Sorry for the cheap suspense, but there was no body or human remains under the hump in the floor; just a big heave-ho of expansion and contraction in the floor boards. However, knowing Abe as I did, it would not have surprised me if some unsuspecting visitor to the Riverside ended up bludgeoned and buried under that floor – particularly a sales tax collector from the Colorado Department of Revenue.
The building contractors, Farson & McBytemee, were hired to renovate the Riverside living quarters; while they came with a few good recommendations, truth had it they were two bartending ski-bums who, during a normal Grand County night of drunken debauchery (probably a Tuesday), set a friends deck on fire, burning it to the ground, then in a fit of soberness, rebuilt the deck. Rumor has it that the deck rebuild was true, level and square; they then deemed themselves building contractors.
25% over budget and one very expensive month behind schedule later, we had our new living quarters. Caveat Emptor, again.
It was Labor Day weekend, 2008, and the hotel was full for the entire three days. Full hotel means non-stop busy; up at 5:30 AM making endless pots of coffee, chatting with and checking people out, starting laundry, cleaning rooms and changing sheets, more laundry, helping with lunch-prep dishes, more laundry, lunch service, doing lunch dishes, cleaning the dining room and setting up for dinner service, more laundry, chatting with and checking guests in, helping with dinner prep, more laundry, grabbing a bite to eat on the fly, a quick shower, doing dinner prep dishes, dinner service, bartending, closing down the kitchen, bartending until 12:00 AM, closing down, locking up……then to bed.
It’ll start all over in four hours. This was our dream job. WTF were we thinking???
It was Sunday evening of Labor Day weekend, maybe 10:30ish, when Julie came back from our living quarters into a fairly busy bar to announce, in a slight panic, that there was a snake in our bedroom. As I was pretty damn busy manning the bar, I was unable to manhandle that snake, as would have been my normal duty. Yes sir, I would have normally jumped right in and handled that sort of task. Fortunately our good friend and neighbor, Tony the sober plumber, was quick to step in, and went back into our living quarters to slay the monster. After playing a little bit with Julie, telling her that it was a poisonous copperhead, he dispatched the 8” long, pencil thin snake. There’s one nice thing about the Hot Sulphur Springs 7700’ altitude and the long winters – it allows for no snakes or big hairy tropical spiders. The only snakes to be found at that elevation are small, non-poisonous black snakes, and the 9-month winters never give them the opportunity to grow much beyond 12” in length.
But let’s be honest here – a snake is a snake, and you damn sure don’t want them crawling around in your bedroom; not even a tough guy like me likes that sort of thing. Julie calmed down a bit, as I tried to assure her that this was an anomalous occurrence, and I doubted very much she’d see another snake in the living quarters. With the busy day we’d had, doors open and closing all day with people coming in and out, the slinky little fella had probably slithered his way in to get out of the blistering high-altitude afternoon sun, and found a nice, cool quiet place to lie on our closet floor. So back Julie went to bed, and back I went to tend bar.
It wasn’t five minutes before Julie was out the door of our living quarters, looking anxiously into the noisy, crowded bar for the specific purpose of getting my attention. While I’d actually never before seen Julie’s “Holy shit! There’s another snake in the bedroom!” expression, I was pretty sure that I was seeing it now. And in fact, there was another small snake in the bedroom, and another, then another. They were crawling through ¼” gaps between the floor and the trim that our crack deck builders had left open and unsealed. What was strange was why, all of a sudden at 10:30 on this Sunday night, were the snakes coming through all at once, right before our eyes? They even began crawling through another gap in the floor in the back bathroom. Was it a simple game of follow the leader – one snake made it through and then yelled back down into the crawl space, “Follow me boys, I’ve found some people up here to scare the shit out of!”
Most of the snakes were really small, not much bigger than your average fishing worm. But they had that big snake head that a worm doesn’t have, and they glided along the tile floor in that ssssnaky manner that makes those of you wussies that are afraid of snakes even more afraid of them. No question, this was not a good situation, and there was only one thing that could put a temporary halt to this situation – duct tape. I grabbed the roll that I keep on my bedpost for night time emergencies, and began taping the gaps in the floor, temporarily holding the little devils at bay. With the living quarters secured for the evening, Julie finally settled down enough to go to bed; I think she slept in the car.
The next day brought an end to the busy holiday weekend and a trip to the hardware store for a tube of clear silicone caulk to seal the gaps in the floor. I wasn’t sure what I’d see when I removed the duct tape; i.e. would the little buggers start flying through the cracks in an Omaha Beach sort of onslaught? Fortunately that wasn’t the case, as there was no evidence of snakes when they tape was removed, and I quickly went to the task of caulking the gaps, hoping it would dry quickly enough to offer the resistance necessary to forestall another PM snake blitz.
Caulk one up for polymer science and the fine folks at Dow Chemical, as the silicone cured and the reptilian onslaught was abated. That was good enough for me; but not for my business partner.
“Do you seriously expect me to live in a house that’s built over a set from an Indiana Jones movie?”
“Well of course not dear, but, who’s gonna, I mean, how would I……there ain’t no way I’m going down into that crawl space after a nest of snakes. In fact, I wouldn’t go into that crawl space after a treasure chest full of gold coins…..and we could damn sure use some gold coins!”
The internet was perused for methods of getting snakes out of your crawl space. I read numerous links, with a myriad of suggestions – from the ASPCA green, organic, non-kill recommendations (reason with them; tell them in a soothing tone that a better life awaits them in the neighbors crawl space), to the toxic – Ted Nugent’s web site suggested a modified flame thrower, which, coincidentally, he had for sale, free shipping included. Without a doubt, the best method involved hiring someone else to do the dirty work, and I found a business in nearby Kremmeling, CO; the “Critter Ridder”.
The Critter Ridder showed on time, with an assistant, equipped with flashlights, ladders and glue traps. When I explained the situation, the man quietly went to the truck, and returned with a TyVek jumpsuit, a respirator and a miner’s hat.
“Where’s the crawlspace?” he quietly asked.
I took him to the first portal of hell, the entry to the crawl space under our living quarters with the three full feet of headroom; the crawl space I’d never been in, and was certain I’d never have any reason to enter, in spite of the possibility of it containing a fortune in gold coins.
Mr. Critter Ridder donned the jumpsuit, strapped on the respirator, and topped it all off with the miners hat. He switched on the miners hat light, switched on his kick-ass big-time halogen flashlight (the kind most guys would kill for), and slowly descended into the first portal of hell. Off he crawled, without a “wish me luck”, into the inky darkness, in search of this nest of vipers.
Two things immediately occurred to me as our brave servant disappeared beneath the floor joists. One, suppose he finds the snake nest, he appears to be totally unarmed; what will he use to eradicate them? He had no flame thrower, no AA-12 automatic shotgun, no light saber – what in the hell would he use to kill these slinky little bastards? Two, how much was he going to charge us to do what he was in the process of doing? We didn’t discuss this before his descent into the abyss, and it quickly occurred to me that I wouldn’t climb down there, and LOOK FOR SNAKES, for a penny less than $500,000. While I didn’t have that sort of ready cash, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he would have emerged from beneath the floor, the flashlight between his teeth, and hundreds of writhing, tiny snakes clutched in his fists, saying through clenched jaws “You owe me $500,000!” Let’s be honest; any guy that would be man enough to crawl under your floors and capture live reptiles would have no problem shaking you down for cash.
To be continued……..
Friday, July 16, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
The Three Portals of Hell................Part II
The arrival of the automobile brought about the departure of the livery stable. I don’t know the exact year that the Riverside converted the stable into additional hotel rooms, but I have to think by looking at the pictures that it was in the early 1920’s. The transformation from horse house to guest house - (horse house to whore house would have been more alliterate, and possibly more accurate) - gave the hotel 11 additional guest rooms and new living quarters for the owner or manager. In subsequent years, two of the downstairs guest rooms were converted into the laundry room and tool room, while the remaining two downstairs guest rooms were seldom used by the paying public.
When Abe owned the hotel, the living quarters were separated from the hotel lobby by two doors, always closed and somewhat foreboding. It was a bit of a mystery as to what was actually behind the doors, as Abe himself was….uh… a bit of a mystery; but Abe is for another chapter. It’ll be a long one.
