Vacillating Velocity

I finally got around to putting up some photos from my cross-country roadtrip. Check ‘em out here.

Last night, I dreamt I was applying for other jobs – one selling Subarus, the other working in the produce department of the grocery store. I’m not sure if this is because I’ve been concerned about my meager income, wary of the repetitiveness of my job, or because I drive by a Suby dealership every day and I need to buy spinach.

I’ve worked five days so far, and as expected, it’s getting a little monotonous. This isn’t to say that I’m not happy with the job, but the unending mindlessness of it all is a downside, a negative counterbalance to the many positive aspects of my new life. Even when you’re busy, time does not pass quite as quickly as you’d like. Take bumping chairs. This is what you’d guess – catching the chair just before it reaches the guests and giving it a slight “bump” back, so that it sweeps them off their feet more like Don Juan, and less like Over A Hundred Pounds Of Metal Moving At Five Hundred Feet Per Minute. Even though it keeps you pretty constantly busy – as one of two Colorado resorts open we’ve yet to have a “slow” day – the business is deceptive. Say you’ve just bumped a hundred chairs. The soreness in your lower back says you’ve been workin’ the time away, but the clock says that ten minutes have passed.

Scanning tickets is a little better – not just because of the lack of muscle strain, but also you might have slightly more than the unceasing and unforgiving six-second chair interval to interact with folks. Most of the people up there are happy and friendly, as you’d imagine people recreating would be. Many are happy to chit-chat, if they’re not lost in their own world created by those everpresent little white “please steal my iPod” headphones. Conversations are still brief and fairly limited (“Mountain View – where’s that?” – the joy of the nametag), but it’s nice to put a smile on someone’s face – usually as easy as offering them a smile of your own.

Still, the real joys of the job are the perks. Showing up in the morning before the daily meeting, clocking in, and getting paid to eat the free hot breakfast you’re about to pick up. Or when lunchtime rolls around, and you strap your board on your feet and head up the mountain that you’re already on. Even the everpresent ability to stop by employee housing and find some friendly young folks to hang out with. Emphasis on the young – of all the lifties, supervisors included, the only person older than me is my boss – by a year. Most of my cohorts are right around twenty years old, which is a little odd. Not that I can really afford to go out drinking, but for the bulk of my friends, it’s not even an option.

I guess that’s all that springs to mind? It’s been pretty blank of late – combining a lack of acclimation to an 11,000 foot plus working environment with being on my feet doing some degree of physical labor for nine straight hours starting before 8am leaves me pretty wiped at the end of a workday. I think I might start drinking a lot of evening coffee¹ to try to be somewhat productive.

1. No more caffiene in the morning. Partly because a hearty breakfast and then going out and shoveling snow is a pretty good wake-up itself, but more because caffiene is a diuretic, and bathroom breaks aren’t simple endeavors as a liftie.

Today, I acquired Colorado citizenship for myself and my car, then went snowboarding on both sides of the continental divide.

Before noon.

We came in for full-time training Tuesday thru Friday. It was mostly classroom-style, sit down and be lectured at by J, our boss. His teaching style is a bit meandering, and we ended up way behind schedule because of it. Some of it was anecdotal: to emphasize the point about not leaving tools laying around, we heard the tale of the man who got knocked over by a chair, got his hand sliced open by a snow scoop, and then sued – since not only was he injured, it was hampering his ability to do his job – as a concert pianist. Some of it was tangential; talk of our backcountry access gate spurred tales of the various backcountry locations nearby, what they were like, and who had died where – avalanches are serious business. Some was irrelevant but interesting – a read-through of a glossary of lift operations terms veered into a fifteen minute tale of the various crazy escapades that await if you go skiing in South America.

We watched cautionary videos – avalanches taking out entire hillsides, and more fun, the mass carnage that ensues if lifts loaded with passengers¹ lose all their brakes. We learned local tips’n’tricks (hitchhiking is a perfectly valid and effective mode of transportation) and, on occasion, how to operate the lifts.

All that training – well, some of it anyway – came in handy on Sunday, our opening day. Got sent up top; I raked, I shoveled, I pressed buttons, I smiled at the unceasing crowds. A few minor incidents: first, a little kid freaked out and failed to disembark, riding around the bullwheel² where I stopped him and ski patrol got him down. Later, I got to dance with a snowboardess who lost her balance coming off the lift and needed a guiding hand. The worst was an unfortunate young gal who fell on the ramp and dislocated her shoulder. I fielded anxious calls from down below wondering when we could turn again while listening to her cries of “Ow. OW! Not again!” All in a day’s work – a day that ended with a snowboard ride.

