I come from Kansas; a slow, languid little piece of “fly-over” country. We’re a bit behind the socio-ecological curve, and for the most part, prefer it to be that way. When I moved to Colorado, the State that houses the city of Boulder, without knowing it I immediately upgraded to a place that was ahead of that curve. For example, in Kansas, going to the bathroom and emitting our bodily waste was a daily part of our existence; how passé. I learned that in some parts of Colorado, defecation is considered "ungreen", and an affront to the environment; those that are sensitive to our Mother, Earth, hold it in, out of respect for the planet. Perhaps that is why most of them are so full of shit. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Anyway, I’ve stumbled on to some things in Colorado that were heretofore unknown to this Midwestern farm boy; an example, the condition “gluten intolerance”. I was familiar with gluten, but couldn’t have told you much about it, including the notion that there are those that are intolerant of the stuff. The first night our restaurant was open, one of our first customers, (damn sure not Wally Reynolds), said that they were gluten intolerant. I asked, “What does that mean??” - Basically, no grains or grain products of any type – wheat, barley, rye, oats, no pasta. How do you survive in this world without being able to eat bread and pasta? Does this also mean no beer?? I was dumbfounded by this notion. (This isn’t to infer that being gluten intolerant isn’t a serious condition, or that those that are gluten intolerant are abnormal; my wonderment at this condition was more a function of me being ignorant, as I’d never been in the restaurant industry, and was also new to the State that includes Boulder.) So I am now tolerant of the gluten intolerant, however, it makes for tough menu planning when we’re doing a “Chef’s tasting” dinner.
Another new one to me, one that I didn’t run across living on the desolate plains of Shawnee, KS, was that there actually existed the paid profession of “Life Coach”. A Life Coach??? Isn’t that the role of a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a boss, a teacher or a friend? I soon learned that there are those who possibly had no parents, no spouses, no siblings, no bosses, no teachers or no friends to coach them, and by God, these individuals need to be coached; and there’s a market for that.
We entertained for dinner a group of ten people who had signed up with a Certified Life Coach for a mountain weekend of life coaching. They paid $1000 for the two-day experience. This fact alone tells me that they indeed do need some sort of coaching; maybe financial responsibility coaching, maybe common sense coaching, maybe even “yes, we’re certain you’ve lost your mind, but there’s still hope for you” coaching. When this group entered our establishment, I thought about having the “life coach” arrested. Taking money from these people for needing to be life coached was no different than a professional pickpocket hosting a “cash only” vacation to Las Vegas for a bunch of blind billionaires who’d also lost their sense of touch. A more obviously dysfunctional group I’d never seen. (I’m not intending to be mean, supercilious or insensitive – I’m just reporting the facts.) Again, that probably explains why these individuals felt they needed coaching. My guess is if you think you need a life coach, you probably do.
I explained that we’d be having a set small course menu, including a small salad, a gluten-laden ravioli appetizer, a fish dish, and Smoked Chicken Penne Pasta with Vodka Cream Sauce. Immediately, half of the group fidgeted noticeably and murmured amongst themselves. One in the group stood up and said “we don’t drink, and we don’t want vodka in our sauce”. I assured them that the vodka is cooked off in the preparation and there is no alcoholic content in the final sauce. Their collective bodily shaking and continual looking back and forth at each other for support told me that the vodka was still an issue – I reassured them that they’d have no vodka in their sauce, cooked-off or otherwise.
The group sat for dinner, and to describe them as an eclectic mix would shame any other group that would want to be described as an eclectic mix. (Talk about your celebrating diversity, and dammit, I’m all about celebrating diversity. Fishing, golf, drinking martinis, listening to music, and celebrating diversity – that’s me in a nutshell; and not necessarily in that order!) We had women who you’d see working at the Clinique counter at Nordstrom, and we had women who were the antithesis of who you’d see working at the Clinique counter at Nordstrom. There was a young, shy, heavily tattooed Goth girl that weighed maybe 80 pounds, and another who would have been a third, maybe even a second round, NFL draft pick for linebacker. You’d have made the Goth girl jump through the roof if you said “boo” to her – the lady linebacker would have thrown you through the roof if you said “boo” to her. It made for some interesting table waiting.
At one point, as Darin and I were delivering one of the courses, one of the guests loudly made a point to the rest of the table, saying “if all males were castrated at birth, there would be no violence in the world”. I wanted to chime in with my opinion that unsolicited castration might be considered a violent act, but I thought better of it and kept to my ‘seen but not heard’ table waiting. I also surreptitiously took the yet-to-be used knife from her place setting. Darin quickly excused himself and crept back into the kitchen, where I’m certain he slipped into his custom-made Kevlar codpiece. I got so nervous when waiting on her that I almost dropped the vodka-free chicken pasta down her back; however, had I actually made that mistake, the hair on her back fortunately would have kept her from noticing my spill and sending her on a frantic search for her missing table knife, with which she would have attempted a retaliatory castration.