During our tire-kicking phase of deciding whether or not to buy the hotel, we made four visits over the course of the spring and summer of 2007. We never saw the owner’s quarters, the place where we would live the next X years of our lives, until the fourth and final visit. The truth was, we were both afraid of what lay beyond those doors – afraid that it would be so despicable that it would immediately squelch our desire to make this radical lifestyle change in this idyllic setting on the banks of the Colorado River. While we wanted a change, we didn’t necessarily want to leave our house in Kansas City – a beautiful house that we built and in which we raised our family.
At the end of that fourth visit, our cars packed and goodbyes being said, Abe finally asked if we’d like to see the owner’s quarters. With just the slightest bit of trepidation (I’m being sarcastic here) we headed through the foreboding doors, back into the unknown world of Abraham Rodriguez. We were accompanied by friends from KC who went with us on this trip to see, as they couldn’t help but believe, if we’d totally lost our minds.
In we went, me in front with the others lagging behind. I didn’t spend much time in the place, and didn’t talk or discuss with the others what we were seeing. I had no questions for Abe, who kind of stood back, very quietly, with a sheepish look on his face that said “I sure hope they don’t notice that 500-pound turd sitting in the middle of the room.”
When we got in the car to leave, Julie started peppering me with question after question – “did you see this”, “did you notice that”, “could you believe what was in that one room”, etc. The truth of the matter was, I didn’t see or notice much of anything, as I walked through that place much like you’d walk through a busy hospital emergency room trauma ward – with your eyes straight ahead, not looking to either side for fear of what horrific thing to which you might be a witness.
There was a simple answer to this hell on earth, this fetid collection of cobbled-together rooms, shelves, nooks and crannies that was the Riverside living quarters – “don’t view it as it is, view it as what it can be.” That philosophy, adopted before I ever set foot in the place, was what allowed me to walk through and not be affected by the horrors contained in this sub-human dwelling. If only there had been a 500 pound turd to be affronted by; trust me, it would have been a classy addition to the actual contents of Abe’s inner sanctum. Pure and simple, the place had to be gutted down to the studs. Any vestiges of the previous owner had to be banished, burnished, bazooka-ed, burned, banned, bulldozed and buried; then fumigated.
The Riverside was purchased, and a contractor hired to literally strip the living quarters to the studs and the bare earth below, down to the floor of the crawl space. This would be the first time in 130 years that the earthen floor had seen daylight. And although Geraldo has moved on to less risky stunts, there was a little bit of ‘what would we find??’ when we exposed what lay beneath those floors. The biggest question came from a noticeable hump – a hump shaped suspiciously like a human body in repose – from a floor section in Abe’s bedroom. No lie; to the right of Abe’s bed, in an open spot of floor in front of the entry door – conspicuously hidden under a throw rug – was an 8” hump that was 6’ in length and 2.5’ in width. Poe’s vulture-eyed antagonist surely would have fit nicely in such a space. What could be the cause of this unnatural protuberance?
To be continued…………..
When Abe owned the hotel, the living quarters were separated from the hotel lobby by two doors, always closed and somewhat foreboding. It was a bit of a mystery as to what was actually behind the doors, as Abe himself was….uh… a bit of a mystery; but Abe is for another chapter. It’ll be a long one.
During our tire-kicking phase of deciding whether or not to buy the hotel, we made four visits over the course of the spring and summer of 2007. We never saw the owner’s quarters, the place where we would live the next X years of our lives, until the fourth and final visit. The truth was, we were both afraid of what lay beyond those doors – afraid that it would be so despicable that it would immediately squelch our desire to make this radical lifestyle change in this idyllic setting on the banks of the Colorado River. While we wanted a change, we didn’t necessarily want to leave our house in Kansas City – a beautiful house that we built and in which we raised our family.
At the end of that fourth visit, our cars packed and goodbyes being said, Abe finally asked if we’d like to see the owner’s quarters. With just the slightest bit of trepidation (I’m being sarcastic here) we headed through the foreboding doors, back into the unknown world of Abraham Rodriguez. We were accompanied by friends from KC who went with us on this trip to see, as they couldn’t help but believe, if we’d totally lost our minds.
In we went, me in front with the others lagging behind. I didn’t spend much time in the place, and didn’t talk or discuss with the others what we were seeing. I had no questions for Abe, who kind of stood back, very quietly, with a sheepish look on his face that said “I sure hope they don’t notice that 500-pound turd sitting in the middle of the room.”
When we got in the car to leave, Julie started peppering me with question after question – “did you see this”, “did you notice that”, “could you believe what was in that one room”, etc. The truth of the matter was, I didn’t see or notice much of anything, as I walked through that place much like you’d walk through a busy hospital emergency room trauma ward – with your eyes straight ahead, not looking to either side for fear of what horrific thing to which you might be a witness.
There was a simple answer to this hell on earth, this fetid collection of cobbled-together rooms, shelves, nooks and crannies that was the Riverside living quarters – “don’t view it as it is, view it as what it can be.” That philosophy, adopted before I ever set foot in the place, was what allowed me to walk through and not be affected by the horrors contained in this sub-human dwelling. If only there had been a 500 pound turd to be affronted by; trust me, it would have been a classy addition to the actual contents of Abe’s inner sanctum. Pure and simple, the place had to be gutted down to the studs. Any vestiges of the previous owner had to be banished, burnished, bazooka-ed, burned, banned, bulldozed and buried; then fumigated.
The Riverside was purchased, and a contractor hired to literally strip the living quarters to the studs and the bare earth below, down to the floor of the crawl space. This would be the first time in 130 years that the earthen floor had seen daylight. And although Geraldo has moved on to less risky stunts, there was a little bit of ‘what would we find??’ when we exposed what lay beneath those floors. The biggest question came from a noticeable hump – a hump shaped suspiciously like a human body in repose – from a floor section in Abe’s bedroom. No lie; to the right of Abe’s bed, in an open spot of floor in front of the entry door – conspicuously hidden under a throw rug – was an 8” hump that was 6’ in length and 2.5’ in width. Poe’s vulture-eyed antagonist surely would have fit nicely in such a space. What could be the cause of this unnatural protuberance?
To be continued…………..
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The Three Portals of Hell
The Riverside Hotel, whose construction date is officially noted as 1903, is comprised of four sections, two original structures and two later additions, which have been morphed into the seamless white façade of its current iteration. We had pictures hanging in our lobby that showed the progression of the buildings architecture, starting with what we believed to be the first 1903 picture, which shows a six window, two-story clapboard structure with a large “HOTEL” and “CAFÉ” painted on the front, adjoined with a turreted building which housed a livery stable. There are pictures of the stable that date back to 1870, and while the two buildings literally shared a wall in 1903, there was no congress between them. Picture #2 is from approximately 1915 with the livery façade still evident, but the two buildings made to look as one with the use of a faux brick, tar-paper façade. The next picture was taken in the 1920’s, and the turreted roof line of the livery stable – you’ve seen this roof line in pictures of old western towns, as it denoted a stable as a steeple denoted a church – was replaced with a straight ridge line across the entire front of the hotel, making it look for the first time in it’s 20 year existence as one building. Finally, the fourth picture, taken in the 1930’s, shows the hotel with the edition of the West wing, a 15’ widening that ran the length of the hotel, adding four rooms upstairs, and doubling the downstairs dining room and kitchen. The fourth and final addition, the single story River Room restaurant, was built onto the western side, or river side, of the hotel in the early 1970’s. It is the only part of the building that has foundation and structural problems.
One of the things I loved about these pictures was the fun in dating them by the type of transportation that was parked in front of the hotel. In the 1903 picture there were horses and a hitching post; in 1915, horse-drawn carriages along with a 1910 Model T Ford. The 1920s-era picture showed no signs of hitching posts, with equine power being replaced by a fancy sedan of unknown make and model. Finally, the 1930’s brought us a regal awning spanning the front of the hotel, offering afternoon shade to a sporty, 1932 Ford Coupe. These pictures were all taken in the summer, as traversing Berthoud Pass in a 1932 Ford Coupe during the winter would have been impossible; much as it can be today, even in a 2003 4WD Chevy Suburban.
It was often while viewing these pictures that our guests would have their feeling of awakening to the history that engulfed them as the stood in the lobby of The Riverside – you could figuratively see the light go on in their head, as their eyes would widen and a smile would break the plane of their face. It is a feeling you don’t often get anywhere else as we live our daily lives in the cities and suburbs of America, and it was certainly one of the feelings that brought us and our dreams to live in Grand County, in this magnificent building.
