Our only possible way out of this financial doomsday was to try and sell the hotel. It had been our plan to give the hotel business at least five years, and as many as ten, at which point we’d have the business soundly established, the place refurbished, the mortgage retired, and we’d sell the joint for $2 million bucks and move on to the next phase in our lives. Can you guess how far reality has taken us away from that scenario?
Now comes proof positive that not only is there a just God, but more importantly, proof of the existence of a God that seems to have a soft spot for idiots. In April of 2009, my old employer called, out of the blue, and asked if I’d be interested in working on some special projects for them. It had been a year since I’d left their employ, and had virtually no contact with them during that time; regardless of how dire my situation had become, my last expected source of relief would have come from a company that, with no warning, I had walked out on. There were some in the organization that were upset with me for leaving; they’d had plans to promote me and move me to Jackson, MS, and my leaving put a bit of a hole in their organizational chart. I didn’t figure they’d have me back if I’d have come begging and crawling, let alone have them initiate my return; I’d have never hired me back. Wonders truly never cease, and the sun occasionally shines on the simple minded.
The offer was for me to work ‘part-time’ for as long as the next two years, during which time we would sell the hotel, and then come back to work full time; and no ifs, ands or buts, that full time thing included relocating to the corporate office in Jackson. Some might have cautioned that I play harder to get, as it was they who contacted me, and in spite of the Business Boner of the Millennium that I had committed, they still placed a value on my services. Let me tell you, I was as coy with them as a Times Square hooker; a nanosecond seems an eternity to the speed at which I accepted their generous offer. The only one who moved faster than me at accepting their largesse was Julie in pushing me to accept; I believe I still have the bruises on my shoulder blades where she pushed me.
And then came Miracle #2 – we had a buyer for the hotel. We were approached by an individual – a local – who expressed what I felt at the time was a serious and sincere interest in buying the hotel. Not only did they have the desire to own The Riverside, but I believed that they had the resources; mentions were actually made of “cashing in CD’s” to fund the purchase of the property. It was at this point that Julie and I mentally checked out as the owners and operators of The Riverside. Julie immediately went from looking online for 2nd income opportunities to looking for tony residences in Mississippi. We weren’t going to sell the hotel for that gaudy dream sum I mentioned earlier, but we were going to recoup all that we had invested into the business, and that was enough to get us out of debt and put us into a home in Jackson.
However, that “mentally checking out” thing ended up being critical towards our ultimate demise, as we would have definitely done things differently if we didn’t think (actually, we were 99% certain) that we had the place sold. I’m not saying we would have been able to salvage the place, just that we would have put time, money and resources in different areas that may have allowed us to ultimately sell the property, and at the very least, minimize some of the bleeding that ultimately occurred.
I really checked out, as I started traveling a bit for the new job in early June, leaving Julie and Rachel behind to fend for themselves. I also quit paying attention to the business side of the business, the penalty of which I would later pay for with some late, frantic nights trying to assemble for the IRS the gory financial details of a year in ruin.
In the middle of July, the buyer for the hotel swiftly, and without warning, backed out of the deal. We quickly contacted a realtor – a friend who was confident that if properly marketed, we’d be able to sell the hotel, even in the current economic climate – and officially put the hotel on the market. In the first few weeks, we had a few people kick the tires, but no serious buyers. What appeared to be our first serious prospect were a young couple who flew down from New York to look at the place – it was their dream to own a B&B in Colorado; and while they loved The Riverside, they were savvy enough (as savvy as your average 5-year old would be savvy, which is unfortunately savvier than me) to know what a tough go it would be to make a living in the out-of-the way shithole that is Hot Sulphur Springs. “Thanks, but no thanks”, they said.
Next we had a business owner from nearby Glenwood Springs, a man who’d made a good living in the construction supply business and was looking to sell that business and make a lifestyle change. (Take it from me; buying The Riverside and moving to Hot Sulphur Springs would slake the thirst of the thirstiest lifestyle changing wanna-be.) This really had me excited, as here we had an individual that was a native, already accustomed to the brutal life and winters of small town, mountainous Colorado, which was the major put-off for our heretofore interested Yankees; and more importantly, he had the money to actually make it happen. His first tour of the property had him salivating, envisioning then vocalizing the improvements he would make, including building a covered, heated deck overlooking the river, with French doors out of the dining room onto the deck. I watched with muted glee as he excitedly painted a picture of the life he was going to change and the business he was going to transform. As he left, he made arrangements to come back and spend the next weekend with his family at the hotel. I never heard from him again.
Then there was a woman from Iowa, who’d inherited a large sum of money and “really wanted to do something crazy with the rest of her life”, something I suppose that wouldn’t ultimately define her as an Iowan. It turns out she met a man from Denver, (in an ‘online’ dating forum, that sacred place where those oh-so strongest of personal bonds are formed), and he knew of The Riverside and knew with the right people running the place, they could make a go of it. He actually told our realtor that we were idiots and had no clue about what we were doing, which was why we were failing so miserably; while his assessment of us was spot on, my hurt feelings would have quickly disappeared when the check cleared. The woman was making the arrangements to visit us, and her cyber beau for the first time, when she called to ask me some questions. It was maybe a few words into the conversation when it occurred to me that if there was someone on this earth with less sense than I, she was in fact now on the other end of the phone line, in Des Moines. She told me that she was starting to have second thoughts, not so much about buying the hotel and moving to Colorado, but about her boyfriend, as in their last few discussions, he had become verbally violent and abusive towards her, and she wasn’t certain if she still wanted to include him in the venture. “Oy!” I thought. She never heard from me again.
And so went the attempted sale of The Riverside…….
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Friday the 13th...The Final Chapter / Part III
The previous owner of The Riverside ran a cash-only business, (I think, duh, maybe for screwing the IRA tax reasons) and therefore, kept no reliable records as to the earning potential of the hotel and restaurant; no occupancy rates, no average # of diners/month, no monthly or annual revenue figures – nothing. So not only did we quit good jobs and leave friends and family to buy a 106-year old haunted building in need of major repairs with fetid living quarters in an out-of-the-way town that smells like rotten eggs in a climate that would freeze the ass off of Nanook of the North for nine months out of the year, we also invested our life savings into the textbook definition of a financial "pig-in-the-poke".