Life here is gorgeous and upbeat. My job is fun, my co-workers are cool, my leisure time is incredible, my home is nice, my roomate is quite possibly a figment of my imagination³. And of course, this is all just a taste – a little pink spoonful of mountainy goodness. Pretty soon it’ll be comin’ in by the quart.

Q: Should you be jealous?
A: Yes.

1. In this case, concrete blocks.
2. In case you’re not down with context, this is that big ol’ wheel at the top and bottom of a lift that reverses the direction of the chairs.
3. We keep divergent schedules, she has two jobs and a life. I’ve been here eight days and seen her twice. For about five minutes a pop.

I don’t know . . . they both look pretty damn spectacular from my deck.

Morning View
Goodnight, Moon

So yes, I’m alive and well and living in Silverthorne, Colorado¹. Not a whole lot to say yet, still mostly getting settled / going through training. We open the hill this weekend, though, so I’m sure I’ll have plenty soon.

More later, when
A) I have something to say
and
B) Using the ‘net doesn’t involve standing out on the neighbor’s front porch in the cold and balancing my laptop on the railing. No, seriously. WiFi beggars can’t be choosy.

1. Don’t have a mailing address yet, because apparently the bulk of this area doesn’t get mail delivery from the postal service – don’t ask me, I can’t explain either. I’ll send out PO box info once I obtain one, within the next week.

35 days
9430 miles
308.41 gallons of gas
$908.73 spent on gas
30.576 average mpg
Cheapest gas: $2.479/gal (somewhere on the Kansas Turnpike)
Most expensive gas: $3.499/gal (Williams, AZ)
26 States
2 Provinces
1 District
6 National Parks
2 National Monuments
1 National Seashore
1 National Historic Site
9 State/Provincial Parks
200 lbs ice (approx)
4 oil changes
1 visit to the mechanic
1 time pulled over
0 tickets (phew)
5 nights in hotels
14 nights with friends/family
15 nights camping
1 hell of a trip.

One last cheerful hello before I shut the lid:

The first time I was in Manhattan, the summer of 2000, S and I did a smaller and largely different version of the walking tour I did with J. Since we were on the south end of the city anyhow after a trip to Ellis Island, we walked by, and in fact, through, the World Trade Center. I remember it clearly enough; the enormity of the place was sufficient to make some sort of impression. But it was only when this memory forever became my sole personal experience with the place – only when the towers were conspicuous in their absence – that it emerged from my repository of remembrances. And even still, that was a brief re-emergence, prompted by tragedy. Four years and a month later, I really haven’t ever cause to think about it.

September eleventh this year I was driving down the highway in Phoenix en route to Tombstone. On an overpass, someone had used styrofoam cups shoved into chain-link fence to spell out “REMEMBER,” and was standing next to it, waving an American flag. It took me a second to process what they were referring to, since most of the trip I wasn’t aware of the day of the week, let alone the date. Quickly though, I figured it out and rolled my eyes. I don’t need some jackass making a non-biodegradable mess to remind me of the morning that is etched into my memory like laser to Lucite. But that’s nothing compared to New Yorkers.

This was best evidenced when I was talking to J (who grew up in nearby Jersey and has lived in Manhattan for seven years) about the Empire State Building. “So, is it still the tallest building here?” I asked, absently. He looked at me, and there was no mirth in his reply: “Well, it is now.” Mirth is ill-suited to the subject. Sunday afternoon we played poker on the roof, six or so stories up, as it was a nice day out. During the game, we commented on the excellence of the choice of locales. Someone remarked on the view, and J said, with the tone of voice that suggests a punchline, that it wasn’t as good as it used to be. The laughs all around were hollow and empty – born not of amusement, but of a complete lack of adequate response.

An update on the last of my tourism, lest I forget:

In Loretto, KY, four winding country roads from the highway, is the Maker’s Mark distillery. If you’ve been to one factory tour, you’ve been to most of them, but fortunately, not all. The highlight of this one was when the tour guide pointed to an open-faced wooden cask, 12 feet across by 12 feet deep, filled with fermenting bourbon-to-be, and said “go ahead, stick your finger in and take a taste.” The entire tour looked at her and each other, trying to figure out if she was kidding. She wasn’t. It was sorta like eating beer-flavored oatmeal. You also got the chance to buy a bottle and hand-dip it yourself in their signature red wax. No tastings, sadly, but they’d be pointless since they have one and only one recipe and it’s been in use for something like 150 years.