Each of the three sections of the building built before 1935 have their own separate foundation, constructed of native stone of irregular size and shape and tightly cemented together. It is as stout today as it was when it was built 100+ years ago. Each foundation also contains a crawl space, differing in size and depth, with the first construction under the stable literally being a ‘crawl space’ as the distance from bare dirt to the floor above is but 3’ in height. The crawl space of the middle structure, which housed the hotel lobby, café and 8 upstairs guest rooms and living quarters, is deep enough in the front end of the building to allow a person to stand almost upright, narrowing in depth as you move towards the back of the hotel. The third section of building, the 1930’s addition, has a real-life, honest-to-God basement, with poured concrete floors and enough head space to walk upright, assuming you’re me and not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
In August of 2007, before purchasing the hotel, I visited the Riverside to meet with Tim, the man who was hired to perform the mechanical inspection. After learning that the roof needed to be replaced, the kitchen didn’t meet all of the state health requirements, and a host of other things that would have sent an intelligent person back to Kansas with a pocket full of cash, searching for a new dream, Tim suggested we go down into the crawl spaces.
“Crawl spaces? Why do we have to go down in the crawl spaces? I really don’t need to see the crawl spaces” I whined.
Tim had shown me the exposed foundations while we toured the outside of the building, demonstrating – I think he pounded his clenched fist against them – how sturdily and solid the foundations were constructed. That was good enough for me; I didn’t need to see them from the inside of a dark, mysterious, possibly big hairy spider-containing crawl space.
Tim said “I’ve got to show you where all of the mechanical stuff is – the water main, the grease trap, the sewage main, the sump pit…..”
It was at this point that I really should have allowed myself to be beaten to death by an army of do-it-yourselfers bearing red flags. Grease traps, sump pits and sewage lines in a subterranean spider farm – and I was interested in owning this place???
The first space we entered – an outside entrance from the rear of the hotel - was the newest of the three, the one where you can stand upright. I entered cautiously, and no big deal, as it was well lit, spider-less and it looked as if someone had actually attempted to turn it into a living space by portioning off rooms and paneling the walls and ceilings with dog-eared, cedar 1x4 fence slats. This space was important as it contained the two relatively new 200-gallon hot water boilers. The current owner had them installed when he purchased the hotel in 1980, replacing the coal fired boiler that sat dormant, a permanent unmovable behemoth, in one of the little rooms. I didn’t think to notice at the time that in the event the boilers needed to be dealt with in the winter – you know, that time of the year in Hot Sulphur where it’s extremely cold, there’s 30 feet of snow piled in the back of the hotel, and the need for hot water in your shower really takes on a whole new dimension – that there was no way you could access this basement to fix those boilers without blasting caps and a Caterpillar tractor, as there was no entrance from the hotel above.
The back of the space contained an un-paneled storage area that was filled with old bed frames, mattresses, desks, chairs, doors….quite an assortment of old junk and furnishings not fit for the current hotel. If you saw what was at that time actually in the Abe-owned hotel, you could only imagine what lay fallow in the space below. The term ‘worthless junk’ has never found a more suited partner.
On to crawl space #2, this located under the original main building. There were two entrances to this space, which actually had a dividing wall, making two separate crawl spaces under the one structure – I didn’t have to pay any extra for this feature. I helped the inspector lift a 3’x5’, seemingly 200 lb. trapdoor from the floor in the back of the kitchen. It was very dark, and the cold air and dank moldy smell attacked us as we peered into the space below.
“Looks good to me!” I said.
“No” Tim replied, “I’ve got to show you where the main kitchen drain runs into the grease trap. You’re going to have to clean that grease trap fairly regularly to keep your lines from clogging.”
This is sort of like when the professor says to the students in medical school “you’re going to have to put this rubber glove on and stick your finger in…”, and the prospective Internist quickly switches over to Radiology. But no, more fool me; I forged ahead, bought the hotel and kept my appointment with that grease trap.
On to the next crawl space; this was accessed through a trap door on hinges located in the main lobby floor, just outside of the public Men’s & Women’s restrooms. This crawl space was approximately 5’ in height at its entry point, and sloped down a little towards the front of the building, enough so that you could all but stand upright. Standing upright would come in handy if it was ever necessary to unclog the main sewer line with a high-pressure sewer line jetter; it was ultimately necessary.
This space also contained the main water shut offs, which a person would have to quickly access and shut off in the event an old pipe burst, or a toilet got jammed up and overflowed; those events ultimately occurred.
Finally, on we went to the last crawl space, this one under the original stable; this one, the very shallow, literal crawl space.
Tim told me, as he struggled to lift the trap door, “There really isn’t much under here, except for water pipes and electrical conduit. No mains, no valves, breakers or shut offs. Not sure there’s really anything to show you. ”
“Great”, I smiled, “I’ll defer to your higher knowledge of crawl space amenities and pass on this one.”
I never did go into this creepiest of crawl spaces, but it wasn’t long before someone did.
To be continued………
One of the things I loved about these pictures was the fun in dating them by the type of transportation that was parked in front of the hotel. In the 1903 picture there were horses and a hitching post; in 1915, horse-drawn carriages along with a 1910 Model T Ford. The 1920s-era picture showed no signs of hitching posts, with equine power being replaced by a fancy sedan of unknown make and model. Finally, the 1930’s brought us a regal awning spanning the front of the hotel, offering afternoon shade to a sporty, 1932 Ford Coupe. These pictures were all taken in the summer, as traversing Berthoud Pass in a 1932 Ford Coupe during the winter would have been impossible; much as it can be today, even in a 2003 4WD Chevy Suburban.
It was often while viewing these pictures that our guests would have their feeling of awakening to the history that engulfed them as the stood in the lobby of The Riverside – you could figuratively see the light go on in their head, as their eyes would widen and a smile would break the plane of their face. It is a feeling you don’t often get anywhere else as we live our daily lives in the cities and suburbs of America, and it was certainly one of the feelings that brought us and our dreams to live in Grand County, in this magnificent building.
Each of the three sections of the building built before 1935 have their own separate foundation, constructed of native stone of irregular size and shape and tightly cemented together. It is as stout today as it was when it was built 100+ years ago. Each foundation also contains a crawl space, differing in size and depth, with the first construction under the stable literally being a ‘crawl space’ as the distance from bare dirt to the floor above is but 3’ in height. The crawl space of the middle structure, which housed the hotel lobby, café and 8 upstairs guest rooms and living quarters, is deep enough in the front end of the building to allow a person to stand almost upright, narrowing in depth as you move towards the back of the hotel. The third section of building, the 1930’s addition, has a real-life, honest-to-God basement, with poured concrete floors and enough head space to walk upright, assuming you’re me and not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
In August of 2007, before purchasing the hotel, I visited the Riverside to meet with Tim, the man who was hired to perform the mechanical inspection. After learning that the roof needed to be replaced, the kitchen didn’t meet all of the state health requirements, and a host of other things that would have sent an intelligent person back to Kansas with a pocket full of cash, searching for a new dream, Tim suggested we go down into the crawl spaces.
“Crawl spaces? Why do we have to go down in the crawl spaces? I really don’t need to see the crawl spaces” I whined.
Tim had shown me the exposed foundations while we toured the outside of the building, demonstrating – I think he pounded his clenched fist against them – how sturdily and solid the foundations were constructed. That was good enough for me; I didn’t need to see them from the inside of a dark, mysterious, possibly big hairy spider-containing crawl space.
Tim said “I’ve got to show you where all of the mechanical stuff is – the water main, the grease trap, the sewage main, the sump pit…..”
It was at this point that I really should have allowed myself to be beaten to death by an army of do-it-yourselfers bearing red flags. Grease traps, sump pits and sewage lines in a subterranean spider farm – and I was interested in owning this place???
The first space we entered – an outside entrance from the rear of the hotel - was the newest of the three, the one where you can stand upright. I entered cautiously, and no big deal, as it was well lit, spider-less and it looked as if someone had actually attempted to turn it into a living space by portioning off rooms and paneling the walls and ceilings with dog-eared, cedar 1x4 fence slats. This space was important as it contained the two relatively new 200-gallon hot water boilers. The current owner had them installed when he purchased the hotel in 1980, replacing the coal fired boiler that sat dormant, a permanent unmovable behemoth, in one of the little rooms. I didn’t think to notice at the time that in the event the boilers needed to be dealt with in the winter – you know, that time of the year in Hot Sulphur where it’s extremely cold, there’s 30 feet of snow piled in the back of the hotel, and the need for hot water in your shower really takes on a whole new dimension – that there was no way you could access this basement to fix those boilers without blasting caps and a Caterpillar tractor, as there was no entrance from the hotel above.
