Friday the 13th...The Final Chapter / Part II

Our first six months of operation were not indicative of the financial struggles that lay ahead. First of all, Julie and I weren’t there to experience the experience; rather, we were relying on three un-supervised inn-keeping novices under the age of 25 to manage our life savings. The business still had a decent amount of money in the bank, and Julie and I both still had jobs and incomes. I’d sit down monthly to pay bills and payroll for the distant business without feeling much of a sting; I went along as happily as if I had good sense.

Things started to get a little hinky when we hired the previously-mentioned bar-tender/building contractor to redo our living quarters. Again, this was an instance of me ignoring the fact that I was all but being beat to within an inch of my life by red flags, as prior to engaging Irish Car Bomb Bob the Builder to tackle the big job of renovating our quarters, I hired him to redo our walk-in cooler that the State Department of Health mandated be redone. That job went 40% over budget and took two weeks longer to complete than promised; yet armed with this knowledge, I went ahead and rehired Farson & McBytemee for the living quarters. Their proposal seemed sound, and while at the high end of what we could afford, the numbers still fell within my worst-case budget for the project. There was one important little fact that the contractors held from us in their proposal; a fact that would play heavily into the project taking five weeks longer to complete than promised.

In fact, Farson & McBytemee, while tackling the Riverside renovation, were also in the midst of building a competing bar and restaurant in neighboring Tabernash, CO – their bar and restaurant. The plan was for them to have their place, The Tabernash Tavern, open by Memorial Day weekend, 2008 – the same Memorial Day weekend that Julie and I had intended to take up residence in our new living quarters, so we could manage our first, busy, sold out holiday weekend on site. This didn’t happen, as I’m strongly supposing that any extra of F&McB’s workers, time and efforts went to meet their restaurants deadlines; the fact that July 4th was the first night we were able to spend in our bedroom tells me my supposition is more than just such. I wouldn’t dare either insinuate that the 25% overage they hit us with in labor and materials would have been due to any bad accounting or misallocated costs from their restaurant project. Why, only a thief or a crook would do something like that, and there certainly weren’t any of those in Grand County that hadn’t already been signed on to work at the local bank.

That first night sleeping in our new bedroom opened my eyes to another issue that I’d never considered before buying a hotel, bar and restaurant, and had I considered it and given it the necessary due diligence, no way would I have pulled the trigger on the purchase; that issue was vomit. Those that know me well know that I would rather face a pack of hungry lions while wearing rib-eye underwear than deal with vomit; the only possible thing worse than dealing with a vomiting human would be dealing with a vomiting tarantula. Oh Lord, let us not go there.

The restaurant was busy, and the hotel was sold out on this Grand County 4th of July night. Fortunately all of the diners and hotel guests ate early, and all but one couple departed for the fireworks extravaganza at Grand Lake – a good 45 minute drive from the Riverside. This would be the first time since moving to the hotel 10 days earlier that I would be able to sit quietly in the lobby and enjoy a cocktail in peace, as the couple that remained went quietly to their room. They were the last to check in that evening, not having a reservation and taking our only available room. When I was showing the gentleman the room, he asked if we had an elevator, as he told me his wife wasn’t in good shape and would be unable to go up and down the steps. When I said no, I felt certain that he would leave and I wouldn’t see any more of him; but I was wrong. A few minutes later, his wife and he were standing in the lobby, asking to check in; they’d flown to Denver from Kentucky that morning, driven through Rocky Mountain National Park, over the 11,000 foot summit of Trail Ridge Road, and were hungry, tired and ready to settle in, stairs or no stairs. His wife, who was 60-ish and not able to wear slim dresses, felt that she could make it up and down the stairs, although she was admittedly having a difficult time breathing, she felt, due to the altitude. She had me just a little worried.