The business plan that I developed for the bank was based upon some wild-ass guesses using formulas that involved days of operation, number of rooms, number of dining room seats, room rates per night and price of the average meal ticket, and put that against estimated monthly expenses – most of which came from Abe; no, unfortunately not Honest Abe Lincoln, but Abe Rodriguez. I conservatively figured, or so I thought at the time, that our break even point was at a 20% occupancy rate. I actually took a lot of time putting occupancy numbers together, with bell curves trending during busy seasons along with expenses, and felt that I had a pretty good grasp of things. After all, (although most who’ve read prior entries to this blog and have marveled at my lack of business acumen, nay in many instances, my lack of a single, properly functioning brain cell, will call absolute screaming BS on this) I ran a successful business for the better part of 20 years, a large part of which involved the financial management of budgets and expenses and generation of revenues. So while I was a neophyte in the hotel and restaurant business, I certainly wasn’t a neophyte in running a successful business. While The Riverside was nothing but an endless string of bad decisions, I previously had a history of making mostly good decisions; the bank relied upon that fact in buying into my 20% occupancy rate business plan, which included 5-year cash flow and pro-formas.
The first summer seemed to go pretty well, in spite of the fact that we’d done zero marketing or advertising. We ended up being at full occupancy every Saturday night from the middle of June until mid September, with numerous near sell outs throughout the weeknights. Our lunch traffic was steady to good throughout the summer, with bustling dinner business on the weekends. I was able to comfortably pay the bills, and even had the cash to make an extra mortgage payment in September. But in October and November, our business dropped like a Boulder boulder; but the expenses held steady. I started eating through our cash like a victorious football team at a post-game buffet. A decent Christmas season helped momentarily to right the ship; then came the off-season (January, February and March), followed by the dead season, or more commonly referred to as ‘mud season’, which is comprised of April, May and the first two weeks of June. I terrifically miscalculated the amount of business that was available to us during Ski season; from a lodging perspective, it was virtually non-existent, as skiers want to be on the slopes, and we were 25 miles away from Winter Park. If not for Valentines Day weekend and a couple of group events, our first full winter would have been disastrous. It was in March that I went to the bank for that promised line-of-credit that was ultimately denied; if not for me raiding my 401k, we wouldn’t have made it to our second summer season.
We shut the hotel down in mid-April after an Easter Sunday brunch and headed to KC for a few weeks. We still had our unsold, unoccupied home in KC that we were making payments on – a situation that never even in my ‘worst case scenario’ plan occurred to me when we packed up in June of 2008 and headed west; not only was I not budgeting in a house payment, I had budgeted in the income from the quick sale of that house at pre-depression real estate values.
There was another nasty little ‘what if?’ that I missed when I was running the business plan numbers on this venture that was now strangling us to a slow, very intense fiscal death – the depression. While I now have profound doubts about our ability to have been successful at The Riverside in a robust economy, I for damn sure know the current state of the economy didn’t do anything but hurt our situation. As bad as things are nationally, they’re far worse in Grand County, CO, with the hub of the pain and suffering being centered in Hot Sulphur Springs – the county seat. The whole raison d’être behind Grand County, CO is tourism, and tourism is fueled by discretionary spending and discretionary spending is the first thing to dry up in a depressed economy.
The difference between our first summer (economy still robust) and our second summer (economy in the toilet) was profound and immediately discernable. Our bustling lunch business of 2008 disappeared in the summer of 2009; on many days not a single soul walked through the door, but a cook was paid and the prepped food went to waste. It was a slow, agonizing financial death; by August I’d sent home all of the peripheral help, and it was down to Julie, our cook and me to handle all of the chores. I had way too much 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM empty lunch time, listening to the dining room playlists and reading books, whilst sitting, hoping and praying that a customer would walk through the door; not one second of it was relaxing or enjoyable.
Our 2009 pre-season hotel room bookings were non-existent and the Saturday afternoon walk-in crowd of 2008 that filled the hotel every single weekend was hunkered down someplace else. Business was in the toilet but the fixed expenses were still in the penthouse.
We were bleeding, we were dying, and the coffers were bare….
The business plan that I developed for the bank was based upon some wild-ass guesses using formulas that involved days of operation, number of rooms, number of dining room seats, room rates per night and price of the average meal ticket, and put that against estimated monthly expenses – most of which came from Abe; no, unfortunately not Honest Abe Lincoln, but Abe Rodriguez. I conservatively figured, or so I thought at the time, that our break even point was at a 20% occupancy rate. I actually took a lot of time putting occupancy numbers together, with bell curves trending during busy seasons along with expenses, and felt that I had a pretty good grasp of things. After all, (although most who’ve read prior entries to this blog and have marveled at my lack of business acumen, nay in many instances, my lack of a single, properly functioning brain cell, will call absolute screaming BS on this) I ran a successful business for the better part of 20 years, a large part of which involved the financial management of budgets and expenses and generation of revenues. So while I was a neophyte in the hotel and restaurant business, I certainly wasn’t a neophyte in running a successful business. While The Riverside was nothing but an endless string of bad decisions, I previously had a history of making mostly good decisions; the bank relied upon that fact in buying into my 20% occupancy rate business plan, which included 5-year cash flow and pro-formas.
The first summer seemed to go pretty well, in spite of the fact that we’d done zero marketing or advertising. We ended up being at full occupancy every Saturday night from the middle of June until mid September, with numerous near sell outs throughout the weeknights. Our lunch traffic was steady to good throughout the summer, with bustling dinner business on the weekends. I was able to comfortably pay the bills, and even had the cash to make an extra mortgage payment in September. But in October and November, our business dropped like a Boulder boulder; but the expenses held steady. I started eating through our cash like a victorious football team at a post-game buffet. A decent Christmas season helped momentarily to right the ship; then came the off-season (January, February and March), followed by the dead season, or more commonly referred to as ‘mud season’, which is comprised of April, May and the first two weeks of June. I terrifically miscalculated the amount of business that was available to us during Ski season; from a lodging perspective, it was virtually non-existent, as skiers want to be on the slopes, and we were 25 miles away from Winter Park. If not for Valentines Day weekend and a couple of group events, our first full winter would have been disastrous. It was in March that I went to the bank for that promised line-of-credit that was ultimately denied; if not for me raiding my 401k, we wouldn’t have made it to our second summer season.