The back of the space contained an un-paneled storage area that was filled with old bed frames, mattresses, desks, chairs, doors….quite an assortment of old junk and furnishings not fit for the current hotel. If you saw what was at that time actually in the Abe-owned hotel, you could only imagine what lay fallow in the space below. The term ‘worthless junk’ has never found a more suited partner.
On to crawl space #2, this located under the original main building. There were two entrances to this space, which actually had a dividing wall, making two separate crawl spaces under the one structure – I didn’t have to pay any extra for this feature. I helped the inspector lift a 3’x5’, seemingly 200 lb. trapdoor from the floor in the back of the kitchen. It was very dark, and the cold air and dank moldy smell attacked us as we peered into the space below.
“Looks good to me!” I said.
“No” Tim replied, “I’ve got to show you where the main kitchen drain runs into the grease trap. You’re going to have to clean that grease trap fairly regularly to keep your lines from clogging.”
This is sort of like when the professor says to the students in medical school “you’re going to have to put this rubber glove on and stick your finger in…”, and the prospective Internist quickly switches over to Radiology. But no, more fool me; I forged ahead, bought the hotel and kept my appointment with that grease trap.
On to the next crawl space; this was accessed through a trap door on hinges located in the main lobby floor, just outside of the public Men’s & Women’s restrooms. This crawl space was approximately 5’ in height at its entry point, and sloped down a little towards the front of the building, enough so that you could all but stand upright. Standing upright would come in handy if it was ever necessary to unclog the main sewer line with a high-pressure sewer line jetter; it was ultimately necessary.
This space also contained the main water shut offs, which a person would have to quickly access and shut off in the event an old pipe burst, or a toilet got jammed up and overflowed; those events ultimately occurred.
Finally, on we went to the last crawl space, this one under the original stable; this one, the very shallow, literal crawl space.
Tim told me, as he struggled to lift the trap door, “There really isn’t much under here, except for water pipes and electrical conduit. No mains, no valves, breakers or shut offs. Not sure there’s really anything to show you. ”
“Great”, I smiled, “I’ll defer to your higher knowledge of crawl space amenities and pass on this one.”
I never did go into this creepiest of crawl spaces, but it wasn’t long before someone did.
To be continued………
Thursday, June 10, 2010
John Lennon slept here......
As you already know if you’ve visited the Riverside under our tenure as owners, it is purported that John Lennon slept at the Riverside Hotel – not exactly sure when, obviously before 1980. I was told this by the hotel’s previous owner, Abe Rodriguez, who even claimed to have a copy of the signed registration receipt. Abe mentioned that we would ultimately own that important little piece of history when we bought the hotel, but regretfully, that promise was never fulfilled. Caveat Emptor. This story was also verified as truth by some of the folks at Grand County Bank; I’m certain they wouldn’t lie to me.
Abe didn’t have a lot of details to pass along regarding Lennon’s visit, but did say that he stayed in what is known as the ‘Mil’ room, which is located at the southwest corner of the hotel. The Mil room is nice in that it is one of the larger rooms, as well as having the best views of the river, Mt. Bross, the town and the hills south of town. It is generally also the brightest room in the hotel.
When we bought the hotel and were in the process of redecorating, we thought it important to recognize the importance of this historic visit by hanging a picture of Mr. Lennon and a plaque detailing a short story of the stay in the Mil room. Julie scoured the internet for just the right Lennon picture, but nothing obvious stood out as the one we had to have; until we stumbled on a print in a dingy old shop on Chartres Street in New Orleans, of John standing in front of the Statue of Liberty waving the peace sign. You’ve probably all seen the picture, and we chose it because it seemed to sum up the John Lennon we loved and wanted to remember – still boyish and fun-loving – and it would have been taken around the time that John stayed at the hotel.
Julie was in charge of the picture, but I was in charge of the plaque. Tough to come up with an informative plaque when you have no information – I knew absolutely nothing other than ‘John Lennon stayed here’. So I did a little research and the first tie that I found to John Lennon and Colorado was that the Beatles played at Red Rocks Amphitheater on their first US tour in August of 1964. That Denver show was preceded three days earlier by a show in Los Angeles at The Hollywood Bowl. There it had to be! Here was Lennon in the Denver area, with three days unaccounted for. Surely he must have taken some tourist time to visit the majestic Rocky Mountains, Grand Lake, the National Park, the Colorado River, and naturally, The Riverside. But I needed a story for the wall, not just a string of dates where this could’ve happened; so I made one up.
Borrowing a little from Mr. Kerouac, the story went something like this. ‘On August 7th, 1964, after the conclusion of the Beatles concert at The Hollywood Bowl, John Lennon left the touring party and with two friends, drove east across the great American West, en route for the Beatles next show on August 11th at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver, CO. On the evening of August 10th, he pulled into Hot Sulphur Springs in search of a meal and a bed, and found the Riverside Restaurant and Hotel. He stayed in this room.’ I printed it, framed it and hung it in the room next to sink – the sink he would have washed in.
We always took visitors to the room when they toured the hotel, and watched with delight as they smiled at the thought of John Lennon one time habiting the space where they now stood. Many would get their picture taken in front of the plaque, while a few even went as far as to wash their hands in the sink. I often even offered guests the opportunity to vacuum the floor upon which he trod, or clean the windows through which he gazed, but never had takers.
Everything was going smoothly with the fabricated John Lennon legend until the arrival of Ms. Janet, one of our guests, who stayed in the John Lennon room one night while visiting the Rocky Mountains from California. Janet called immediate bullshit on the story, saying there was no way that Lennon left the group and drove across the desert with his buddies. In fact, she informed me that the first American Beatles tour was planned down to the second, and nowhere on the agenda would there have been a day away from the group for open time.
All right, so she caught me. But she was intrigued enough by the legend of his visit to do some research. Her job as a consultant in historical building and landmark preservation bent her towards a proclivity to get to the bottom of things and places. It wasn’t long after her visit that I received an email from Janet, detailing her best guess at when and why John Lennon would have visited The Riverside.
In the summer of 1974, four years after the breakup of The Beatles, John Lennon traveled to Caribou Ranch, a music studio in Nederland, CO, to record a few songs with Elton John; among them was Elton John’s cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Lennon was accompanied not by Yoko, but May Pang, Yoko’s personal assistant, who at the time happened to be assisting Yoko by taking care of John’s…uh…personal needs.
After the recording session, John and May struck out on their own for a few quiet days in the Rockies. They were spotted buying a pair of cowboy boots in Boulder, and there are a few snapshots in May Pang’s book of John in a mountain meadow, and John lying in a mountain stream, but beyond that, not much else exists as a record of their Colorado visit. Being the internationally famous icon that he was, odds are he travelled the back roads, visiting quiet, out-of-the-way places, all the while keeping a low profile.
When you say things like ‘back roads’, ‘out-of-the-way places’ and ‘low profile’, what on earth would spring more quickly to mind than Hot Sulphur Springs, CO. And Lennon wouldn’t have wanted to stay at a busy summer-time hotel, one with a bunch of nosey, autograph-seeking tourists; again, what better spot for solitude in a deserted hotel than The Riverside. It makes perfect sense to me.
So did he or didn’t he stay at The Riverside? And if he did, did he play Imagine on the piano in the bar; that same bar piano that I have for sale on EBay right now? Did he eat in the restaurant, and did he really use the utensils that I sold for $600 on EBay last month? We’ll never know for sure, but I’m going with Janet’s theory and Imagine that he did.
Abe didn’t have a lot of details to pass along regarding Lennon’s visit, but did say that he stayed in what is known as the ‘Mil’ room, which is located at the southwest corner of the hotel. The Mil room is nice in that it is one of the larger rooms, as well as having the best views of the river, Mt. Bross, the town and the hills south of town. It is generally also the brightest room in the hotel.