Dinner ended with little fanfare, and the group huddled together and moved out into the night. I will give the life coach credit, as she seemed to have all of her charges in sync, functioning as a group, supporting each other, murmuring together, mutually avoiding eye contact with strangers, etc. The way they banded together and moved out of the hotel reminded me a little of the minimalist animation used in the South Park TV show. In fact, now that I think about it, I’ve seen this group and their foibles in the South Park TV show.
So, one more thing I can chalk up on my Colorado life experience board – there are people that feel the need to be coached, and there are those who, for a not-so nominal fee, will coach them. My guess is that if this particular life coach were to read this blog, she would gladly, and at no charge, coach me as to how I can take my opinion of her chosen profession and shove it up my you know what. Not a problem, as we don’t use our you-know-what’s in Colorado for you know what.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
What I did on my vacation....
The plan was to shut down the hotel and restaurant after an Easter Sunday Brunch until Memorial Day weekend for a few weeks of vacation and a few more weeks of backbreaking labor spent redoing the kitchen, spring cleaning and a general reorganization of things before the big summer season. Our two-week vacation involved driving back to KC to spend some time with family and friends, then a few days fishing and relaxing at The Lake of the Ozarks, then back to KC for a second week of visiting and sprucing things up around the unsold house before heading back to Hot Sulphur. Everything went smoothly and as planned, until we got in the car to leave.
Thursday, April 16, greeted us with the biggest single day snowfall of the winter. This being our first winter in Hot Sulphur, we’d never experienced a snow like this – any synonym for “pounded” that you can think of would aptly describe the inundation of snowflakes that occurred. I would estimate we received two feet of snow in a little less than an hour. Two days prior to this, Julie spent the day in the backyard raking, arranging rocks around a soon-to-be wildflower mound, i.e. readying the outside for spring; she received a nasty sunburn on her back in the process. 48 hours later, we are bundled up to the gills in our LL Bean parkas, walking the dog along the river in a snowfall so thick and so heavy, we literally couldn’t see 10 feet in front of us. It was beautiful and spectacular, but quickly reminded us that all is never as it seems in the mountains of Colorado. We’d been lulled into a false sense that the winter was behind us – foolish flatlanders we were still. This blast of December in April also made us all the more excited about leaving it behind to head for the comparatively tropical respite that awaited us in KC.
The Friday morning of our departure dawned clear in Hot Sulphur, the snow having dumped it’s last on us for this winter. (Long time Grand Countians are now laughing at my Midwestern naiveté. They know we’re liable to get snowed on in the middle of the summer. In fact, in 2008 it snowed above 9000’ every month of the year, July and August included.) We headed east and not long out of town you could see the dark clouds that awaited us ahead. Twelve short miles from home, on the eastern edge of Granby, the snow started. By the time we got to Winter Park, 20 miles further east of Granby and 2000’ higher in elevation, that pounded by snow thing was happening again. On to Berthoud Pass – a stretch of road that can be daunting on a clear summer day to those not acclimatized to mountain driving. Try maneuvering it in a blizzard so profound that my windshield wipers couldn’t wipe the falling snow away quickly enough for me to see. Near the top of the pass, elevation 11,000’ and also the Continental Divide, the snow was a foot deep on the roads, and the only way I could see where I was going was to stick my head out the window and look for the guardrails. Once at the top of the pass, the downward decent on the eastern slope of the divide saw an instant decrease in the snowfall; still coming down beyond anything that we’re used to in Kansas City, but decreased enough that I could see through the windshield. 20 miles later we’re on I-70, heading east, still snowing hard, and now you’ve got semi-trucks to deal with. You know, 80,000 pounds of screaming steel, most often piloted by drivers whose IQ’s barely approach the number of wheels on their rigs. The west-bound lane of I-70 was already shut down by two of these cowboys who’d jackknifed their trucks after finding out that when you drive a big truck real fast on snow and ice, and then slam on the brakes, your ability to stop in a timely fashion is greatly diminished. Who’d be expected to know such a thing?!
We stopped briefly in Denver, where it was snowing slushballs – falling globs of slush the size of golf balls that sounded, when they hit your car, as if a group of 20 gloved pugilists were working on your vehicle like they would a taunting sweat bag. Again, we can smile at this because we are in the process of leaving it behind for a few weeks. As we head further east, the slush turns to rain and fog; hard rain and heavy fog, all the way to Salina, KS. Somewhere along the way, maybe between Colby and Hays, KS, we hear a noise beneath the car that sounds as if we’ve run over a rock, and it has hit the bottom center of the car. Nothing seems amiss, and on we drive. When the rain stopped and the wipers finally went off, I began to hear a noise that sounded a little like white noise that you would hear if the radio were on, but not tuned to a station. Not being able to discover the source, I again went back to the matter at hand, i.e. eating up ground in an easterly direction.
I’ll make this brief, because it isn’t interesting and I can’t make it funny. The bad rock under the car noise and undetectable “white noise” noise was a failed transfer case in the four-wheel drive transmission – those are $1400 at your local auto repair shop. It was a long first day of vacation.
