I was driving my wife to the hospital (a colonoscopy don't freak out) just before 6AM and was greeted with that message. Luckily this early the drive from my house to the hospital took about 12 minutes. We were smiling about how nice Aspen can be when there are no people. But a 3 hour delay to get into town for paving roads. WTF.
The drive from my house to Aspen is about 10 miles. Given that there won't be any traffic for the first 3 miles or so of that drive they are suggesting that it could take up to 3 hours to drive 7 miles. I struggle to get my head around that. And this is for repaving---which seems to be an annual thing. Again WTF
Other things I struggle to get my head around:
Snowmass Village roads have been under construction for about 3 months with no end in site. The drive from my house to the post office has gone from 2.5 miles to 4 miles. There are sink holes appearing all over the place and it seems that all the roads are collapsing.
The woman who cuts my sons hair had her rent go from $700 a month to $6,000 a month. That is an 850% increase. I guess to keep her margins the same my son's hair cut would go from $75 to $650. I struggle to figure out how much to tip on a $650 hair cut. She no longer cuts hair.
I had to put down one of my dogs (Wiggins) recently. The costs around it were very high. Why? Well when vets' rents and vets expenses in Aspen Snowmass are sky high they gotta charge sky high rates.
Everything around here costs an arm and a leg and yet we still live rural AF (as fuck). Grocery shelves are often empty (finding lime seltzer is like winning mega millions), the emergency vets office only had a vet, no technician, no front desk person because they can't find labor. A friend of mine had a weird growth on his ear, took 3 weeks to get it biopsied, and 10 days later he still hasn't heard from the doc if its cancer (but heck not to worry, when the doc did the biopsy after asking him why he waiting so long to come in she said 'it looks like cancer'). Aspen and the roaring fork valley is broken. I am not sure there is a fix.
