Final relief

For the first time in my American academic history, I had only 3 final exams to worry about. Despite this, I had one of the most hectic weeks I can recall with 3 final projects due around that time, relatives in from England, best friends leaving the country for good, friends graduating and moving away from Austin and I hadnt even packed for Colorado. Did I forget to mention I had noticed a problem with my power-steering fluid leaking? A quote from a local mechanic was in the magnitude of $800 plus. Before a 1600 mile road trip to Keystone, CO this was the last thing I needed.

The Friday after my last exam, I woke up early and Andy Gush (my partner for one of my projects) and I consumed several bars of dark chocolate and a hefty bag of chocolate covered espresso beans. Needless to say at 7pm that night we had almost completed the project we began that morning after only 1 or 2 water/bathroom breaks... I packed that night and the next morning and Saturday night at around 5pm Gabe, Giselle, Loren and I began our journey to CO.
Unfortunately at about 4am when we reached TexLine unexpected weather conditions had propogated spawning in my frequent disgruntled cell phone calls to Gabe whenever we had enough bars on the phone. We finally pulled over and Gabe almost wiped out on the ice getting out of his truck. Finally I think he realised the predicament we were in. We put our feet up for a couple of hours and let the sun come up and begin melting the ice before we soldiered on at about 30mph. Turned over vehicles, collisions with emergency vehicles and a "war-torn" SUV that must have exploded in an accident lay strewn about the New Mexico stretch of the trip. At about 10am we entered CO. Conditions improved, but after we entered the rockies themselves blizzards threw down inches of snow relentlessly while CO drivers appeared quite unaware of these absolutely mental conditions. The total drive time alone went from a predicted 16 hours to an absurd 29 hours, not including the time I was awake on Saturday before we left Austin! I think I had been awake a total of 48 hours by the time my eyes finally closed.