Day two finds us at our unsold home in KC. In mid-March, I received a “feedback” email from a realtor who showed the house, which simply said “sump pump is broken, basement is flooded.” It being a buyer’s market and all, his clients decided to pass on our house and look for one without a flooded basement. I’m cool with that. (We find out that the pilot light in the heater has gone off, and there is no heat in the house. This causes the water in the pipes to freeze, and the pipes to burst, including the exhaust line on the sump pump. When the weather warms, and it begins to rain, the sump pump is doing its intended thing, pumping water away from our foundation; except the water isn’t being pumped outside, it’s being pumped right through that ruptured pipe back into our basement – “sump pump is broken, basement is flooded”.) In having the situation remedied from 700 miles away, the repairman tells me that we also have several copper pipes that have burst, and they will need to be repaired before the water can be turned back on. I decide to tackle this myself when I’m back on vacation, and begin to do just that upon our Saturday arrival.
Two hours and seven trips to the Home Depot later, I’ve got a new sump pump and four new pieces of copper pipe installed. It is time for the moment of truth that all amateur plumbers dread – time to turn on the water and check for leaks. I turn on the main valve, and quickly head for the repaired breaks; all looks good, no leaks. But I hear running water coming from upstairs; lots of water like the sound that a big, pretty waterfall makes. I quickly turn the main off and run upstairs, and am quick to detect the source of the waterfall sound, as water is pouring out of a recessed can-light fixture in the kitchen, out of the center of the ceiling in the family room, and down a wall in the dining room. It splatters as it hits the bare hardwood floor, and the sound of the splatter resonates throughout the empty house. I’m thinking maybe there are more broken pipes than I’ve accounted for. On the bright side, I’m in Kansas City, and I am actually able to get a plumber to 1) answer his phone and 2) show up as promised – sober to boot! Six large holes cut in our ceiling and a $600 plumbing bill later, and we have running water again. However, we still have six large holes cut in our ceilings and walls; another not so appealing feature in a buyer’s real estate market.
The final indignity occurred Monday morning, April 26th. It stormed and rained heavily Sunday night/Monday morning, this on top of already saturated ground. Remember that new sump pump I installed? I commented to Julie at the time, “never has one of my home repair projects gone so smoothly.” I hooked it up right, measured everything right the first time, plugged it in and tested it – Bingo, it worked like a champ; I saved $250 in plumbing labor. However, a real plumber – the ones that charge $250 to hook these babies up - would have known to make sure the float switch was unobstructed. Float switch, unobstructed? What the hell is that all about? It’s about the little ball that, when the pit is full of water, floats to the top of the sump pit and turns the pump on; if the ball isn’t able to float free and unobstructed, the pump won’t turn on and the basement will flood - again, only this time worse than before. All of the new padding that had been installed from the first flood had to be ripped up and replaced, not to mention the cost of drying the basement out with big blowers and dehumidifiers. Thank God for insurance, but damn those high deductibles.
So, as vacations go, this one wouldn’t rate high on the list of providing quality rest and relaxation; starting out with the ultimate ride piloting the white knuckle express down
Mt. Snowdeath, and finishing with an infrastructural nightmare that made us long for our 106-year old Colorado money pit. Between our places in Hot Sulphur and Kansas City, I’d better be getting some big-ass Christmas hams from plumbers this year, as I certainly don’t expect to be getting any from blog-reading semi-drivers; not that there are any.
Thursday, April 16, greeted us with the biggest single day snowfall of the winter. This being our first winter in Hot Sulphur, we’d never experienced a snow like this – any synonym for “pounded” that you can think of would aptly describe the inundation of snowflakes that occurred. I would estimate we received two feet of snow in a little less than an hour. Two days prior to this, Julie spent the day in the backyard raking, arranging rocks around a soon-to-be wildflower mound, i.e. readying the outside for spring; she received a nasty sunburn on her back in the process. 48 hours later, we are bundled up to the gills in our LL Bean parkas, walking the dog along the river in a snowfall so thick and so heavy, we literally couldn’t see 10 feet in front of us. It was beautiful and spectacular, but quickly reminded us that all is never as it seems in the mountains of Colorado. We’d been lulled into a false sense that the winter was behind us – foolish flatlanders we were still. This blast of December in April also made us all the more excited about leaving it behind to head for the comparatively tropical respite that awaited us in KC.
