I’m now back in Champaign. Safe and secure.

I woke up on Saturday at 4am in Breckenridge. Ate, showered, carried stuff to the car, and we were on the road at 5:03am. I had the pleasure of driving (it was a conspiracy, I think. The others seem to enjoy having me drive during the bad stuff). Highway 9 from Breck to the Interstate (about 9 miles) was about half snow covered and the wind was blowing snow across the road… quite bad at times. A few times I could only see about 5 feet in front of the car. But, I didn’t get in a hurry, and it went well.

Once on the interstate at Frisco ( about 9,600 foot elevation) you drive up and down a couple of hills and then you start the climb to the Eisenhower tunnel, which is at 11,000 feet. The weather generally gets progressively worse as you get near the tunnel. The chain law was in effect for commercial vehicles, and no one was getting in a real hurry. Luckily, the road on the west side of the mountain is relatively well shielded from wind effects, so I didn’t have to deal with that very much. We made it to the tunnel and through it. The wind and blowing snow was a lot worse on the east side. My guess is that the mountain was shielding the wind from the Breckenridge side.

Anyway, once through the tunnel things got a lot better. We made it to Denver and the sun rose just as we were on the east side of town. It would have been great to have been about half an hour later. When you come down out of the mountains there is a great view of the entire city down below you, and the view of the city lights in the foreground with the rising sun in the background would have been wonderful. Oh well. We weren’t going to wait. We were on a mission.

I had calculated that, if we left Breck at 5am, we should be at Cinzetti’s in Kansas City at 5pm. Last year, we had met up with John and Natty at Cinzetti’s in Denver. I had never heard of the place until then. It’s an all-you-can-eat Italian restaurant, and we absolutely loved it last year. We looked them up on the web and discovered that they had a Kansas City location. So, we had plans to stop there on the way back.

We made our way across eastern Colorado (boring) and Kansas (very boring) and rolled into Cinzetti’s about 5:05pm. We immediately got a table. Lucky that we got there when we did. When we left an hour later the entrance area was a madhouse. Cinzetti’s is awesome. By far the best meal of the week. They have a number of tasty Italian dishes, pizzas, and a bunch of nice dessert. It’s a dandy place to visit. I think that once a year is about right, though. Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures, though. I completely forgot. *slap*

We left Cinzetti’s between 6 and 6:30. Made our way east from KC and then south to Bill’s place in Rolla. Got there about 10:15, crashed on the couch and got up at 6:30am for a 7am departure. Dropped Brian off in St Louis about 8:30-8:45 and then headed on to Illinois. Made it back to the house about 12:15pm or so. All in all, a good trip.

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