We shut the hotel down in mid-April after an Easter Sunday brunch and headed to KC for a few weeks. We still had our unsold, unoccupied home in KC that we were making payments on – a situation that never even in my ‘worst case scenario’ plan occurred to me when we packed up in June of 2008 and headed west; not only was I not budgeting in a house payment, I had budgeted in the income from the quick sale of that house at pre-depression real estate values.
There was another nasty little ‘what if?’ that I missed when I was running the business plan numbers on this venture that was now strangling us to a slow, very intense fiscal death – the depression. While I now have profound doubts about our ability to have been successful at The Riverside in a robust economy, I for damn sure know the current state of the economy didn’t do anything but hurt our situation. As bad as things are nationally, they’re far worse in Grand County, CO, with the hub of the pain and suffering being centered in Hot Sulphur Springs – the county seat. The whole raison d’être behind Grand County, CO is tourism, and tourism is fueled by discretionary spending and discretionary spending is the first thing to dry up in a depressed economy.
The difference between our first summer (economy still robust) and our second summer (economy in the toilet) was profound and immediately discernable. Our bustling lunch business of 2008 disappeared in the summer of 2009; on many days not a single soul walked through the door, but a cook was paid and the prepped food went to waste. It was a slow, agonizing financial death; by August I’d sent home all of the peripheral help, and it was down to Julie, our cook and me to handle all of the chores. I had way too much 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM empty lunch time, listening to the dining room playlists and reading books, whilst sitting, hoping and praying that a customer would walk through the door; not one second of it was relaxing or enjoyable.
Our 2009 pre-season hotel room bookings were non-existent and the Saturday afternoon walk-in crowd of 2008 that filled the hotel every single weekend was hunkered down someplace else. Business was in the toilet but the fixed expenses were still in the penthouse.
We were bleeding, we were dying, and the coffers were bare….
Thursday, September 16, 2010
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………..
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………..
Thursday, September 9, 2010
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…………
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…………
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Chicken Spiedini for the masses
I thought it only fitting that I should follow up a story about the bounteously heinous discovery in the kitchen crawl space with a recipe for one of our restaurants best selling, if not our signature, entree – Chicken Spiedini.
We brought this dish from a storied Italian eatery in Kansas City, Garozzo’s Ristorente, which built a bit of an empire on the back of this grilled, garlic-laden fowl. The first time I ate at the original location on 5th & Harrison, down near the KC City Market, the waiter suggested the Spiedini over a pasta dish I was tempted to order; I took his advice, and found that I’d never tasted anything quite like it. It was one of those seminal degustatory moments that jarred you into the realization that there was a whole culinary world beyond your mother’s meatloaf. Mr. Garozzo went on to open three more restaurants, including one in Wichita, KS, all of which were fueled by the success of his Spiedini. Chicken Spedini even wrought new, competitive restaurants from former Garozzo employees, including the original Garozzo’s chef who opened his own place, loudly proclaiming himself the inventor of the dish; he didn’t make it a year, while all of the Garozzo’s are still churning out Spiedini.
At The Riverside, we never claimed Chicken Spiedini as an original recipe, but gave due credit by referring to the dish on our first menu as ‘Chicken Spiedini a la Garozzo’. (I’m not certain what ‘a la’ means, but I’d seen it on a lot of other menus, and thought, ‘what the hell’.) I do steadfastly believe that our version was better than Garozzo’s; an opinion that was shared by numerous Kansas-Citians who had eaten the dish in both KC and at The Riverside. The only restaurant review that we ever received in the local paper, good or bad, was a one-line mention in a “What to do this weekend” column from the Sky-High Daily News entertainment writer, saying “try the Chicken Spiedini at The Riverside – it’s incredible!”
While it was immensely popular, it was also very labor intensive to prepare, and in our last few months of operation, down to a single chef, we decided to scrap the dish in favor of easier preparations. Make it at home, and you’ll get a feel for what our kitchen help had to do on a daily basis for the throngs (ok, maybe not throngs; if there had been throngs, we may yet still be in business) of dinner guests who ordered, and adored, Spiedini. I’m proud that we threw very little un-eaten food away at The Riverside, and when we did, never was it Spiedini.
Serves 4
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
¾ cup flour
¾ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons dried sweet basil
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 ½ cup bread crumbs (buy ‘em, don’t make ‘em)
AMOGIO SAUCE
¾ cup olive oil
¾ cup vegetable oil
1 medium-sized head of garlic
1 thin-skinned, damn juicy lemon, juiced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley
A few hefty grinds of fresh black pepper and a few stout pinches of Kosher salt
You’ll need ka-bob skewers, and in a perfect world, a nice, hot bed of coals to grill the Spiedini over; if you can’t grill, you can also cook the skewers indoors on a hot griddle. Spiedini is an Italian term with the loose translation of ‘skewers of meat or fish, grilled over a flame’; the direct translation is ‘skewers of meat that are slowly prepared, to the sound of blaring heavy-metal/ bad rap music, by highly paid kitchen staff.’
Pound the chicken breasts thin, about a quarter inch thick, and cut length-wise into 1” wide strips. If you’ve pounded your breasts thin enough, you should get 14 – 16 strips from the 2# of chicken.
You’ll also need three prep bowls, one which will contain the ½ cup of olive oil, one the flour, and the third a well-mixed blend of the bread crumbs, the grated parm cheese and the basil flakes.