The Friday morning of our departure dawned clear in Hot Sulphur, the snow having dumped it’s last on us for this winter. (Long time Grand Countians are now laughing at my Midwestern naiveté. They know we’re liable to get snowed on in the middle of the summer. In fact, in 2008 it snowed above 9000’ every month of the year, July and August included.) We headed east and not long out of town you could see the dark clouds that awaited us ahead. Twelve short miles from home, on the eastern edge of Granby, the snow started. By the time we got to Winter Park, 20 miles further east of Granby and 2000’ higher in elevation, that pounded by snow thing was happening again. On to Berthoud Pass – a stretch of road that can be daunting on a clear summer day to those not acclimatized to mountain driving. Try maneuvering it in a blizzard so profound that my windshield wipers couldn’t wipe the falling snow away quickly enough for me to see. Near the top of the pass, elevation 11,000’ and also the Continental Divide, the snow was a foot deep on the roads, and the only way I could see where I was going was to stick my head out the window and look for the guardrails. Once at the top of the pass, the downward decent on the eastern slope of the divide saw an instant decrease in the snowfall; still coming down beyond anything that we’re used to in Kansas City, but decreased enough that I could see through the windshield. 20 miles later we’re on I-70, heading east, still snowing hard, and now you’ve got semi-trucks to deal with. You know, 80,000 pounds of screaming steel, most often piloted by drivers whose IQ’s barely approach the number of wheels on their rigs. The west-bound lane of I-70 was already shut down by two of these cowboys who’d jackknifed their trucks after finding out that when you drive a big truck real fast on snow and ice, and then slam on the brakes, your ability to stop in a timely fashion is greatly diminished. Who’d be expected to know such a thing?!
We stopped briefly in Denver, where it was snowing slushballs – falling globs of slush the size of golf balls that sounded, when they hit your car, as if a group of 20 gloved pugilists were working on your vehicle like they would a taunting sweat bag. Again, we can smile at this because we are in the process of leaving it behind for a few weeks. As we head further east, the slush turns to rain and fog; hard rain and heavy fog, all the way to Salina, KS. Somewhere along the way, maybe between Colby and Hays, KS, we hear a noise beneath the car that sounds as if we’ve run over a rock, and it has hit the bottom center of the car. Nothing seems amiss, and on we drive. When the rain stopped and the wipers finally went off, I began to hear a noise that sounded a little like white noise that you would hear if the radio were on, but not tuned to a station. Not being able to discover the source, I again went back to the matter at hand, i.e. eating up ground in an easterly direction.
I’ll make this brief, because it isn’t interesting and I can’t make it funny. The bad rock under the car noise and undetectable “white noise” noise was a failed transfer case in the four-wheel drive transmission – those are $1400 at your local auto repair shop. It was a long first day of vacation.
Day two finds us at our unsold home in KC. In mid-March, I received a “feedback” email from a realtor who showed the house, which simply said “sump pump is broken, basement is flooded.” It being a buyer’s market and all, his clients decided to pass on our house and look for one without a flooded basement. I’m cool with that. (We find out that the pilot light in the heater has gone off, and there is no heat in the house. This causes the water in the pipes to freeze, and the pipes to burst, including the exhaust line on the sump pump. When the weather warms, and it begins to rain, the sump pump is doing its intended thing, pumping water away from our foundation; except the water isn’t being pumped outside, it’s being pumped right through that ruptured pipe back into our basement – “sump pump is broken, basement is flooded”.) In having the situation remedied from 700 miles away, the repairman tells me that we also have several copper pipes that have burst, and they will need to be repaired before the water can be turned back on. I decide to tackle this myself when I’m back on vacation, and begin to do just that upon our Saturday arrival.
Two hours and seven trips to the Home Depot later, I’ve got a new sump pump and four new pieces of copper pipe installed. It is time for the moment of truth that all amateur plumbers dread – time to turn on the water and check for leaks. I turn on the main valve, and quickly head for the repaired breaks; all looks good, no leaks. But I hear running water coming from upstairs; lots of water like the sound that a big, pretty waterfall makes. I quickly turn the main off and run upstairs, and am quick to detect the source of the waterfall sound, as water is pouring out of a recessed can-light fixture in the kitchen, out of the center of the ceiling in the family room, and down a wall in the dining room. It splatters as it hits the bare hardwood floor, and the sound of the splatter resonates throughout the empty house. I’m thinking maybe there are more broken pipes than I’ve accounted for. On the bright side, I’m in Kansas City, and I am actually able to get a plumber to 1) answer his phone and 2) show up as promised – sober to boot! Six large holes cut in our ceiling and a $600 plumbing bill later, and we have running water again. However, we still have six large holes cut in our ceilings and walls; another not so appealing feature in a buyer’s real estate market.
The final indignity occurred Monday morning, April 26th. It stormed and rained heavily Sunday night/Monday morning, this on top of already saturated ground. Remember that new sump pump I installed? I commented to Julie at the time, “never has one of my home repair projects gone so smoothly.” I hooked it up right, measured everything right the first time, plugged it in and tested it – Bingo, it worked like a champ; I saved $250 in plumbing labor. However, a real plumber – the ones that charge $250 to hook these babies up - would have known to make sure the float switch was unobstructed. Float switch, unobstructed? What the hell is that all about? It’s about the little ball that, when the pit is full of water, floats to the top of the sump pit and turns the pump on; if the ball isn’t able to float free and unobstructed, the pump won’t turn on and the basement will flood - again, only this time worse than before. All of the new padding that had been installed from the first flood had to be ripped up and replaced, not to mention the cost of drying the basement out with big blowers and dehumidifiers. Thank God for insurance, but damn those high deductibles.
