I’m not quite sure who Murphy was of the infamous Murphy’s Law, but I’m not particularly fond of this character right now. As witnessed by the lack of posts on this travel blog (as it has so evolved), I have not been doing much of that activity. In fact, the only time I’ve left Boulder since our East Coast trip of August, was to Moab for a wedding in October and one night in the mountains a month ago. To say that I am antsy to get out of town would be an understatement. So, it was with great pleasure that I have been preparing for our annual spring break mountain biking extravaganza; this year to ride the Kokopelli Trail, a 140 mile route from Fruita,Colorado to Moab, Utah over four days, camping along the way.

It has been a mild, dry winter. February was downright balmy and March has not cracked up to be the wettest month as it is known. There was an impetuous daffodil blooming in the backyard as of this past weekend. It would then be an incident of Murphy’s Law that the day we were set to leave would coincide with the “storm of the season.” I woke to find my car, packed and ready to go looking like this:

After a harrowing trip about a mile and back from my house that included getting stuck on the hill up Broadway (whereby assisting others to also get stuck) requiring multiple sessions of scraping slushy snowpack from in front of my tires and then engaging the assistance of some young men to push my car (and all the others that were stuck); followed by a slippy-slide trip down 9th street, back through town to Broadway (I did actually see a snow plough) and a running start into the driveway, I am back where I started. My utterly useless car is now where it belongs – in the garage – still packed with mountain bike, camping gear, cooler, etc. All told, I believe that equates to a net loss in the progress of my much-needed vacating motion.

I will be partaking of the time old tradition of shoveling… if I remember how to do that since it is a skill I have used minimally this season. If nothing else, there appears to be plenty of amusement sitting by the big front window watching the cars go by. I waved to one vehicle that did a graceful sideways slide down the center of the road at an opportune traffic-free moment, ending with a quarter-spin and facing our house. I’m sure she appreciated the friendly gesture before she unceremoniously headed in the opposite direction from whence she came.

Of course it is still spring and the temperature is barely freezing, so the snow is not the usual light, airy affair Colorado is known for, but is of the heavy variety – back-breaking for shoveling, great for snowmen-making. It is coming down in a sort of pins and needles formation and there appears to be wind adding to the equation. Wind means the promotion to “blizzard” status and the forecast calls for 16-24 inches by morning (nevermind that there looks to be 16-18 inches already accumulated on the lids of the garbage bins). Luckily I’ve been reading Into the Woods by Bill Bryson, as the only travelling I’ll be doing today is of the armchair variety...

As for Murphy, according to Wikipedia and other easily-found internet sources, Murphy was an engineer who, while working on an Air Force project in the early 1950’s, complained about a technician that if there was any way to screw up, this guy would find it. Hence, the age-old concept of what can go wrong, will go wrong, was given an official name when referred to at a subsequent press conference by a fellow-engineer who, ironically, attributed their success to Murphy’s Law (because everything that could go wrong was taken into account).

There are certain folks on the other side of the pond who will tell you that this rule was known to them much previously as Sod’s Law (because they did do everything first, don’t you know.) For those of you unversed in British slang, this would be a reference that anything bad that can happen, will happen to the poor sod who least needed something bad to happen. The same concept has also been known to be referred to as Reilly’s Law and Finagle’s Law, which seems to suggest a certain Irish tendency, but I’ll leave any commentary on that to someone else.