When we bought the hotel and were in the process of redecorating, we thought it important to recognize the importance of this historic visit by hanging a picture of Mr. Lennon and a plaque detailing a short story of the stay in the Mil room. Julie scoured the internet for just the right Lennon picture, but nothing obvious stood out as the one we had to have; until we stumbled on a print in a dingy old shop on Chartres Street in New Orleans, of John standing in front of the Statue of Liberty waving the peace sign. You’ve probably all seen the picture, and we chose it because it seemed to sum up the John Lennon we loved and wanted to remember – still boyish and fun-loving – and it would have been taken around the time that John stayed at the hotel.
Julie was in charge of the picture, but I was in charge of the plaque. Tough to come up with an informative plaque when you have no information – I knew absolutely nothing other than ‘John Lennon stayed here’. So I did a little research and the first tie that I found to John Lennon and Colorado was that the Beatles played at Red Rocks Amphitheater on their first US tour in August of 1964. That Denver show was preceded three days earlier by a show in Los Angeles at The Hollywood Bowl. There it had to be! Here was Lennon in the Denver area, with three days unaccounted for. Surely he must have taken some tourist time to visit the majestic Rocky Mountains, Grand Lake, the National Park, the Colorado River, and naturally, The Riverside. But I needed a story for the wall, not just a string of dates where this could’ve happened; so I made one up.
Borrowing a little from Mr. Kerouac, the story went something like this. ‘On August 7th, 1964, after the conclusion of the Beatles concert at The Hollywood Bowl, John Lennon left the touring party and with two friends, drove east across the great American West, en route for the Beatles next show on August 11th at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver, CO. On the evening of August 10th, he pulled into Hot Sulphur Springs in search of a meal and a bed, and found the Riverside Restaurant and Hotel. He stayed in this room.’ I printed it, framed it and hung it in the room next to sink – the sink he would have washed in.
We always took visitors to the room when they toured the hotel, and watched with delight as they smiled at the thought of John Lennon one time habiting the space where they now stood. Many would get their picture taken in front of the plaque, while a few even went as far as to wash their hands in the sink. I often even offered guests the opportunity to vacuum the floor upon which he trod, or clean the windows through which he gazed, but never had takers.
Everything was going smoothly with the fabricated John Lennon legend until the arrival of Ms. Janet, one of our guests, who stayed in the John Lennon room one night while visiting the Rocky Mountains from California. Janet called immediate bullshit on the story, saying there was no way that Lennon left the group and drove across the desert with his buddies. In fact, she informed me that the first American Beatles tour was planned down to the second, and nowhere on the agenda would there have been a day away from the group for open time.
All right, so she caught me. But she was intrigued enough by the legend of his visit to do some research. Her job as a consultant in historical building and landmark preservation bent her towards a proclivity to get to the bottom of things and places. It wasn’t long after her visit that I received an email from Janet, detailing her best guess at when and why John Lennon would have visited The Riverside.
In the summer of 1974, four years after the breakup of The Beatles, John Lennon traveled to Caribou Ranch, a music studio in Nederland, CO, to record a few songs with Elton John; among them was Elton John’s cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Lennon was accompanied not by Yoko, but May Pang, Yoko’s personal assistant, who at the time happened to be assisting Yoko by taking care of John’s…uh…personal needs.
After the recording session, John and May struck out on their own for a few quiet days in the Rockies. They were spotted buying a pair of cowboy boots in Boulder, and there are a few snapshots in May Pang’s book of John in a mountain meadow, and John lying in a mountain stream, but beyond that, not much else exists as a record of their Colorado visit. Being the internationally famous icon that he was, odds are he travelled the back roads, visiting quiet, out-of-the-way places, all the while keeping a low profile.
When you say things like ‘back roads’, ‘out-of-the-way places’ and ‘low profile’, what on earth would spring more quickly to mind than Hot Sulphur Springs, CO. And Lennon wouldn’t have wanted to stay at a busy summer-time hotel, one with a bunch of nosey, autograph-seeking tourists; again, what better spot for solitude in a deserted hotel than The Riverside. It makes perfect sense to me.
So did he or didn’t he stay at The Riverside? And if he did, did he play Imagine on the piano in the bar; that same bar piano that I have for sale on EBay right now? Did he eat in the restaurant, and did he really use the utensils that I sold for $600 on EBay last month? We’ll never know for sure, but I’m going with Janet’s theory and Imagine that he did.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part VI………………………EASTWARD HO!
On Sunday, March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed and locked the doors of The Riverside for the final time. It was a beautiful evening – the kind that I grew to relish, the kind of evening that made all of the pain and struggles inherent of living in Grand County worthwhile. All of my favorite Grand County early evening accoutrements were on display, particularly the emerald blue eastern sky which starkly contrasted the pumpkin-colored alpenglow on the rise of Cottonwood Pass. Many an evening I sat in front of the hotel, regardless of the temperature or the crowd in the restaurant, (“Have you seen our waiter???”) and drank in that ‘has to be seen to be believed’ vista to the east. I guess I always new that our time in Hot Sulphur Springs would be relatively short lived – 5 to 10 years at best – and I took advantage of every opportunity to gaze at the surrounding spectra as if it would be my last. The time for my last gaze had come, albeit a lot sooner than I had either imagined or intended, and I witnessed that natural spectacle for the final time through eyes blurred by tears of both joy and sadness.
We’d succumbed to the forces that were thrashing our dream – the economy, the bank, our ineptitude and our newfound lack of desire due to all of the afore-mentioned. We were leaving good friends and a lifestyle in a vacation setting that most people only dream of realizing. The tears shed on the wings of such failings, such sadness, were expected and require no explanation.
Yet, there were also tears of joy?
Yes, tears of joy indeed, at the immitigable delight of a fresh start, in a new place; another exhilarating go at embracing the unknown. This speaks to why we left our Shawnee, KS comfort zone and did this crazy thing in the first place. We were the new pioneers, giving up the safety and security of our cushy life in the suburbs and packing up our belongings to head west into the unknown. And not unlike the old pioneers, that unknown held the promise of a radically different, and a hopefully better, way of life. We knew there were risks, both in the journey and at the destination, but we looked beyond the rational and forged ahead. We focused on the joy of change and the excitement of the unknown, concentrating on the glory of what could go right as opposed to the agony of what might go wrong.
I don’t wish the feeling of failure and nothingness at the end of the rainbow on anyone, but I can tell you that the feeling you experience at the onset of the quest is an elixir that cannot be reproduced, bottled or sold, not for any price. I also have many regrets about our ‘mid-life’ crisis, our westward digression, but one of them isn’t the indescribable feeling that you experience when you step off the ledge into the unknown.
And here we were, two short years later, stepping off another ledge. I was short of breath; my head swirled, and yes, melded into the burnt orange and azure eastern evening vistas, there were indeed tears of joy.
Back to reality, as our 2003 Suburban was absolutely crammed to the gills with stuff that we didn’t want in the moving van. Most of it was booze-related. Specifically, 50-60 bottles of wine, collectable stuff that I took better care of than my kids. And for good reason, damn it! Add to these a dozen Riedel wine glasses, very carefully packed, and my crystal Riedel phallic wine decanter. You look at this thing wrong and it breaks. No way its going in a moving van – even crated in a 4'x 4' x 6' box with 96-pounds of packing paper. We also had several crates of hard liquor that we took from the bar; stuff Julie and I didn’t drink, but you never knew when you were going to be invited to a ‘bring your own Grasshopper’ party down in Mississippi; If that call came in, I had the juice. Add to this our traveling clothes, last-minute nik-naks, some yard and garden things....and of course, Lucy.
The plan was to pull out of Hot Sulphur whenever we did, and drive as far as we could that evening. I didn’t care what time we left or how far we got; whatever it be, I didn’t want to spend one more night at The Riverside. I even had discussions with myself all day about the ultimate departure, and ‘not looking back’. You’d have to experience what I’d gone through the past eight months, with me living in Mississippi, Julie living in Colorado, the bank giving us the old jail house chi-chi, etc, etc, etc, before you'd understand why I wouldn't want to look back. I loved the place, I had great times and better memories, but I WANTED OUT OF GRAND COUNTY!
6:15 PM, the door was locked, hugs and tears to all assembled at our farewell. We climbed in the Suburban, backed out of the alley, and headed east on Grand Street. I hadn’t driven thirty feet, and in spite of what I promised myself I wouldn’t do, I looked back, into the drivers-side rear view mirror. It was a spectacular vision, as the magnificent white façade of that grand old girl was bathed in the luminescent orange glow of the setting sun. It was my favorite Grand County evening vision; it was alpenglow on The Riverside. I didn't take my eyes off of the place for the half-mile up Grand Street that I could still see her. In my last view of the place, she looked as beautiful as I’d ever seen her look. It was a 240-volt jolt reminding me of why I shucked it all to move west, move here. The tears flowed, unabated.