So, as vacations go, this one wouldn’t rate high on the list of providing quality rest and relaxation; starting out with the ultimate ride piloting the white knuckle express down
Mt. Snowdeath, and finishing with an infrastructural nightmare that made us long for our 106-year old Colorado money pit. Between our places in Hot Sulphur and Kansas City, I’d better be getting some big-ass Christmas hams from plumbers this year, as I certainly don’t expect to be getting any from blog-reading semi-drivers; not that there are any.
Friday, May 8, 2009
The Colorado River, in spring
It is May 8, 2009, and I’m looking out of our dining room window at the Colorado River. The sun is setting behind Mt. Bross, and the river glows, as if Hollywood’s higher technical powers had grabbed hold of it. I know, that when gazing upon this iconic river of rivers – one that ranks with the Nile, the Amazon and the Mississippi, not because of its size or length, but because of what it has wrought, namely The Grand Canyon – that I am viewing, from my dining room, a living, flowing entity that history was forged from, songs are composed of and books are written about. Imagine that we live on a piece of land that is now our property, a piece of land that John Wesley Powell, Kit Carson, John Fremont and numerous other historical luminaries have paddled by and camped near; not to mention the Native American tribes, particularly the Ute Indians, who’ve called this area home for 10,000 years. I acknowledge that I’m blessed to be here, but also realize that I’m not a spec of what makes this ground relevant to human history.
When I think about it, it is more than a little humbling; life is built on and around rivers. Most of our great cities are built on rivers, and those rivers are our lore, our past, our present and our future; we sometimes take them for granted but at the same time, we always revere and romanticize them. They are more famous and more vital to our survival than mountains, buildings, streets, cities and people. A river is why Paris and London will be a world destination, and the lack of a river is why Los Angeles will never be anything more than a population center. Here’s the A-list river roll call – Seine, Danube, Thames, Ganges, Indus, Volga, Niagara, Yangtze, Amazon, Nile, Mississippi, Colorado. I might have missed one, but not the one I live upon.
For a fact, The Riverside Hotel is the oldest existing, non-agricultural, business on the Colorado River. It may be the only business directly on the Colorado River that isn’t a farm or ranch – I’m still researching this. Again, that humbles me. We moved to The Riverside in June of 2008; by the time we’d moved in, the river had thawed and was flowing freely. 2009, being our first winter/spring living on The Colorado, was also my first time seeing the river frozen, then thawing, then flowing, then bursting and roiling. I will liken the witnessing of the transformation of the Colorado River from solid to liquid as experiencing the grandeur, spectacle, wonder and awe of seeing fireworks as a child for the first time. Out of my kitchen window, I watched daily as this 30-yard wide, snow covered and dormant piece of river turned into a boiling, rushing and violent living thing that popped, cracked and screamed its way into a new season. It was an “aha!” answer to one of the questions of “why did we give up what we had to move to a place like this?” – The answer, to witness a once-in-a-lifetime liquid fireworks show that lasted a couple of weeks. And it continues on a daily basis. 200 yards south of our river property, The Colorado bends at a 90-degree western dog-leg, and then S-curves another four or five times until it flows into Byers Canyon. Right now, at that first bend south of our property, the river thrashes and rails like a white-capped sea, unaccepting of the Fly fishermen who typically probe its languid pools during the summer months; at its present state, no caddis, no midge, no Wooly Bugger will find respite in this tumultuous stew, nor will a trout indulge.
This was my first, and it may be my last spring gaze upon the seasonal transmogrification of The Colorado. If that is the case, I can say that I witnessed a sight so spectacular and significant that it will be remembered and cherished like the first view of my newborn children, the first glimpse of my beautiful wife and the lingering memory of the love of my parents for their child. It will forever be as essential to my being as water.
If you have the chance, if it’s even for a short while, live on a river.
When I think about it, it is more than a little humbling; life is built on and around rivers. Most of our great cities are built on rivers, and those rivers are our lore, our past, our present and our future; we sometimes take them for granted but at the same time, we always revere and romanticize them. They are more famous and more vital to our survival than mountains, buildings, streets, cities and people. A river is why Paris and London will be a world destination, and the lack of a river is why Los Angeles will never be anything more than a population center. Here’s the A-list river roll call – Seine, Danube, Thames, Ganges, Indus, Volga, Niagara, Yangtze, Amazon, Nile, Mississippi, Colorado. I might have missed one, but not the one I live upon.