Afterwards was a tour of Mammoth Cave. I was excited about this one – I’ve enjoyed several other caves I’ve been to, and this one’s huge! Unfortunately, quantity stands alone, without its Q-brother. Mammoth is totally dry – no water seeps down, so there are none of the fascinating formations you think of when you think cave. It’s pretty much just huge tunnels filled with rocks – like road construction in progress. The particular tour I went on was at least unique; it was the last tour of the day, starting at sundown, and lit entirely by kersoene lanterns we carried in. Unfortunately, the ambience was ruined by 39 tourists, including kids, making constant mindless chit-chat with each other.

And last, but certainly not least filling, was my promised stop by Steak’n'Shake, for the titular meal. The quality to price ratio definitely lends some insight into Ebert’s girth. (Translation: yum.)

Aaaand back to the house-hunt, a.k.a. sitting in a coffee house, drinking hot liquid love¹, and waiting for calls to be returned.

1. No, not that, pervert. Caramel apple chaider. From Didn’t-Know-It-Existed to Moaning in one sip.

Sunday morning I steered my steel steed out of Cave City and onto the Interstates; a flat-out, high-speed burn through Louisville, Kansas City, and Topeka. I set out with a destination but no plan – twelve hundred miles is a lot of ground to cover, but I was eager to do so. I’d picked out a halfway point – a campground just outside KC. As I approached, though, I had no desire to ease up on the gas. Unsure that I wanted to go the distance, but sure that I was in no mood to relent, I continued westward, chasing after the sun as it slunk further and further away.

Automobile speeds are no match for the orbiting earth, unfortunately, and even crossing a new time zone couldn’t prevent it from going dark. I did, though, manage to catch up with the storm from days prior. Perhaps it was the pouring rain, perhaps the near-uninterrupted darkness, or perhaps merely my own carelessness, that led me not to notice that Crown Vic – until its unwelcome lights were performing a patriotic dance of red, white and blue upon my rear view.

Perhaps as solidarity between good ol’ American Boys, perhaps as simple kindness, and perhaps because he had better things to do than prosecute a simple speeding infraction, the trooper let me off with a warning, which went heeded. Velocity somewhat diminished, I doggedly pursued my westward goal, until around 1am (2am where I’d woken that day), when I lost confidence in my ability to further navigate the darkened deluge. I pulled into a rest stop, pulled a sleeping bag over my body, and unsettled into fitful slumber.

Around seven I tired of tossing and turning and took off. I shortly entered my new home-state, and not long after that, the continued rain became snow. My progress slowed but remained steady – and then, five miles east of the first evidence of civilization in a while, it slowed rapidly and unexpectedly. At first I thought I was slipping – that my wheels were spinning without contacting the ground. Then I realized the truth – my wheels were contacting the ground, but the only thing keeping them spinning was my rapidly dwindling forward momentum. I was out of gas. In the middle of a snowstorm.

I switched on my emergency blinkers, pointed at the side of the road, slowed to a stop, and sighed. Fortunately, I had cell service, and after a few minutes on hold, had AAAssurance that someone would be out within a half-hour. Forty minutes later, an older-model 4×4 pickup pulled up behind me and stopped. I got out and met the driver, who greeted me with a gas canister and “I’ve seen some dumb things in my day, but . . . “ I assured him I’d had plenty of time to contemplate my stupidity, and thanked him for his stated decision not to turn around en route, because he was afraid I’d freeze.

Re-invigorated with an infusion of dead dinosaur decay, Grover made it to the next, and, as it turned out, only exit. I’m now here in Limon, Colorado, where I bought gas, breakfast, and, reluctantly, a room for the night – the weather isn’t expected to abate until tomorrow, and the roads will reopen when they reopen. Fortunately, I’m replete with good literature – I just finished re-reading The Great Gatsby (and, unlike high school, actually and enthusiastically appreciated it), and there’s plenty more where that came. Hopefully this will only delay the beginning of my house-hunt by a day – and I rest confident that there is little chance, given the weather here at ~5800 feet, that anyone is out perusing property at 10k.

Dillon, CO:

Sunday : Cloudy with snow. Cooler. High 33F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 90%. 3 to 5 inches of snow expected.

Sunday night : Snow this evening will become heavy at times late. Low 26F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Snow accumulating 4 to 6 inches.

Monday : Periods of snow. Snow will be heavy at times especially during the morning. Cold. High 34F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 80%. 4 to 7 inches of snow expected.

This ain’t some three-plus hour drive to the hills, folks. This is my front porch – and that, of course, is why I’m going through all this craziness.

And now – it’s 1200 miles to the mountains, I’ve got half a tank of gas, “quit” smoking cigarettes, it’s gray, and I lost my sunglasses.

Hit it.