The rearview mirror view dissipated. We hit Highway 40, and headed east. The tears abated.
Eastward Ho!
On Sunday, March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed and locked the doors of The Riverside for the final time. It was a beautiful evening – the kind that I grew to relish, the kind of evening that made all of the pain and struggles inherent of living in Grand County worthwhile. All of my favorite Grand County early evening accoutrements were on display, particularly the emerald blue eastern sky which starkly contrasted the pumpkin-colored alpenglow on the rise of Cottonwood Pass. Many an evening I sat in front of the hotel, regardless of the temperature or the crowd in the restaurant, (“Have you seen our waiter???”) and drank in that ‘has to be seen to be believed’ vista to the east. I guess I always new that our time in Hot Sulphur Springs would be relatively short lived – 5 to 10 years at best – and I took advantage of every opportunity to gaze at the surrounding spectra as if it would be my last. The time for my last gaze had come, albeit a lot sooner than I had either imagined or intended, and I witnessed that natural spectacle for the final time through eyes blurred by tears of both joy and sadness.
We’d succumbed to the forces that were thrashing our dream – the economy, the bank, our ineptitude and our newfound lack of desire due to all of the afore-mentioned. We were leaving good friends and a lifestyle in a vacation setting that most people only dream of realizing. The tears shed on the wings of such failings, such sadness, were expected and require no explanation.
Yet, there were also tears of joy?
Yes, tears of joy indeed, at the immitigable delight of a fresh start, in a new place; another exhilarating go at embracing the unknown. This speaks to why we left our Shawnee, KS comfort zone and did this crazy thing in the first place. We were the new pioneers, giving up the safety and security of our cushy life in the suburbs and packing up our belongings to head west into the unknown. And not unlike the old pioneers, that unknown held the promise of a radically different, and a hopefully better, way of life. We knew there were risks, both in the journey and at the destination, but we looked beyond the rational and forged ahead. We focused on the joy of change and the excitement of the unknown, concentrating on the glory of what could go right as opposed to the agony of what might go wrong.
I don’t wish the feeling of failure and nothingness at the end of the rainbow on anyone, but I can tell you that the feeling you experience at the onset of the quest is an elixir that cannot be reproduced, bottled or sold, not for any price. I also have many regrets about our ‘mid-life’ crisis, our westward digression, but one of them isn’t the indescribable feeling that you experience when you step off the ledge into the unknown.
And here we were, two short years later, stepping off another ledge. I was short of breath; my head swirled, and yes, melded into the burnt orange and azure eastern evening vistas, there were indeed tears of joy.
Back to reality, as our 2003 Suburban was absolutely crammed to the gills with stuff that we didn’t want in the moving van. Most of it was booze-related. Specifically, 50-60 bottles of wine, collectable stuff that I took better care of than my kids. And for good reason, damn it! Add to these a dozen Riedel wine glasses, very carefully packed, and my crystal Riedel phallic wine decanter. You look at this thing wrong and it breaks. No way its going in a moving van – even crated in a 4'x 4' x 6' box with 96-pounds of packing paper. We also had several crates of hard liquor that we took from the bar; stuff Julie and I didn’t drink, but you never knew when you were going to be invited to a ‘bring your own Grasshopper’ party down in Mississippi; If that call came in, I had the juice. Add to this our traveling clothes, last-minute nik-naks, some yard and garden things....and of course, Lucy.
The plan was to pull out of Hot Sulphur whenever we did, and drive as far as we could that evening. I didn’t care what time we left or how far we got; whatever it be, I didn’t want to spend one more night at The Riverside. I even had discussions with myself all day about the ultimate departure, and ‘not looking back’. You’d have to experience what I’d gone through the past eight months, with me living in Mississippi, Julie living in Colorado, the bank giving us the old jail house chi-chi, etc, etc, etc, before you'd understand why I wouldn't want to look back. I loved the place, I had great times and better memories, but I WANTED OUT OF GRAND COUNTY!
6:15 PM, the door was locked, hugs and tears to all assembled at our farewell. We climbed in the Suburban, backed out of the alley, and headed east on Grand Street. I hadn’t driven thirty feet, and in spite of what I promised myself I wouldn’t do, I looked back, into the drivers-side rear view mirror. It was a spectacular vision, as the magnificent white façade of that grand old girl was bathed in the luminescent orange glow of the setting sun. It was my favorite Grand County evening vision; it was alpenglow on The Riverside. I didn't take my eyes off of the place for the half-mile up Grand Street that I could still see her. In my last view of the place, she looked as beautiful as I’d ever seen her look. It was a 240-volt jolt reminding me of why I shucked it all to move west, move here. The tears flowed, unabated.
The rearview mirror view dissipated. We hit Highway 40, and headed east. The tears abated.
Eastward Ho!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part V…………………….A Fluid Farewell (continued)
I’d made 8, 10, 12 trips – I’d lost count - back and forth in my Sisyphean effort to keep the water from flooding our bathroom, but to no immediate avail. The water just kept coming, but from where? During bucket-running trip number X, I noticed the sound of running water as I ran past the laundry room. Instantly it registered to me, as I’d heard that sound before; the upstairs toilet in bathroom #2 was running, as occasionally the flapper valve in that toilet would stick. Not often, but occasionally. But the previous occasions of stuck flapper valves had always involved actual humans being upstairs, actually flushing the toilet. No one had been upstairs for an hour.
I dumped the bucket and ran upstairs to fix the toilet. "Holy Shit!" The bathroom door was locked. “You’ve got to be kidding me! The freaking bathroom door is locked!”
This would be the bathroom on the left, bathroom #2, for which we have no key. It wouldn’t be the bathroom on the right, bathroom #1, for which we have a key.
“All right” I said to myself, “Take a deep breath and gather your thoughts. Let’s see. Five of us have been in the house for the past hour, and none of us have gone upstairs. I’m certain of this, as we were all downstairs together, and all within earshot as the water started rising in our bathroom toilet; water from which I now know is from this running toilet. So within the last 10 minutes, this toilet flushed, the flapper valve got stuck, and now the door is locked.”
I didn’t have too much more time to stand around and talk to myself and examine the implications of obvious physical activity without the presence of physical beings. I ran downstairs and told my neighbor what was up, his wife stepping in to vacuum the water, while he took over the bucket-running duties. Darin still stood quietly in the office, with a mad grin on his face and a glazed look in his eyes.
Three or four times during our ownership this bathroom door had been inadvertently locked by guests. You’d think that I would have gotten a new lock with an actual key, but noooo, I’d found a cheaper way around this problem, as I was able to pry the door molding ajar with a putty knife then use a small saw to jimmy the lock. I would have run to get that prying tool and small saw, but I knew it a wasted effort as they were probably packed in a 36”x24”x24” box with 24 pounds of packing paper, labeled “BATHROOM #2 JIMMY TOOLS”. The box was certainly well hidden in the moving van; in fact, all of my tools, and anything that even resembled a tool, was in a box in the van.
At this point, I was literally running around pell-mell downstairs, resembling something like a wild-eyed, sweaty, fleshy pinball, as I ran from this room to that, looking for something, anything, that I could use to get in that bathroom. I’d run by the large silverware tray four or five times - the silverware tray that contained 150 knives, any of which would have worked beautifully for both the molding pry and the lock jimmy process – before it hit me like a big “W”. I grabbed a knife – a simple dinner knife – ran upstairs and within a matter of seconds, pried open the molding, jimmied the lock and silenced the toilet.
The water stopped rising. The bucket brigade ended. Darin was still smiling.
The ghost had to be laughing hysterically, proud as a peacock of his final Seinfeldian prank. If there are multiple Riverside ghosts, I’m certain there was back-slapping, high-fiving and exploding fists as well. While humored, I’ll hope that they were also heartbroken at our impending departure – we were not only good stewards of their domain, but even better foibles for their ghostly folly.
To be concluded................