For a fact, The Riverside Hotel is the oldest existing, non-agricultural, business on the Colorado River. It may be the only business directly on the Colorado River that isn’t a farm or ranch – I’m still researching this. Again, that humbles me. We moved to The Riverside in June of 2008; by the time we’d moved in, the river had thawed and was flowing freely. 2009, being our first winter/spring living on The Colorado, was also my first time seeing the river frozen, then thawing, then flowing, then bursting and roiling. I will liken the witnessing of the transformation of the Colorado River from solid to liquid as experiencing the grandeur, spectacle, wonder and awe of seeing fireworks as a child for the first time. Out of my kitchen window, I watched daily as this 30-yard wide, snow covered and dormant piece of river turned into a boiling, rushing and violent living thing that popped, cracked and screamed its way into a new season. It was an “aha!” answer to one of the questions of “why did we give up what we had to move to a place like this?” – The answer, to witness a once-in-a-lifetime liquid fireworks show that lasted a couple of weeks. And it continues on a daily basis. 200 yards south of our river property, The Colorado bends at a 90-degree western dog-leg, and then S-curves another four or five times until it flows into Byers Canyon. Right now, at that first bend south of our property, the river thrashes and rails like a white-capped sea, unaccepting of the Fly fishermen who typically probe its languid pools during the summer months; at its present state, no caddis, no midge, no Wooly Bugger will find respite in this tumultuous stew, nor will a trout indulge.
This was my first, and it may be my last spring gaze upon the seasonal transmogrification of The Colorado. If that is the case, I can say that I witnessed a sight so spectacular and significant that it will be remembered and cherished like the first view of my newborn children, the first glimpse of my beautiful wife and the lingering memory of the love of my parents for their child. It will forever be as essential to my being as water.
If you have the chance, if it’s even for a short while, live on a river.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The 2nd day of the New Year
Friday, January 2nd; Darin is a free man, thanks to the American Express card, and back on the job at The Riverside. That was a good thing, as our hotel was nearly full, as was the restaurant reservation log. I was back in our living quarters taking my shower, getting ready for the evening, when I noticed the shower drain wasn’t draining so well. Out of the shower, I then notice the toilet is also backed up. Our newly remodeled and re-plumbed living quarters had already had a few issues with the plumbing, so I cursed the plumbing issues and the half-assed contractor who did the half-assed job, quickly got dressed and told Julie I’d plunge later, as the dinner rush had started. I’m not long in the kitchen when I see that one of the sinks, the one that is supposed to be used only for washing hands but is also frequently used by our cooking staff as a dump sink for food stuffs, has standing water and isn’t draining. I throw my first bona-fide fit in front of the help since owning the hotel – cussing, throwing things, yelling “how many times have I told you not to dump food in the sink!!” at everyone but no one in particular. They weren’t impressed. I then notice the floor drain isn’t draining. I was then quick to deduce that there was a pattern, a pattern that I’d seen once before – I knew we had a clogged main sewage line.
The State of Colorado Department of Health & Environment – the folks who oversee the safety and sanitation of our restaurant – have a pretty basic rule about not being able to prepare or serve food without access to a free-flowing water and waste disposal system. Damned pesky bureaucrats! I had no choice but to close the restaurant; a nearly full restaurant, with a nearly full bar waiting for tables, as well as numerous reservations for tables later in the evening. My hope was that I could get this problem solved in time to at least re-open in an hour and accommodate the evening’s second seating. But wait a minute….I suddenly remembered we weren’t in Kansas anymore. I remembered that you can’t get a plumber in Grand County to show up for a scheduled job at 10:00 on a Monday morning (unless maybe it’s to fix the dispensing valve on your beer keg), let alone answer an after hour emergency call on a Friday night over a holiday weekend. I tried my best, going alphabetically through all of the Grand County plumbers, all of whose ads touted “24 Hour Emergency Service”, and got not one, not a single one, who could make it to The Riverside that evening.
(Shortly after moving to Hot Sulphur, one of my neighbors told me a story about how they went to one of the local plumbers who lived across the street from them on a Saturday, and begged him to come fix a plumbing emergency. They promised double the amount, in cash, that he would necessarily get for such a job. “Please, Please, Pleeeeze” they begged of him. His simple and direct reply was “I’m not feeling it today.” I’ve come to learn that is pretty much the working man’s mantra in Grand County.)
I was left with no other option than to call my friend Tony, (who lives up the street and is an excellent plumber), of whose good and reliable nature I hate to take advantage. Tony is in Denver and unable to help, but as luck would have it, Tony’s company has a plumber, Ron, on call, and he also lives in Hot Sulphur. I call the number, but it goes to voice mail; I leave my pleading message with Ron, and then go to my second-to-last resort.
I send my son Scott up to the Barking Dog Pub in search of another local plumber who has the same name as a deceased rock star, (first name rhymes with “Jan” and last name rhymes with “Hogleberg”), and is known to frequent the Barking Dog. More to the truth, he lives at the Barking Dog and is occasionally known to frequent his house. (I don’t mean to malign that un-named plumber, as he has saved our plumbing bacon on more than one occasion, and were he to read this blog and figure out who I’m talking about, I thank him for his past fine efforts on our behalf.) Scott triumphantly returns with good news – no, the deceased rock star-named plumber isn’t there, but there was another plumber sitting at the end of the bar who volunteered his services, and he would be down shortly. And who says only the Irish to have such fine luck?