Lightly salt and pepper the chicken strips, thoroughly wash your hands (this is an important step that was often overlooked by our kitchen staff, no matter how much I yelled at them when I found them preparing this dish, and others, with dirty, filthy hands), and grab a chicken strip. Dredge it in the flour, shake off the excess, dip it in the olive oil, drip off the excess, and dredge it in the bread crumb mixture. Place the coated strip on your work surface and roll it into a pinwheel. Stick this onto a skewer, obviously jamming the business end of the skewer through the entire diameter of the pinwheel, and repeat the process with all of the strips. Dependent upon your dredging, dripping and shaking skills, you may end up needing more flour, oil or bread crumb mix; but you’d have hopefully figured that out on your own, as any cook knows that a recipe is but a yardstick, not a micrometer.
Let your skewered, Spiedini-ed chicken sit patiently on your cooking sheet, and begin preparing the Amogio sauce. Peel your garlic cloves, and chop to a fine dice. Don’t use a garlic press; there is a profound difference in how garlic tastes and reacts to other ingredients when it is chopped versus pressed. Throw your finely diced garlic in a mixing bowl along with all of the other ingredients, and stir it gently with a spoon every so often. Don’t whisk it, as you don’t want to emulsify the lemon juice into the blend. Be gentle.
You can make the Amogio sauce the day before, but needless to say, the longer it sits, the more potent it gets. If you do make it the day before, I’d leave out the freshly squeezed lemon juice; add that closer to meal time. Stir gently after adding the lemon juice.
Grill or griddle your chicken to doneness – and you have to be careful about this, as the rolled up chicken will need to cook through; but be careful not to burn the crap out of the outer portion of the chicken in the process. Grilling is a skill, not to be maligned, chided and laughed at by those who don’t practice, but only eat the fruits of the hot iron grate. The first time we had the dish at the newly opened restaurant of the ‘inventor’ chef, the inner part of our Spiedini was RAW; not undercooked, but blind-ass, naked RAW! The waiter was flustered, and actually said, “Uh, keep this quiet, and the Tiramisu is on the house!” Mmmmm, raw chicken and Tiramisu, one of my favorite Italian delights! What wine goes with that?
To plate, liberally spoon 1/3 cup of the Amogio on a plate, un-skewer the properly grilled chicken onto the pool of sauce, top the chicken and rim the plate with a little finely chopped parsley, spoon another tablespoon or two of the remaining Amogio over the top of the chicken and accompany with sides. I’d suggest a nice penne pasta with a light, slightly sweet marinara sauce as an accompaniment, as you’ll want something all-but bland to offset the punch-in-the-nose you’ll get from the Amogio sauce. Nicely prepared fresh green beans or broccoli will seal the meal.
Listen to some Sinatra and quaff some Chianti, or Amarone, if the finances will allow.
We brought this dish from a storied Italian eatery in Kansas City, Garozzo’s Ristorente, which built a bit of an empire on the back of this grilled, garlic-laden fowl. The first time I ate at the original location on 5th & Harrison, down near the KC City Market, the waiter suggested the Spiedini over a pasta dish I was tempted to order; I took his advice, and found that I’d never tasted anything quite like it. It was one of those seminal degustatory moments that jarred you into the realization that there was a whole culinary world beyond your mother’s meatloaf. Mr. Garozzo went on to open three more restaurants, including one in Wichita, KS, all of which were fueled by the success of his Spiedini. Chicken Spedini even wrought new, competitive restaurants from former Garozzo employees, including the original Garozzo’s chef who opened his own place, loudly proclaiming himself the inventor of the dish; he didn’t make it a year, while all of the Garozzo’s are still churning out Spiedini.
At The Riverside, we never claimed Chicken Spiedini as an original recipe, but gave due credit by referring to the dish on our first menu as ‘Chicken Spiedini a la Garozzo’. (I’m not certain what ‘a la’ means, but I’d seen it on a lot of other menus, and thought, ‘what the hell’.) I do steadfastly believe that our version was better than Garozzo’s; an opinion that was shared by numerous Kansas-Citians who had eaten the dish in both KC and at The Riverside. The only restaurant review that we ever received in the local paper, good or bad, was a one-line mention in a “What to do this weekend” column from the Sky-High Daily News entertainment writer, saying “try the Chicken Spiedini at The Riverside – it’s incredible!”
While it was immensely popular, it was also very labor intensive to prepare, and in our last few months of operation, down to a single chef, we decided to scrap the dish in favor of easier preparations. Make it at home, and you’ll get a feel for what our kitchen help had to do on a daily basis for the throngs (ok, maybe not throngs; if there had been throngs, we may yet still be in business) of dinner guests who ordered, and adored, Spiedini. I’m proud that we threw very little un-eaten food away at The Riverside, and when we did, never was it Spiedini.
Serves 4
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
¾ cup flour
¾ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons dried sweet basil
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 ½ cup bread crumbs (buy ‘em, don’t make ‘em)
AMOGIO SAUCE
¾ cup olive oil
¾ cup vegetable oil
1 medium-sized head of garlic
1 thin-skinned, damn juicy lemon, juiced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley
A few hefty grinds of fresh black pepper and a few stout pinches of Kosher salt
You’ll need ka-bob skewers, and in a perfect world, a nice, hot bed of coals to grill the Spiedini over; if you can’t grill, you can also cook the skewers indoors on a hot griddle. Spiedini is an Italian term with the loose translation of ‘skewers of meat or fish, grilled over a flame’; the direct translation is ‘skewers of meat that are slowly prepared, to the sound of blaring heavy-metal/ bad rap music, by highly paid kitchen staff.’
Pound the chicken breasts thin, about a quarter inch thick, and cut length-wise into 1” wide strips. If you’ve pounded your breasts thin enough, you should get 14 – 16 strips from the 2# of chicken.
You’ll also need three prep bowls, one which will contain the ½ cup of olive oil, one the flour, and the third a well-mixed blend of the bread crumbs, the grated parm cheese and the basil flakes.
