You would think, the way my life is right now, I'd have plenty to tell you. Words should just fly from my keyboard, but when we are in the middle of something, it's hard to stand back and dispassionately describe.

During the four days I was stuck in my house waiting for rescue, I was keeping a chronicle of what I was doing and thinking, because I figured it would be interesting to read it some time in the future when the memories have faded. I haven't worked on it for a couple of weeks, but want to get back to it.

I spend a lot of time responding to emails from friends and family.

My days right now are bursts of energy punctuated by napping, or at least resting in case I might drift off to sleep for a few minutes. I haven't been able to sleep more than a couple of hours at a time, so all of a sudden severe, aching fatigue will hit me, and I have to figure out how to get some rest before the next undertaking.

I have visited the FEMA and Small Business Administration (SBA) people just about every day. I don't know if I need an SBA loan or not, because it has not been revealed who is financially responsible for restoring my private road down from the highway. This is because that road leads to a county bridge, so they might have some responsibility to restore access to it. Or not.

The other big question is who is supposed to clean all the debris from our river and repair the damage to the channel. I've got building materials, patio furniture, propane tanks, and an electric power pole complete with PCB transformer to be dealt with.



Wednesday at a town meeting someone asked this question, and the answer was that the landowner is responsible for the cleanup, and must get a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to fix the river channel. Really? I don't know how to begin to hire large earth-moving equipment to accomplish this. I'm hoping that answer applied only to people in town, and it will be different out in the county where I live.



The edge of my driveway - there is quite a bit of erosion, but looking at it when you are driving on it, not much was lost - it's stable right now, but needs work.

My chief occupation right now is worrying about the battery that starts my standby generator. Those batteries are kept charged by the house current, so when the electric utility goes down, the generator must be run regularly. I didn't realize this, so was surprised and discouraged to come home the other day to find the battery completely dead.

It was almost impossible to get out of the enclosure, and I was in the process of trying to take the end off of it, even though I knew that couldn't be right, but finally wrestled the thing free.

My dilemma right now is I don't know if electrical power from the public utility can be restored to my home because the trucks may not be able to get down my road. If not, then all I can do is get the generator going one last time so I can blow out the plumbing pipes and winterize the house. I wouldn't want to invest in a new battery if it is just going to sit idle for months, because it probably wouldn't hold the charge, but if I am going to have power, then I will need the new battery to get the generator back to its normal state.

Meanwhile, I am waiting for FEMA and SBA inspectors to contact me so they can look at my property. Since I don't have a landline or cell phone service at my home (assuming I wanted to camp out without electricity), I am living in a motel in town. It is a very nice motel, so that helps a lot, and I am getting the FEMA rate. There is a chance they will cover some of it.

Yesterday morning I was awakened by my cell phone. It was a FEMA inspector demanding I fax certain information to her, and I needed to sign a form she was faxing me. It didn't come and didn't come, and many phone calls later I finally got a different fax number because I think the motel gave me the wrong one, and it finally came through.

Turns out this woman is located down in the flat land, a four hour drive from here (40 minutes before the flood), and had been assigned to my case based upon my address, not on reality. Her plan was to get my paperwork set up, and then wait the six months until she could get to my property from that direction.

I told her my case needs to be transferred to Estes Park because from this direction we are already able to get to my home. I called the FEMA hotline and told them this, and they said this woman needs to close out my case from her assignment so it can be reassigned. I am praying that she did this overnight, so when I call them again this morning we can make some progress.

I have been going back to my house every day to pack things in to the house, and pack food and water out. There are crazy things, like the drivers side door panel from my old pickup that is trapped up there. The day before the flood I had to take the truck to a body shop to have the panel removed and the door opened because the latch assembly broke.

They kept the panel and ordered the part, and we decided I would pay for the part and take the two pieces home until the truck can be gotten out. So I was toting that thing around.



This is as far as I can drive my truck. Starting in front of the red cabin the road is filled with 6 - 8 inch rocks, sand, and gravel. The Light and Power guys have a front end loader, and I hope they will be able to use it to smooth out the road so they can get their trucks in to place new power poles, and then I'll be able to get closer to my house.



Here's my bridge with step ladder. I carried in 6 gallons of antifreeze. You can just see the Brown Palace across there.

Yesterday I found out the county Roads and Bridges people have not been able to inspect the bridges except by flying over because they are four hours away due to highways being out. One of them left me a voice mail and asked me to describe the condition of my bridge. They are 'currently trying to develop a plan.'



Our culvert washed out. It didn't go downstream because it has a pvc hose through it - part of our lawn irrigation system. It looks in good shape and I hope we can get it re-installed at some point.

At some point, all these particular concerns will be resolved - the problems won't totally go away, but will move to their next phase with a whole new set of things to think out and work through.