In walks our Johnny-on-the-spot plumber, Ron; this would be Tony’s Ron who was on call that evening. Did I say “in walks”? Perhaps I should say in reeled, in staggered, in swayed, in teetered, in lurched, in weaved; Mr. Roget doesn’t yet have a synonym for the one word you would use to aptly describe Ron’s’ mode of locomotion. I direct Ron, with great effort, back to the kitchen, where he immediately spots the backed-up hand sink. Without saying a word, he plops himself down on the floor and begins to attempt to dismantle the P-trap under the sink. I say to Ron, and I was being very dramatic at this point by raising my voice, waving my arms about and pointing in all directions, “It’s not the P-trap! We’re backed up in our bathroom, we’re backed up in the bar, we’re backed up in the kitchen; WE’RE BACKED UP EVERYWHERE. THE MAIN IS BACKED UP!!” Ron looks up at me and, uttering his first words of the night, says “Shlow down a minute, will ya?” He then turns his glazed eyes back on the P-trap, which he successfully dismantles, and watches as the turbid water rushes from the sink drain into his lap.
I help a very wet and still very drunk Ron up from the floor, and lead him to the main hotel lobby, where the entrance to the crawl space, which contains the main plumbing lines, is located. Down into the space we go, and I point out the main sewage discharge line. Ron looks all around the crawl space as if he was looking for an “Easy” button, or perhaps a detonator that would blow this plumbing problem into the next county. Remember, he’s having a tough time with his equilibrium, so the sight of this man half hunched over in the 5’ tall crawl space looking and pointing at the pipes all about him took on the appearance of a drunken sailor swatting at bees below deck in a violent sea.
Ron finally gets his bearings, and faces me with his assessment of the situation. He also delivers this assessment in a dramatic fashion, similar to my aforementioned dramatic outburst in the kitchen. “Everythings backwards down here. Thish pipe ish running backwards, thish pipe should be goin th’other way. Whoever built thish thing got it all screwed up!” He then proceeds to crawl slowly and carefully up the steps, and sits on the edge of the crawl space, his legs dangling over the abyss, his elbows on his knees, and his face buried in his hands. He doesn’t move for 15 minutes. When he finally stirs – I wasn’t there to see this but heard it second hand – he gets up, says not a word to anyone present, then staggers/reels/teeters/sways/weaves/lurches his way out the front door and into the cold, dark, January night.
In walks one of our kitchen employees, who happens to have a drug connection who is also a plumber. (This drug connection thing is not uncommon in Grand County, or in the restaurant business.) I previously mentioned that the dead rock star-named plumber was my second-to- last resort – this drug connection plumber was indeed my last resort. That story about “I’m not feeling it today,” - that might also be this guy. But then I figure, “What do I have to lose?” At the very least, I’ll have more fodder for the blog.
Enter Plumber #3, the most unreliable plumber in Grand County. That’s like being the worst sinner in Las Vegas or the biggest drunk at Mardi gras, or…..you get the point.
Not only am I stunned that he showed up when summoned, but he’s bright eyed, he’s clean, he’s sober, and he’s ready to tackle the problem. All those present, at least those who knew this gentleman and his predilections, could’ve been knocked over by a puff of bong exhaust.
Four hours and $400 dollars later, our local hero has the lines flowing free. He worked down in that fetid crawl space from 8:00 until midnight, flushing the line with a high pressure “jetter”, and then cleaning up the offal responsible for the clog - and it wasn't good offal. This was a job so nasty and so incredibly filthy, that the Dirty Jobs guy on TV would’ve hired it out; and our man did it with a smile. No matter what Plumber #3 didn’t do before, or what he may yet not do in the future, the night of January 2nd will forever be known in local lore as the night that Grand Counties most infamous slacker plumber, actually plumbed, and in doing so, saved our bacon and allowed The Riverside to continue to serve some of Grand Counties finest food in a sewage-free environment, per the State code.
The State of Colorado Department of Health & Environment – the folks who oversee the safety and sanitation of our restaurant – have a pretty basic rule about not being able to prepare or serve food without access to a free-flowing water and waste disposal system. Damned pesky bureaucrats! I had no choice but to close the restaurant; a nearly full restaurant, with a nearly full bar waiting for tables, as well as numerous reservations for tables later in the evening. My hope was that I could get this problem solved in time to at least re-open in an hour and accommodate the evening’s second seating. But wait a minute….I suddenly remembered we weren’t in Kansas anymore. I remembered that you can’t get a plumber in Grand County to show up for a scheduled job at 10:00 on a Monday morning (unless maybe it’s to fix the dispensing valve on your beer keg), let alone answer an after hour emergency call on a Friday night over a holiday weekend. I tried my best, going alphabetically through all of the Grand County plumbers, all of whose ads touted “24 Hour Emergency Service”, and got not one, not a single one, who could make it to The Riverside that evening.
(Shortly after moving to Hot Sulphur, one of my neighbors told me a story about how they went to one of the local plumbers who lived across the street from them on a Saturday, and begged him to come fix a plumbing emergency. They promised double the amount, in cash, that he would necessarily get for such a job. “Please, Please, Pleeeeze” they begged of him. His simple and direct reply was “I’m not feeling it today.” I’ve come to learn that is pretty much the working man’s mantra in Grand County.)
