 3 I came home to my kitchen all ripped out again…guess I won't be cooking the food I bought.  Still I had faith it would improve!

Well the shit hit the fan on Thursday of week 2…I got home from work to see my neighbors all loading up cars and leaving…huh.  Walked in my house and HOLY SHIT.  They had essentially poured an industrial-grade germicide everywhere downstairs and my house was a toxic gas cloud.  I could barely breathe and MY DOGS WERE UPSTAIRS.  I got the boys out quickly - thanks to closing them up upstairs, it wasn't AS bad up there.  I could not figure out how to breathe in my house, it was making me ill.  One of the neighbors said the workers had told him to stay somewhere else that night (but what about the rest of us?) - when I called the property management company, they said to just leave the windows open for a few hours.  I was LIVID that my dogs had been subjected to that, when the workers KNEW they were there, and very worried about the health of all of us after the exposure.  In the end, we fled to a hotel, the only one I could find with an open room that night (remember, with half of town evacuated from their homes due to the flooding, hotel space was at a premium).  After many tears on the phone with Jeff that night, we agreed I would not go back to this apartment - I simply could not trust our safety or the landlords.  The boys slept in my car in a parking garage on campus that next day and then we moved to a great hotel room at the Residence Inn where I could leave them there all day.  In the meantime I immediately launched into finding a new place to live.  And set Jeff to work dealing with the old landlords, because I could not even think of speaking to them without killing someone.

Long story short, I was approved for a new, MUCH nicer (and more $$ *sigh*) apartment.  After initial resistance from the property management company, Jeff was able to convince them that it was better to let me go and keep my October rent than face legal action.  I lined up some big burly men to help me move 3/4 mile down the road.  And on October 1st, nearly 3 weeks after the flood, we had a safe and dry home.

Next post, more about our FUN activities here!

Flooded

Oops…so much life went by since I started this post that it's somewhat ridiculous.  I'll chop it short to just cover the basics of the flood and try to pick up from there soon.  Rest assured, we are all safe and doing OK (and living somewhere new). 

On Monday (9/9) it rained and we were grateful for a change in weather from the record-breaking heat we'd been experiencing.  On Tuesday it rained some more - ok, still a nice change, I'll just walk to work instead of biking.  On Wednesday it rained even more, and I was only slightly annoyed because Stanley had picked up a skin infection from swimming and rain made it hard to keep dry.  I gave him a medicated bath that day after work and dried and brushed him out.

Later on Wednesday evening, I Facetimed with Jeff until about 9:30pm and then went to bed, planning to attend 6am masters.  I texted him a photo from my upstairs window, expressing relief that my car was on high ground in the parking lot while some cars on the other side appeared to have puddles.



Within 30 minutes of my going to bed, I suddenly heard what sounded like tornado sirens going off at the street.  That freaked this California native out plenty and I raced around the house to collect the dogs and find a safe place to hide - that's when I heard the voice-over that follows the sirens, with a flash flood warning telling people to get away from the creek (we live about a block and a half from Boulder Creek).  Oooookay then, I guess I can go back to bed.  Texted Jeff video of the sirens, looked at Twitter to see warnings in place up the canyon, and tried to go back to bed.  It was hard to sleep because crowds of people kept walking by our place on their way TO the creek to check it out, go tubing on the rapids, etc.  When another round of sirens went off  and it seemed our neighbors were all out front, I popped my head out the front door and was surprised to see the water rising under my car and streaming down our sidewalk out front!  That had risen in a hurry!

I called Jeff in a panic - do I leave my car there in the flooding and stay here with the dogs? Do I load them up and try to drive for higher ground (I was thinking we could drive up the hill to the CU campus and sleep in the car)?  I was paralyzed and Jeff wasn't really sure what the right answer was either. 

Then one of the neighbors let me know everyone was moving their car across the street to higher ground.  So I ran out in shorts and a sweatshirt with flip flops, waded into the water, and drove across the street to park.  Waded back through deeper fast moving water, came home to the dogs, and saw clearly that it was a matter of just minutes before the water reached our doorstep.

