Twenty-one years ago Kate and I were driving back to the University of Wyoming from Longmont, Colorado. We made it as far as Cheyenne before the interstates iced over, visibility dropped to almost nothing, and the road to Laramie closed.

Stranded in Cheyenne on Oscar Sunday, we made the most of it by staying at a Quality Inn, ordering Domino’s, and watching the three hour broadcast of the 2004 Oscars.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King reigned over most of the night. Peter Jackson won best director, paving the way for a promising, yet ultimately, horrible adaptation of The Hobbit into three massive films.

But there was no denying Jackson’s touch on Oscar night in 2004. The LotR trilogy are three of the best movies made in my lifetime, but it wasn’t until the third movie that the Academy anointed Jackson and his flawless epic of a movie.

Tonight there will be no pizza and no wine shared during the Oscars. I am in Steamboat with Camden and Kate and London are in Omaha. It might be the first Oscars that Kate and I have spent apart since that Wyoming blizzard in 2004. We will make up for it tomorrow in the best way we can by queuing up the recording of the broadcast, opening a bottle of wine, and digging into some pizza. Although in the last 21 years, the pizza is greatly improved over Domino’s. And I don’t exactly miss the Quality Inn in Cheyenne either.