I’d made 8, 10, 12 trips – I’d lost count - back and forth in my Sisyphean effort to keep the water from flooding our bathroom, but to no immediate avail. The water just kept coming, but from where? During bucket-running trip number X, I noticed the sound of running water as I ran past the laundry room. Instantly it registered to me, as I’d heard that sound before; the upstairs toilet in bathroom #2 was running, as occasionally the flapper valve in that toilet would stick. Not often, but occasionally. But the previous occasions of stuck flapper valves had always involved actual humans being upstairs, actually flushing the toilet. No one had been upstairs for an hour.
I dumped the bucket and ran upstairs to fix the toilet. "Holy Shit!" The bathroom door was locked. “You’ve got to be kidding me! The freaking bathroom door is locked!”
This would be the bathroom on the left, bathroom #2, for which we have no key. It wouldn’t be the bathroom on the right, bathroom #1, for which we have a key.
“All right” I said to myself, “Take a deep breath and gather your thoughts. Let’s see. Five of us have been in the house for the past hour, and none of us have gone upstairs. I’m certain of this, as we were all downstairs together, and all within earshot as the water started rising in our bathroom toilet; water from which I now know is from this running toilet. So within the last 10 minutes, this toilet flushed, the flapper valve got stuck, and now the door is locked.”
I didn’t have too much more time to stand around and talk to myself and examine the implications of obvious physical activity without the presence of physical beings. I ran downstairs and told my neighbor what was up, his wife stepping in to vacuum the water, while he took over the bucket-running duties. Darin still stood quietly in the office, with a mad grin on his face and a glazed look in his eyes.
Three or four times during our ownership this bathroom door had been inadvertently locked by guests. You’d think that I would have gotten a new lock with an actual key, but noooo, I’d found a cheaper way around this problem, as I was able to pry the door molding ajar with a putty knife then use a small saw to jimmy the lock. I would have run to get that prying tool and small saw, but I knew it a wasted effort as they were probably packed in a 36”x24”x24” box with 24 pounds of packing paper, labeled “BATHROOM #2 JIMMY TOOLS”. The box was certainly well hidden in the moving van; in fact, all of my tools, and anything that even resembled a tool, was in a box in the van.
At this point, I was literally running around pell-mell downstairs, resembling something like a wild-eyed, sweaty, fleshy pinball, as I ran from this room to that, looking for something, anything, that I could use to get in that bathroom. I’d run by the large silverware tray four or five times - the silverware tray that contained 150 knives, any of which would have worked beautifully for both the molding pry and the lock jimmy process – before it hit me like a big “W”. I grabbed a knife – a simple dinner knife – ran upstairs and within a matter of seconds, pried open the molding, jimmied the lock and silenced the toilet.
The water stopped rising. The bucket brigade ended. Darin was still smiling.
The ghost had to be laughing hysterically, proud as a peacock of his final Seinfeldian prank. If there are multiple Riverside ghosts, I’m certain there was back-slapping, high-fiving and exploding fists as well. While humored, I’ll hope that they were also heartbroken at our impending departure – we were not only good stewards of their domain, but even better foibles for their ghostly folly.
To be concluded................
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part IV...............A Fluid Farewell
On March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed the doors, gave a local caretaker the keys, tearfully hugged our close friends’ goodbye, and drove out of Hot Sulphur Springs, away from the Riverside Hotel. The flood of emotions that came with that action were literally metaphorically a flood - a massive, violent, lifting, rumbling jumble of both destruction and cleansing; washing away the old and clearing a way for our ultimate rebirth. A flood is the perfect metaphor for what occurred, as we stood back, helpless, and watched a force much greater than us sweep over and destroy our dream, and despite our protestations and earnest but futile efforts, take that dream and leave us with little more than the reckoning of what comes next. What hopefully comes after a flood, provided it didn’t kill you, is rebirth, reorganization and the realization that you got smacked hard, but you’re still alive and, Thank God Almighty, you’re able to smack back.
What destructive force took us under? The list is as long as a Grand County winter and it would be small of me to blame first and foremost anyone but myself for my bad business acumen. Couple that with a horrible economy in an out-of-the-way place whose sole existence and economy is based upon discretionary income – the first type of income that goes south in a bad economy. Add to this volatile mix the local financial institution, the supposed backbone of this beautiful, rugged but financially strapped area, run by a bunch of wealthy ranchers that combined a lethal mixture of financial naiveté, avarice and a moral compass that would make you pray for Somali pirates as your business partners. The final F-up would be our poor choice of location – a small, out-of-the-way town whose only raison d’être is to draw a select group of clientele to a hot springs complex that ranks at the bottom of all hot springs complexes in the State/Country/World. We’re catering to a very small, very select group, going to the (arguably) worst of all possible very small, very select places. No knock on those that love the place, as we did, but honestly, it’s a very select group; and a depressed economy can be a financially fatal time to cater to a select group. Oh well, I’d been lucky in life up to this point; odds dictated that there eventually had to be a bump in that road.
The packers were supposed to show up on Thursday, March 18th, and the moving van on the 19th to load us up and take us to our new world. But Colorado had a parting gift for us – a blizzard the morning of the 18th that shut down I-70, Berthoud Pass and most of Grand County; to this point, the largest snowfall of the year in this snow/water starved environ. Unfortunately the ski slopes closed the weekend before – no question, timing is everything. The blizzard put the move back two days, with the packers now scheduled to arrive on Saturday, March 20th, and the moving van on Sunday the 21st.
When I awoke early on the morning of the 20th – the first day of spring – the temperature in Hot Sulphur Springs was a robust 18 degrees……below zero. While there were innumerable things I would miss about living in Grand County, CO, the blissful memory of greeting spring with 18 degrees below zero would be tossed quickly into the recycle bin. As the packers had to have doors open to move in and out of the building, the temperature for most of the morning – in the hotel – was below zero. Recycle bin that memory as well.
I learned something interesting about the relocation industry that day, especially those involved in corporate relocations – the kind where the company picks up the total tab. I would have assumed the cost of the move was based upon mileage and cubic feet of truck space; in fact, it is based upon gross weight. This would explain why a packer would use a 24”x12”x12” box, loaded with 3-4 pounds of packing paper, to carefully and thoroughly wrap a box of paper clips, a roll of scotch tape, a small stapler and a pencil holder from the top of our office desk. In total, the carton and its contents weighed 7 pounds – the actual contents (things I would have thrown away vs. packing) weighed less than a pound. We had large moving boxes – 36”x24”x24” – containing two 8- ounce lamp shades, secured by reams of packing paper, total weight approaching 15 pounds. Oh, and they also charge per box and per 1000 sheets of packing paper. They were nice people, but what a racket!
Sunday arrives, along with the moving van, and the 10AM thermometer reads 30F; that’s a 50 degree swing from the previous morning. It took the movers until about 4:00 PM to load all of our furniture, appliances, a 1300-pound gun safe (cha-ching!) and 123 boxes of various weights, shapes and sizes. As the movers emptied a room, we cleaned behind them, as our intent was to leave the place spotless for future sales showings, then get out of town before dark. At 3:00 PM, I did the final upstairs walkthrough. We’d left all of the furnishings in the rooms, so there wasn’t the empty feel that our downstairs living quarters would offer. A sad, slow walkthrough, room by room, filled me with a thousand memories – things like “I’ve made this damn bed a thousand times” and “I’ve scrubbed this damn toilet a thousand times.” I said my final goodbye – aloud, in case I wasn’t alone - knowing that I’d made that bed and cleaned that toilet for the last time.
I joined Julie downstairs, watching as she made her final pass with the vacuum. Speaking of doing something 1000 times, Julie knew every square inch of that floor from the handle of our Riccar, and I know for certain that her vacuuming memories would soon be joining a few of mine in the recycling bin. We were joined by a few remaining friends as we wrapped things up, preparing to leave the Riverside forever, as the owners. I needed to make a final pit stop in our bathroom before heading out, and I headed back to our living quarters for what I thought would be the last time.
Business completed, I gave one final flush, and watched in horror as the water in the bowl began to rise. Oh my, how could this be? After all, it was business #1, not the number of business that typically clogs a toilet. I quickly shut the water off, and headed to the tool room to retrieve the plunger. Needless to say, I’d done this more than a few times in this plumber’s nightmare of a house.
Plunge. Plunge. Plunge………nothing. Damn!
One other time during our ownership did the plumbing main back up – I’ve chronicled this New Year’s Day nightmare in a previous blog. But that clog was the result of full hotel rooms for 3 straight days, which equates to pretty extensive number two-ing. We’d had no guests in the hotel for the last two weeks; I couldn’t imagine how – and why now, why today – we could have a clogged main sewer line.