Lightly salt and pepper the chicken strips, thoroughly wash your hands (this is an important step that was often overlooked by our kitchen staff, no matter how much I yelled at them when I found them preparing this dish, and others, with dirty, filthy hands), and grab a chicken strip. Dredge it in the flour, shake off the excess, dip it in the olive oil, drip off the excess, and dredge it in the bread crumb mixture. Place the coated strip on your work surface and roll it into a pinwheel. Stick this onto a skewer, obviously jamming the business end of the skewer through the entire diameter of the pinwheel, and repeat the process with all of the strips. Dependent upon your dredging, dripping and shaking skills, you may end up needing more flour, oil or bread crumb mix; but you’d have hopefully figured that out on your own, as any cook knows that a recipe is but a yardstick, not a micrometer.
Let your skewered, Spiedini-ed chicken sit patiently on your cooking sheet, and begin preparing the Amogio sauce. Peel your garlic cloves, and chop to a fine dice. Don’t use a garlic press; there is a profound difference in how garlic tastes and reacts to other ingredients when it is chopped versus pressed. Throw your finely diced garlic in a mixing bowl along with all of the other ingredients, and stir it gently with a spoon every so often. Don’t whisk it, as you don’t want to emulsify the lemon juice into the blend. Be gentle.
You can make the Amogio sauce the day before, but needless to say, the longer it sits, the more potent it gets. If you do make it the day before, I’d leave out the freshly squeezed lemon juice; add that closer to meal time. Stir gently after adding the lemon juice.
Grill or griddle your chicken to doneness – and you have to be careful about this, as the rolled up chicken will need to cook through; but be careful not to burn the crap out of the outer portion of the chicken in the process. Grilling is a skill, not to be maligned, chided and laughed at by those who don’t practice, but only eat the fruits of the hot iron grate. The first time we had the dish at the newly opened restaurant of the ‘inventor’ chef, the inner part of our Spiedini was RAW; not undercooked, but blind-ass, naked RAW! The waiter was flustered, and actually said, “Uh, keep this quiet, and the Tiramisu is on the house!” Mmmmm, raw chicken and Tiramisu, one of my favorite Italian delights! What wine goes with that?
To plate, liberally spoon 1/3 cup of the Amogio on a plate, un-skewer the properly grilled chicken onto the pool of sauce, top the chicken and rim the plate with a little finely chopped parsley, spoon another tablespoon or two of the remaining Amogio over the top of the chicken and accompany with sides. I’d suggest a nice penne pasta with a light, slightly sweet marinara sauce as an accompaniment, as you’ll want something all-but bland to offset the punch-in-the-nose you’ll get from the Amogio sauce. Nicely prepared fresh green beans or broccoli will seal the meal.
Listen to some Sinatra and quaff some Chianti, or Amarone, if the finances will allow.
Monday, August 2, 2010
The Three Portals of Hell....Part V
Really Awful Offal....
In many cases, one would save the best for last. I’ve done the opposite, as the final story of the three Riverside portals is indeed saving the worst, most offensive, most God-awful for last. Portal Number One involved snakes in the bedroom – BUPKIS! Portal Number Two involved bad plumbing, raw sewage and a Meth addict manhandling a rented high-pressure Jetter in the underbelly of the hotel – Sheer Folly!
Portal Number Three involves the kitchen; it involves grease, old food and bad dishwater festering in a darkened crawl space – it involves an agglomeration of things so bad that people actually go to school to become lawyers, so that they can avoid ever having to be within anything short of tort distance from this holy trinity of gluck.
As mentioned previously, the space under the kitchen was original to the hotels 1903 construction. It had a shorter head clearance than the crawl space under the hotel lobby, by maybe a foot; you were in a serious crouch in this space, and in most cases to get done what you had to do when you were down there, you had to kneel on the lengths of 2 x 12s that ran the length of the space. The two kitchen drains ran under this section, both ultimately leading into the infamous ‘grease trap’, a 16” square box that collected…well…the sort of things that would not only turn you into a Boulder-proud vegan, you’d possibly never eat again if you saw what it contained. The exit side of the grease trap consisted of a 3” pipe that ran into the main sewer line in the crawlspace in Portal Number Two, where it joined with the 3” exit pipes from the toilets, sinks and showers.
(Side Note from Richard Paradise, Restaurant/B&B Consultant LLC: If you, the prospective first-time restaurateur and B&B Operator, just read this last paragraph, and you still want to get into the restaurant & hotel business, quickly send me another $10,000, so that I can further counsel, advise and save you $1,000,000 worth of blood, sweat, tears and actual cash money; not to mention the eventual date with your grease trap.)
It was the end of the Easter weekend, 2009, when we were shutting the hotel down, for both a vacation and a kitchen reconstruction. The plan involved a big-bang, farewell Easter brunch, two-weeks out of Hot Sulphur, then a return to gut and replace the old, inherited equipment we’d been dealing with the past year, replace the existing slippery linoleum floor with some kick-ass commercial floor tile I’d scored from an old adhesive-business contact, and be ready to fly by Memorial Day, 2009.
I can’t remember why our chef went into Portal Number Three shortly before our two-week vacation, but he did, and he reported something pretty wretched.
“The pipe from the dishwasher/disposal has a crack in it, and the crawl space is flooded with….uh….well…some pretty bad stuff. There’s, like, a foot of really bad water down there.”
This was one of those times when procrastination seemed the wiser option. There was a basement full of fetid water, that wouldn’t be added to when we were on vacation. We’d rent a pump when we got back from vacation, drain it, fix the pipe, the floor, the kitchen, etc. No point in delaying our much anticipated and much deserved vacation to deal with this seamy little issue. Unlike us, it sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.
Two weeks later, we’re back at the Riverside, ready for one hell of a floor ripping-up, crawl-space draining good time. I didn’t even bother to look in the flooded crawl space before heading to the local equipment-rental place for a portable sump pump. Money down, pump in hand, we sucked it up and opened the crawl space, to find….no water! Closer inspection found a substance that, much unlike water, was indefinable. Several months full of restaurant flotsam and jetsam, discharging through the dishwashing system through the crack in the exhaust pipe, in small dribs and drabs over the past few months, into the dirt floor of the crawl space, to sit, stew and percolate, had turned into a gel, a goo, an all but living, breathing, writhing clot. There is really no better way to describe this substance other than it being a grayish, rubbery subterranean pudding, smelling like no pudding you could imagine. If evil sought out a smell, it would have latched onto this layer of gloosma like corruption seeks out politicians.