Our visitors from Kentucky were the last to be seated for dinner, and after getting over the crankiness that often comes with traveling, they seemed to begin enjoying themselves and The Riverside. The wife had our Pan-seared Scallops w/Asparagus Tips in a Buerre Blanc sauce, while the husband enjoyed Prime Rib, with both enjoying a bottle of Riesling then desserts; a $100 restaurant tab on top of an $80 room rental that I didn’t think I’d get for the evening. Off they went to bed, off everyone else went to the fireworks and off I went to my quiet lobby and cold martini. Even Julie had decided to pack it in early, anxious for a rest in our own king-size bed, a bed that had been sitting for 10 days in the unfinished bedroom of the unfinished living quarters.

I had less than an hour of uninterrupted bliss, when the guest from Kentucky appeared in the lobby with a concerned look on his face.

“Can I help you?” I asked with a smile that tried to hide what I really wanted to ask – “what in the hell are you doing down here disturbing my peace???”

“Your scallops have made my wife sick. She’s thrown up all over the bedroom. Can you call 911?”

“Oh My God!” I thought, “I forgot about vomit. How in the hell could I have forgotten about vomit? Who in the hell is going to clean up the vomit?? There’s no way I can clean up the vomit! I doubt I’ll ever even be able to go upstairs again, let alone clean up the damn vomit!”

“You’re serious?” I asked. “You really need me to call 911? I mean, the vomit is about the worst thing that could have happened at this point in my life, but I don’t need 911!”

So I called 911, which will have to come from Granby, some 14 miles away. I stand out in front of the hotel, waiting anxiously for help, hoping the lady doesn’t die in our hotel, but more importantly hoping that she’ll be well enough to help clean up her vomit.

Within 15 minutes that seemed like the proverbial eternity, the ambulance showed and I pointed the Paramedics in the direction of the vomit-filled room. A few minutes later, the two male Paramedics, (there was a third female Paramedic), came down to retrieve the stretcher.

“How is she” I asked.

“Severe altitude sickness”, one answered, “a really bad idea for someone her age, in her shape, to come from sea level to 11,000 feet in an 8-hour period.”

“How bad is the room” I asked, cognitive of my being polite to ask first about the lady before asking about what really concerned me.

“Pretty bad” was the answer.

Pretty bad!!! These guys are used to dealing with all sorts of nasty stuff, and he said ‘Pretty bad’. Oh my God, what awfulness awaits me?

It was another 30 minutes before the ambulance crew started to traverse the stairs with the stretcher that contained our guest. It’s work to slither up and down those stairs with a box of donuts; imagine transporting a human cargo on a 7’, wheeled gurney. My hat’s still off to those dudes, who were making something that I would have considered impossible look easy. Our guest didn’t look well; she was pale, sweating and strapped to the gurney with much needed oxygen being tubed to her nostrils. She gave me a sad look, a faint wave and mouthed “I’m sorry!” I know she felt sick, and worse, badly for me and the situation.

By this time, guests had begun to return from the fireworks and were milling around the front of the darkened hotel. Off went the ambulance, followed by her husband in their rented Ford Taurus; that being followed by $180 that went unpaid for the room and the dinner, half of the latter of which was left behind in the ‘Linda’ room.

When I finished dealing with the guests and locking the place down, and thanking my darling daughter Rachel, to whom I will forever be eternally grateful to for her courage in cleaning up the vomit, I went back to spend my first night in my old bed in my new room. I belive it was 2 AM.

Julie awoke from a deep sleep, to mumble/ask, “how’d things go?”

“Before or after the ambulance left?”

To be continued………..

Friday the 13th.........The Final Chapter

No, this isn’t another Riverside ghost story, but it is for damn sure a horror story. And as for the ‘Final Chapter’, is it the end of the blog?

Maybe….

There are still untold stories – some really, really good untold stories. I’ve yet to tell the story of the previous owner, and that is one humdinger of a story. There are other stories, partly written, about other characters and events that need to be told; but I want to make certain that we’ve been totally immersed into the Mississippi Witness Protection Program, with the requisite assumed identities, before exposing all of the juicy details of the people we encountered and events that occurred during our two year fling in the mountains.