I checked another downstairs toilet, and sure enough, the main was backed up. I shut the water off to all of the toilets, and stood looking at the throne in our bathroom, wondering just what in the hell I was going to do about this. And as if a switch had been turned on, the water in our stool began to slowly rise. Holy crap! I’d shut the water supply off. What could be causing this? In a matter of seconds, the water began flowing over the brim of the bowl, onto the just cleaned and disinfected tile floor. My neighbor came running when he heard my screams, and quickly surveying the situation, he ran to the tool room to grab the wet vac. He began vacuuming the water out of the bowl – it took less than 10 seconds to fill the 5-gallon vacuum canister. I grabbed the 40+ pound bucket and moved outside as quickly as I could, dumping it into the street in front of the hotel. I won’t get graphic here, but suffice to say, the water wasn’t fresh and clear. Back and forth I went, filling the vac and dumping the water into the street, all the while the water continuing to slowly rise.
(An important aside to this part of the story; Darin, the local mortician who had seriously considered purchasing The Riverside, was standing in the empty office, watching quietly as I ran back and forth, gently carrying, so as not to spill it on the cleaned floors, the 40 pound buckets full of flotsam and jetsam before dumping them into the street. I've never seen the face of a man who’s just learned that he’s been given a death sentence commutation, but I was pretty certain that was the look I was seeing on Darin's face.)
Where in the hell was the water coming from?
To Be Continued....................
On March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed the doors, gave a local caretaker the keys, tearfully hugged our close friends’ goodbye, and drove out of Hot Sulphur Springs, away from the Riverside Hotel. The flood of emotions that came with that action were literally metaphorically a flood - a massive, violent, lifting, rumbling jumble of both destruction and cleansing; washing away the old and clearing a way for our ultimate rebirth. A flood is the perfect metaphor for what occurred, as we stood back, helpless, and watched a force much greater than us sweep over and destroy our dream, and despite our protestations and earnest but futile efforts, take that dream and leave us with little more than the reckoning of what comes next. What hopefully comes after a flood, provided it didn’t kill you, is rebirth, reorganization and the realization that you got smacked hard, but you’re still alive and, Thank God Almighty, you’re able to smack back.
What destructive force took us under? The list is as long as a Grand County winter and it would be small of me to blame first and foremost anyone but myself for my bad business acumen. Couple that with a horrible economy in an out-of-the-way place whose sole existence and economy is based upon discretionary income – the first type of income that goes south in a bad economy. Add to this volatile mix the local financial institution, the supposed backbone of this beautiful, rugged but financially strapped area, run by a bunch of wealthy ranchers that combined a lethal mixture of financial naiveté, avarice and a moral compass that would make you pray for Somali pirates as your business partners. The final F-up would be our poor choice of location – a small, out-of-the-way town whose only raison d’être is to draw a select group of clientele to a hot springs complex that ranks at the bottom of all hot springs complexes in the State/Country/World. We’re catering to a very small, very select group, going to the (arguably) worst of all possible very small, very select places. No knock on those that love the place, as we did, but honestly, it’s a very select group; and a depressed economy can be a financially fatal time to cater to a select group. Oh well, I’d been lucky in life up to this point; odds dictated that there eventually had to be a bump in that road.
The packers were supposed to show up on Thursday, March 18th, and the moving van on the 19th to load us up and take us to our new world. But Colorado had a parting gift for us – a blizzard the morning of the 18th that shut down I-70, Berthoud Pass and most of Grand County; to this point, the largest snowfall of the year in this snow/water starved environ. Unfortunately the ski slopes closed the weekend before – no question, timing is everything. The blizzard put the move back two days, with the packers now scheduled to arrive on Saturday, March 20th, and the moving van on Sunday the 21st.
When I awoke early on the morning of the 20th – the first day of spring – the temperature in Hot Sulphur Springs was a robust 18 degrees……below zero. While there were innumerable things I would miss about living in Grand County, CO, the blissful memory of greeting spring with 18 degrees below zero would be tossed quickly into the recycle bin. As the packers had to have doors open to move in and out of the building, the temperature for most of the morning – in the hotel – was below zero. Recycle bin that memory as well.
I learned something interesting about the relocation industry that day, especially those involved in corporate relocations – the kind where the company picks up the total tab. I would have assumed the cost of the move was based upon mileage and cubic feet of truck space; in fact, it is based upon gross weight. This would explain why a packer would use a 24”x12”x12” box, loaded with 3-4 pounds of packing paper, to carefully and thoroughly wrap a box of paper clips, a roll of scotch tape, a small stapler and a pencil holder from the top of our office desk. In total, the carton and its contents weighed 7 pounds – the actual contents (things I would have thrown away vs. packing) weighed less than a pound. We had large moving boxes – 36”x24”x24” – containing two 8- ounce lamp shades, secured by reams of packing paper, total weight approaching 15 pounds. Oh, and they also charge per box and per 1000 sheets of packing paper. They were nice people, but what a racket!
Sunday arrives, along with the moving van, and the 10AM thermometer reads 30F; that’s a 50 degree swing from the previous morning. It took the movers until about 4:00 PM to load all of our furniture, appliances, a 1300-pound gun safe (cha-ching!) and 123 boxes of various weights, shapes and sizes. As the movers emptied a room, we cleaned behind them, as our intent was to leave the place spotless for future sales showings, then get out of town before dark. At 3:00 PM, I did the final upstairs walkthrough. We’d left all of the furnishings in the rooms, so there wasn’t the empty feel that our downstairs living quarters would offer. A sad, slow walkthrough, room by room, filled me with a thousand memories – things like “I’ve made this damn bed a thousand times” and “I’ve scrubbed this damn toilet a thousand times.” I said my final goodbye – aloud, in case I wasn’t alone - knowing that I’d made that bed and cleaned that toilet for the last time.
I joined Julie downstairs, watching as she made her final pass with the vacuum. Speaking of doing something 1000 times, Julie knew every square inch of that floor from the handle of our Riccar, and I know for certain that her vacuuming memories would soon be joining a few of mine in the recycling bin. We were joined by a few remaining friends as we wrapped things up, preparing to leave the Riverside forever, as the owners. I needed to make a final pit stop in our bathroom before heading out, and I headed back to our living quarters for what I thought would be the last time.
Business completed, I gave one final flush, and watched in horror as the water in the bowl began to rise. Oh my, how could this be? After all, it was business #1, not the number of business that typically clogs a toilet. I quickly shut the water off, and headed to the tool room to retrieve the plunger. Needless to say, I’d done this more than a few times in this plumber’s nightmare of a house.
Plunge. Plunge. Plunge………nothing. Damn!
One other time during our ownership did the plumbing main back up – I’ve chronicled this New Year’s Day nightmare in a previous blog. But that clog was the result of full hotel rooms for 3 straight days, which equates to pretty extensive number two-ing. We’d had no guests in the hotel for the last two weeks; I couldn’t imagine how – and why now, why today – we could have a clogged main sewer line.
I checked another downstairs toilet, and sure enough, the main was backed up. I shut the water off to all of the toilets, and stood looking at the throne in our bathroom, wondering just what in the hell I was going to do about this. And as if a switch had been turned on, the water in our stool began to slowly rise. Holy crap! I’d shut the water supply off. What could be causing this? In a matter of seconds, the water began flowing over the brim of the bowl, onto the just cleaned and disinfected tile floor. My neighbor came running when he heard my screams, and quickly surveying the situation, he ran to the tool room to grab the wet vac. He began vacuuming the water out of the bowl – it took less than 10 seconds to fill the 5-gallon vacuum canister. I grabbed the 40+ pound bucket and moved outside as quickly as I could, dumping it into the street in front of the hotel. I won’t get graphic here, but suffice to say, the water wasn’t fresh and clear. Back and forth I went, filling the vac and dumping the water into the street, all the while the water continuing to slowly rise.
(An important aside to this part of the story; Darin, the local mortician who had seriously considered purchasing The Riverside, was standing in the empty office, watching quietly as I ran back and forth, gently carrying, so as not to spill it on the cleaned floors, the 40 pound buckets full of flotsam and jetsam before dumping them into the street. I've never seen the face of a man who’s just learned that he’s been given a death sentence commutation, but I was pretty certain that was the look I was seeing on Darin's face.)
Where in the hell was the water coming from?
To Be Continued....................
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