“Crap!” I thought, “I planned on being able to pump this problem out of my life.” No, it would require a shovel, some plastic bags, and me kneeling/crouching in the cramped quarters of the Third Portal of Hell. While my chef honorably offered to do this dirty beyond dirty job, I couldn’t reasonably ask anyone that I was paying less than $140/second to perform this horrific task.
I previously might have mentioned that it smelled really bad; it did, but when the gelatinous smelogma was actually disturbed, i.e., turned and probed by the peak of the spade, the odor that was unleashed from this custard of a thousand previous Riverside dinners was indescribable. It was very quick duty; throw a plastic trash bag in the hole, hold my breath, descend and scrape two or three shovelfuls into the bag, stick my head above the crawl space for a breath of air, hold my breath, and repeat. There were a few times I had to exhale and breathe on my way back up, and the gag reflex was major; just a momentary whiff of what I was excavating was potentially lethal. Any bad human act – you name it; robbery, terror, murder, greed, vengeance - could be averted by the threat of having to smell this hellish concoction.
It took a while, but the job was completed. I might have imagined this, but I don’t think so, as the trash dumpster, containing the bags of crawl space sploojisma, emitted a fluorescent greenish glow from beneath its lid as it sat in our side yard, waiting patiently for the 2nd Tuesday of the month pick-up.
The puddinous spoosma collected, a layer of lime was deposited upon the crawl space floor, eliminating any of the remaining odors, and slaying the resident microbial villains that had been wrought from the no-longer festering foodsmegjisma.
I now live in Mississippi, and am fortunate to have a job with a large corporation. People often ask me “Why would you move from Colorado to Mississippi? Didn’t you love the restaurant business? Aren’t you sorry that you gave up your dream?”
Those are fair questions. If you want the real answer, please contact me at:
Be prepared to spend a Grand. I’ll save you a fortune.
In many cases, one would save the best for last. I’ve done the opposite, as the final story of the three Riverside portals is indeed saving the worst, most offensive, most God-awful for last. Portal Number One involved snakes in the bedroom – BUPKIS! Portal Number Two involved bad plumbing, raw sewage and a Meth addict manhandling a rented high-pressure Jetter in the underbelly of the hotel – Sheer Folly!
Portal Number Three involves the kitchen; it involves grease, old food and bad dishwater festering in a darkened crawl space – it involves an agglomeration of things so bad that people actually go to school to become lawyers, so that they can avoid ever having to be within anything short of tort distance from this holy trinity of gluck.
As mentioned previously, the space under the kitchen was original to the hotels 1903 construction. It had a shorter head clearance than the crawl space under the hotel lobby, by maybe a foot; you were in a serious crouch in this space, and in most cases to get done what you had to do when you were down there, you had to kneel on the lengths of 2 x 12s that ran the length of the space. The two kitchen drains ran under this section, both ultimately leading into the infamous ‘grease trap’, a 16” square box that collected…well…the sort of things that would not only turn you into a Boulder-proud vegan, you’d possibly never eat again if you saw what it contained. The exit side of the grease trap consisted of a 3” pipe that ran into the main sewer line in the crawlspace in Portal Number Two, where it joined with the 3” exit pipes from the toilets, sinks and showers.
(Side Note from Richard Paradise, Restaurant/B&B Consultant LLC: If you, the prospective first-time restaurateur and B&B Operator, just read this last paragraph, and you still want to get into the restaurant & hotel business, quickly send me another $10,000, so that I can further counsel, advise and save you $1,000,000 worth of blood, sweat, tears and actual cash money; not to mention the eventual date with your grease trap.)
It was the end of the Easter weekend, 2009, when we were shutting the hotel down, for both a vacation and a kitchen reconstruction. The plan involved a big-bang, farewell Easter brunch, two-weeks out of Hot Sulphur, then a return to gut and replace the old, inherited equipment we’d been dealing with the past year, replace the existing slippery linoleum floor with some kick-ass commercial floor tile I’d scored from an old adhesive-business contact, and be ready to fly by Memorial Day, 2009.
I can’t remember why our chef went into Portal Number Three shortly before our two-week vacation, but he did, and he reported something pretty wretched.
“The pipe from the dishwasher/disposal has a crack in it, and the crawl space is flooded with….uh….well…some pretty bad stuff. There’s, like, a foot of really bad water down there.”
This was one of those times when procrastination seemed the wiser option. There was a basement full of fetid water, that wouldn’t be added to when we were on vacation. We’d rent a pump when we got back from vacation, drain it, fix the pipe, the floor, the kitchen, etc. No point in delaying our much anticipated and much deserved vacation to deal with this seamy little issue. Unlike us, it sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.
Two weeks later, we’re back at the Riverside, ready for one hell of a floor ripping-up, crawl-space draining good time. I didn’t even bother to look in the flooded crawl space before heading to the local equipment-rental place for a portable sump pump. Money down, pump in hand, we sucked it up and opened the crawl space, to find….no water! Closer inspection found a substance that, much unlike water, was indefinable. Several months full of restaurant flotsam and jetsam, discharging through the dishwashing system through the crack in the exhaust pipe, in small dribs and drabs over the past few months, into the dirt floor of the crawl space, to sit, stew and percolate, had turned into a gel, a goo, an all but living, breathing, writhing clot. There is really no better way to describe this substance other than it being a grayish, rubbery subterranean pudding, smelling like no pudding you could imagine. If evil sought out a smell, it would have latched onto this layer of gloosma like corruption seeks out politicians.
“Crap!” I thought, “I planned on being able to pump this problem out of my life.” No, it would require a shovel, some plastic bags, and me kneeling/crouching in the cramped quarters of the Third Portal of Hell. While my chef honorably offered to do this dirty beyond dirty job, I couldn’t reasonably ask anyone that I was paying less than $140/second to perform this horrific task.