No, these untold stories will be for the book. Let’s face it. I was foolish enough to think that I could chuck it all and make a go of it in the mountains of Grand County, CO; getting a book written and published would be folderol compared to the task of paying the bills and earning a living, during a depression, in a ramshackle, haunted hotel in Hot Sulphur Springs, CO.

During our first full weekend of living at The Riverside, I received a harbinger of things to come that made my already nervous self-examination about “have we done the right thing?” look like a hungry buzzard hanging around the back door of a Kobe Beef processing plant.

A quick update; we bought the hotel on December 27th, 2007. My daughter Rachel, and two other family members, ran the place the best they could under the circumstances, until Julie and I showed up on June 25th, 2008. As I was driving into Hot Sulphur Springs on June 25th, following the jack-leg moving company that I hired on the cheap, I took a deep breath and drank in the moment. The sun was setting over Mt. Bross and the spacious valley that was carved by the Colorado River, the valley that is Hot Sulphur Springs; it all lay before us in spectacular fashion as we drove in for the first time as residents.

“Ahhh”, I exhaled, and said out loud to both Julie and myself, “it’s June 25th, and we’re arriving at our new home, and our new life. It’s hard to believe that we live here! Let’s never forget this date!”

No sooner were the words were out of my mouth, when my history-loving nerd-gene grabbed me by the ear in a combined Jesuit/nun-like fashion, and screamed the following at a deafening level, to which only I was privy – “JUNE 25!! YOU IDIOT!!! THAT’S THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE OF THE LITTLE BIGHORN!! YOU KNOW, CUSTER’S LAST STAND ??!! HE WAS A FOOL, RUSHING BRAZENLY INTO THE UNKNOWN, FOR GLORY, FOR HIS EGO, AND HE WAS SLAUGHTERED ON THIS DAY, 132 YEARS AGO.BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERED, I TELL YOU! DO FOOLS NEVER LEARN FROM HISTORY???”

My history-loving nerd gene has a bit of an attitude, and typically offers me way too much information. But he often motivates me, and this is what he tossed out regarding Custer’s quest for greatness; a quote from Teddy Roosevelt that was offered in defense of Custer’s folly. I relate to it, and embrace it as an excuse for my Colorado brain fart.

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat”

The content of this fine quote gives me great comfort as I chastise and feel superior to you poor spirits, you that live in that gray twilight; you that still have your 401K’s intact in the bank.

So much for the pursuit of glory….

So back to the harbinger. Our first weekend had us hosting guests in 6 rooms, and one of the couples were old time ‘Abe’ guests, i.e. people that had stayed at The Riverside for years and knew both its charms and its foibles. They were celebrating a wedding anniversary, and were staying in the two-room suite overlooking the river; a wonderful couple who were very supportive of what we’d done to improve the hotel. They had a lovely dinner that they raved about, complete with wine and champagne, then retired to the bar for a ‘final-final’. Through bar chatter I learned that the gentleman was a Circuit Court Judge in Denver; a very distinguished, gentle, intelligent man – a man who’s opinion would hold some weight.

After I shared our story of quitting our jobs, packing it up and moving to a brave new life in the mountains, he looked at me, and earnestly said, “I really admire you for what you’ve done. You’ve done great things with this place, and I really hope that you’re able make a go of it. But I can tell you, Grand County is a damn tough place to make a living. I can only wish you the best.”

When he told me this, the economy was still robust, or as we know now in retrospect, was still robust on the surface to us idiots. The bubble had yet to burst, and this guy who dealt with the day to day reality of making a go of it in Colorado, looked me in the eye, with a face that showed genuine concern, and said “….Grand County is a damn tough place to make a living. I can only wish you the best.”

After our first weekend in our new venture, it began to occur to me that the carrion of Kobe Beef might stand a better chance against vultures, and our ultimate demise, than we.

To Be Continued…………