I was left with no other option than to call my friend Tony, (who lives up the street and is an excellent plumber), of whose good and reliable nature I hate to take advantage. Tony is in Denver and unable to help, but as luck would have it, Tony’s company has a plumber, Ron, on call, and he also lives in Hot Sulphur. I call the number, but it goes to voice mail; I leave my pleading message with Ron, and then go to my second-to-last resort.
I send my son Scott up to the Barking Dog Pub in search of another local plumber who has the same name as a deceased rock star, (first name rhymes with “Jan” and last name rhymes with “Hogleberg”), and is known to frequent the Barking Dog. More to the truth, he lives at the Barking Dog and is occasionally known to frequent his house. (I don’t mean to malign that un-named plumber, as he has saved our plumbing bacon on more than one occasion, and were he to read this blog and figure out who I’m talking about, I thank him for his past fine efforts on our behalf.) Scott triumphantly returns with good news – no, the deceased rock star-named plumber isn’t there, but there was another plumber sitting at the end of the bar who volunteered his services, and he would be down shortly. And who says only the Irish to have such fine luck?
In walks our Johnny-on-the-spot plumber, Ron; this would be Tony’s Ron who was on call that evening. Did I say “in walks”? Perhaps I should say in reeled, in staggered, in swayed, in teetered, in lurched, in weaved; Mr. Roget doesn’t yet have a synonym for the one word you would use to aptly describe Ron’s’ mode of locomotion. I direct Ron, with great effort, back to the kitchen, where he immediately spots the backed-up hand sink. Without saying a word, he plops himself down on the floor and begins to attempt to dismantle the P-trap under the sink. I say to Ron, and I was being very dramatic at this point by raising my voice, waving my arms about and pointing in all directions, “It’s not the P-trap! We’re backed up in our bathroom, we’re backed up in the bar, we’re backed up in the kitchen; WE’RE BACKED UP EVERYWHERE. THE MAIN IS BACKED UP!!” Ron looks up at me and, uttering his first words of the night, says “Shlow down a minute, will ya?” He then turns his glazed eyes back on the P-trap, which he successfully dismantles, and watches as the turbid water rushes from the sink drain into his lap.
I help a very wet and still very drunk Ron up from the floor, and lead him to the main hotel lobby, where the entrance to the crawl space, which contains the main plumbing lines, is located. Down into the space we go, and I point out the main sewage discharge line. Ron looks all around the crawl space as if he was looking for an “Easy” button, or perhaps a detonator that would blow this plumbing problem into the next county. Remember, he’s having a tough time with his equilibrium, so the sight of this man half hunched over in the 5’ tall crawl space looking and pointing at the pipes all about him took on the appearance of a drunken sailor swatting at bees below deck in a violent sea.
Ron finally gets his bearings, and faces me with his assessment of the situation. He also delivers this assessment in a dramatic fashion, similar to my aforementioned dramatic outburst in the kitchen. “Everythings backwards down here. Thish pipe ish running backwards, thish pipe should be goin th’other way. Whoever built thish thing got it all screwed up!” He then proceeds to crawl slowly and carefully up the steps, and sits on the edge of the crawl space, his legs dangling over the abyss, his elbows on his knees, and his face buried in his hands. He doesn’t move for 15 minutes. When he finally stirs – I wasn’t there to see this but heard it second hand – he gets up, says not a word to anyone present, then staggers/reels/teeters/sways/weaves/lurches his way out the front door and into the cold, dark, January night.
In walks one of our kitchen employees, who happens to have a drug connection who is also a plumber. (This drug connection thing is not uncommon in Grand County, or in the restaurant business.) I previously mentioned that the dead rock star-named plumber was my second-to- last resort – this drug connection plumber was indeed my last resort. That story about “I’m not feeling it today,” - that might also be this guy. But then I figure, “What do I have to lose?” At the very least, I’ll have more fodder for the blog.
Enter Plumber #3, the most unreliable plumber in Grand County. That’s like being the worst sinner in Las Vegas or the biggest drunk at Mardi gras, or…..you get the point.
Not only am I stunned that he showed up when summoned, but he’s bright eyed, he’s clean, he’s sober, and he’s ready to tackle the problem. All those present, at least those who knew this gentleman and his predilections, could’ve been knocked over by a puff of bong exhaust.
Four hours and $400 dollars later, our local hero has the lines flowing free. He worked down in that fetid crawl space from 8:00 until midnight, flushing the line with a high pressure “jetter”, and then cleaning up the offal responsible for the clog - and it wasn't good offal. This was a job so nasty and so incredibly filthy, that the Dirty Jobs guy on TV would’ve hired it out; and our man did it with a smile. No matter what Plumber #3 didn’t do before, or what he may yet not do in the future, the night of January 2nd will forever be known in local lore as the night that Grand Counties most infamous slacker plumber, actually plumbed, and in doing so, saved our bacon and allowed The Riverside to continue to serve some of Grand Counties finest food in a sewage-free environment, per the State code.
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