I previously might have mentioned that it smelled really bad; it did, but when the gelatinous smelogma was actually disturbed, i.e., turned and probed by the peak of the spade, the odor that was unleashed from this custard of a thousand previous Riverside dinners was indescribable. It was very quick duty; throw a plastic trash bag in the hole, hold my breath, descend and scrape two or three shovelfuls into the bag, stick my head above the crawl space for a breath of air, hold my breath, and repeat. There were a few times I had to exhale and breathe on my way back up, and the gag reflex was major; just a momentary whiff of what I was excavating was potentially lethal. Any bad human act – you name it; robbery, terror, murder, greed, vengeance - could be averted by the threat of having to smell this hellish concoction.
It took a while, but the job was completed. I might have imagined this, but I don’t think so, as the trash dumpster, containing the bags of crawl space sploojisma, emitted a fluorescent greenish glow from beneath its lid as it sat in our side yard, waiting patiently for the 2nd Tuesday of the month pick-up.
The puddinous spoosma collected, a layer of lime was deposited upon the crawl space floor, eliminating any of the remaining odors, and slaying the resident microbial villains that had been wrought from the no-longer festering foodsmegjisma.
I now live in Mississippi, and am fortunate to have a job with a large corporation. People often ask me “Why would you move from Colorado to Mississippi? Didn’t you love the restaurant business? Aren’t you sorry that you gave up your dream?”
Those are fair questions. If you want the real answer, please contact me at:
rwparadise.restaurantconsultant.com/hellportal
Be prepared to spend a Grand. I’ll save you a fortune.
Friday, July 23, 2010
The Three Portals of Hell....Part IV
After about twenty minutes that seemed an eternity, the Critter Ridder emerged from this subterranean snake farm empty handed. No writhing, slithering masses were clutched in his clenched fists, nor did he triumphantly hold up a squirming gunny sack.
“I can’t find a single snake. I looked all the way back into the deepest corner – no live snakes, no dead snakes. Whatever problem you had is gone now.”
“Well I suppose that’s good news.” I said; now for the tough part. “How much do I owe you?”
“$140.00”
“Per second?” I asked, praying like hell that he would say “No, per minute.”
“No, I charge $90 per call, plus any materials, and there’s a $50 fee for driving over from Kremmling.”
As I wrote the check, I worried that perhaps crawling around in the dank, moldy darkness had terribly skewed the poor mans cognitive ability, and during his drive home, reality would re-inhabit his skull, the car brakes would be slammed, and he’d steam “Wait just a minute. I only charged that repto-phobic bastard $140 to crawl around in the dark, under his house and look for snakes??” Never have I written a check so quickly, and never have I been happier to write one. Julie went back to sleeping in the house, and never again did we find a snake in the Riverside.
Portal Number Two, the middle portal to hell, contained the plumbing guts to the Riverside. All of the main valves that shut the water on and off were located in this space, along with the main sewage line, which when I inspected the space during the mechanical, had no threaded cap, but a few rags jammed into the open end. I was to learn later that quick access to the sewer line was needed so often, that taking the time to continuously and under duress wrench open a 3” pipe plug would get cumbersome. Again, these little red flags flew right by me, unnoticed, during the due diligence process.
I’ve told previously in this blog the best story relating to Portal Number Two, and for the six of you who’ve already read this story, my apologies.
The Second Portal of Hell
It was January 2nd, 2009, the butt end of a busy holiday weekend. I was back in our living quarters taking my shower, getting ready for the evening, when I noticed the shower drain wasn’t draining so well. Out of the shower, I then notice the toilet is also backed up. Our newly remodeled and re-plumbed living quarters had already had a few issues with the plumbing, so I cursed the plumbing issues and the half-assed contractor who did the half-assed job, quickly got dressed and told Julie I’d plunge later, as the dinner rush had started. I’m not long in the kitchen when I see that one of the sinks, one that is supposed to be used only for washing hands but is also frequently used by our cooking staff as a dump sink for food stuffs, has standing water and isn’t draining. I throw my first bona-fide fit in front of the help since owning the hotel – cussing, throwing things, yelling “how many times have I told you not to dump food in the sink!!” at everyone but no one in particular. They weren’t impressed. I then notice the floor drain isn’t draining. I was then quick to deduce that there was a pattern, a pattern that I’d seen once before – I knew we had a clogged main sewage line.
The State of Colorado Department of Health & Environment – the folks who oversee the safety and sanitation of our restaurant – have a pretty basic rule about not being able to prepare or serve food without access to a free-flowing water and waste disposal system. Damned pesky bureaucrats! I had no choice but to close the restaurant; a nearly full restaurant, with a nearly full bar waiting for tables, as well as numerous reservations for tables later in the evening. My hope was that I could get this problem solved in time to at least re-open in an hour and accommodate the evening’s second seating. But wait a minute….I suddenly remembered we weren’t in Kansas anymore. I remembered that you can’t get a plumber in Grand County to show up for a scheduled job at 10:00 on a Monday morning (unless maybe it’s to fix the dispensing valve on your beer keg), let alone answer an after hour emergency call on a Friday night. I tried my best, going alphabetically through all of the Grand County plumbers, all of whose ads touted “24 Hour Emergency Service”, and got not one, not a single one, who could make it to The Riverside that evening.
(Shortly after moving to Hot Sulphur, one of my neighbors told me a story about how they went to one of the local plumbers who lived across the street from them on a Saturday, and begged him to come fix a plumbing emergency. They promised double the amount, in cash, that he would necessarily get for such a job. “Please, Please, Pleeeeze” they begged of him. His simple and direct reply was “I’m not feeling it today.” I’ve come to learn that is pretty much the working man’s mantra in Grand County.)
I was left with no other option than to call my friend Tony, (who lives up the street and is an excellent plumber), of whose good and reliable nature I hate to take advantage. Tony is in Denver and unable to help, but as luck would have it, Tony’s company has a plumber, Ron, on call, and he also lives in Hot Sulphur. I call the number, but it goes to voice mail; I leave my pleading message with Ron, and then go to my second-to-last resort.