I ran around the house trying to put low-lying things like dog toys and towels on higher objects, unplugging cords and then washed my legs to avoid any infection from dirty water.  Then with the water at our doorstep, I locked up and went upstairs to hang out the window and see what was going on with the neighbors. 

As it turned out I'd missed the word going around that the water levels across the street were rising too.  A neighbor was leading a caravan down to park at the mall.  I threw clean dry sweats on, waded out and across the street, trying not to get knocked over by the fast moving water, and jumped in my car to drive over to the mall.  Everyone had gone ahead of me so I saw no other cars from our complex headed over...I got lost driving around the mall and eventually found my way to the top of a parking garage by Macys.  Luckily, one of the neighbors spotted me and swung back to give me a ride home.  That 1/2 mile was quite harrowing with the streets flooded heavily, cars abandoned/stuck on the center divider and waves from Boulder Creek cresting over the bridge onto the road.

I waded back across the street, drenched again, and into my house (at about 1:00 am at this point) which was starting to flood.  I called Jeff to let him know I was home safe again, washed my legs again, put on warm dry clothes to stop shivering, and tried to hunker down with the dogs upstairs.  Of course, after that much adrenaline and knowing your downstairs is filling with water, it's hard to sleep.  I kept getting up to check on the water levels, or stick my head out the window and talk to the neighbors, or text Jeff as the creek sirens kept going off, or check Twitter to find out what was going on (I'd unplugged my appliances downstairs, including modem and TV).  It's also hard to sleep when you hear the sound of rushing/flowing water in your house.

Several of the scarier moments came when I saw things on Twitter like:
"Residents of 4 Mile Canyon, run for higher ground now, run for your lives, don't drive, climb as high as you can immediately."
and then later
"City of Boulder declared impassable, all units retreat to higher ground."

My downstairs, in the middle of the night...

Finally around 3am, when it seemed the water would not rise any further, I curled up with both dogs and fell asleep for about 90 minutes.  I missed a text message from Jeff and several more warnings from school and the city.

Morning view out our windows, after water was being pumped out by maintenance

We were lucky our landlords sent crews to start pumping out water right away…I was carrying my dogs out over my shoulders through the floodwaters to potty at the street level and that got hard after a while.  But I didn't want them tracking in floodwater and mud upstairs.

Jeff caught the first flight he could to Boulder, I moved what I could upstairs, and we met up at a hotel. I was completely exhausted from the lack of sleep and it took all weekend, as he helped me clean up, to try to recover.  I was lucky school/work was cancelled for Thursday and Friday.  I am also SO grateful to my friend Kim who watched the dogs for me all weekend while we mucked out the apartment.

When I sent Jeff home Sunday morning, I figured the worst was past.  The wet carpets had been ripped out, we'd trashed all my downstairs furniture that was damaged, and the apartment was already dried out - things were well on their way to cleaned up.  The upstairs was unaffected so the dogs and I could at the very least huddle up there and live reasonably well while the downstairs had new flooring put in.

Little did I know things were still going to get more complicated!

Whoops

I've been so busy with work and school that a month went by.  And now I'm sure everyone wants to hear about the great Boulder Flood of 2013.  So let me catch up real quick, mostly via photos, on the past month, and then I'll try to work on our flood story...

More sunny pretty views.  

Boulder Creek at sunset.  Remember that water level later.

First day of classes!!! Graduate school round 2 and I'm LOVING it.

The threat of rain and thunderstorms did nothing to dissuade graduate students from free food and beer at the welcome picnic

Jeff visited us over Labor Day weekend.  And bought us an air conditioner.  Stanley may never move from this position.

Happy dogs love beer tasting at Oskar Blues!

Before Jeff went home, we hiked the Royal Arch trail in the Flatirons.  Just gorgeous.

This never gets old.

My first try ordering from Boulder Baked.  Think about it…hot fresh cookies delivered to your door, as late as midnight?

A pretty Saturday morning meeting up with a friend to hike our dogs together

Saw this on my weekend long ride…I don't know why it made me laugh, but all the cars there appeared to be those of folks off riding.

I went to the first CU home game.  And met Ralphie!

Monday, September 9th, the first day of rain and it was still lovely here.

Day 3 of rain and a saaaaaad bath face