I send my son Scott up to the Barking Dog Pub in search of another local plumber who has the same name as a deceased rock star, (first name rhymes with “Jan” and last name rhymes with “Hogleberg”), and is known to frequent the Barking Dog. More to the truth, he lives at the Barking Dog and is occasionally known to frequent his house. (I don’t mean to malign that un-named plumber, as he has saved our plumbing bacon on more than one occasion, and were he to read this blog and figure out who I’m talking about, I thank him for his past fine efforts on our behalf.) Scott triumphantly returns with good news – no, the deceased rock star-named plumber isn’t there, but there was another plumber sitting at the end of the bar who volunteered his services, and he would be down shortly. And who says only the Irish have such fine luck?
In walks our Johnny-on-the-spot plumber, Ron; this would be Tony’s Ron who was on call that evening. Did I say “in walks”? Perhaps I should say in reeled, in staggered, in swayed, in teetered, in lurched, in weaved; Mr. Roget doesn’t yet have a synonym for the one word you would use to aptly describe Ron’s’ mode of locomotion. I direct Ron, with great effort, back to the kitchen, where he immediately spots the backed-up hand sink. Without saying a word, he plops himself down on the floor and begins to attempt to dismantle the P-trap under the sink. I say to Ron, and I was being very dramatic at this point by raising my voice, waving my arms about and pointing in all directions, “It’s not the P-trap! We’re backed up in our bathroom, we’re backed up in the bar, we’re backed up in the kitchen; WE’RE BACKED UP EVERYWHERE. THE MAIN IS BACKED UP!!” Ron looks up at me and, uttering his first words of the night, says “Shlow down a minute, will ya?” He then turns his glazed eyes back on the P-trap, which he successfully dismantles, and watches as the turbid water rushes from the sink drain into his lap.
I help a very wet and still very drunk Ron up from the floor, and lead him to the main hotel lobby, where the entrance to the crawl space, which contains the main plumbing lines, is located. Down into the space we go, and I point out the main sewage discharge line. Ron looks all around the crawl space as if he was looking for an “Easy” button, or perhaps a detonator that would blow this plumbing problem into the next county. Remember, he’s having a tough time with his equilibrium, so the sight of this man half hunched over in the 5’ tall crawl space looking and pointing at the pipes all about him took on the appearance of a drunken sailor swatting at bees below deck in a violent sea.
Ron finally gets his bearings, and faces me with his assessment of the situation. He also delivers this assessment in a dramatic fashion, similar to my aforementioned dramatic outburst in the kitchen. “Everythings backwards down here. Thish pipe ish running backwards, thish pipe should be goin th’other way. Whoever built thish thing got it all screwed up!” He then proceeds to crawl slowly and carefully up the steps, and sits on the edge of the crawl space, his legs dangling over the abyss, his elbows on his knees, and his face buried in his hands. He doesn’t move for 15 minutes. When he finally stirs – I wasn’t there to see this but heard it second hand – he gets up, says not a word to anyone present, then staggers/reels/teeters/sways/weaves/lurches his way out the front door and into the cold, dark, January night.
In walks one of our kitchen employees, who happens to have a drug connection who is also a plumber. (This drug connection thing is not uncommon in Grand County, or in the restaurant business.) I previously mentioned that the dead rock star-named plumber was my second-to- last resort – this drug connection plumber was indeed my last resort. That story about “I’m not feeling it today,” - that might also be this guy. But then I figure, “What do I have to lose?” At the very least, I’ll have more fodder for the blog.
Enter Plumber #3, the most unreliable plumber in Grand County. That’s like being the worst sinner in Las Vegas or the biggest drunk at Mardi gras, or…..you get the point.
Not only am I stunned that he showed up when summoned, but he’s bright eyed, he’s clean, he’s sober, and he’s ready to tackle the problem. All those present, at least those who knew this gentleman and his predilections, could’ve been knocked over by a puff of bong exhaust.
Four hours and $400 dollars later, our local hero has the lines flowing free. He worked down in that fetid crawl space from 8:00 until midnight, flushing the line with a high pressure “jetter”, and then cleaning up the offal responsible for the clog. This was a job so nasty and so incredibly filthy, that the Dirty Jobs guy on TV would’ve hired it out; and our man did it with a smile. No matter what Plumber #3 didn’t do before, or what he may yet not do in the future, the night of January 2nd will forever be known in local lore as the night that Grand Counties most infamous slacker plumber, actually plumbed, and in doing so, saved our bacon and allowed The Riverside to continue to serve some of Grand Counties finest food in a sewage-free environment, per the State code.
To be concluded........
“I can’t find a single snake. I looked all the way back into the deepest corner – no live snakes, no dead snakes. Whatever problem you had is gone now.”
“Well I suppose that’s good news.” I said; now for the tough part. “How much do I owe you?”
“$140.00”
“Per second?” I asked, praying like hell that he would say “No, per minute.”
“No, I charge $90 per call, plus any materials, and there’s a $50 fee for driving over from Kremmling.”
As I wrote the check, I worried that perhaps crawling around in the dank, moldy darkness had terribly skewed the poor mans cognitive ability, and during his drive home, reality would re-inhabit his skull, the car brakes would be slammed, and he’d steam “Wait just a minute. I only charged that repto-phobic bastard $140 to crawl around in the dark, under his house and look for snakes??” Never have I written a check so quickly, and never have I been happier to write one. Julie went back to sleeping in the house, and never again did we find a snake in the Riverside.
Portal Number Two, the middle portal to hell, contained the plumbing guts to the Riverside. All of the main valves that shut the water on and off were located in this space, along with the main sewage line, which when I inspected the space during the mechanical, had no threaded cap, but a few rags jammed into the open end. I was to learn later that quick access to the sewer line was needed so often, that taking the time to continuously and under duress wrench open a 3” pipe plug would get cumbersome. Again, these little red flags flew right by me, unnoticed, during the due diligence process.
I’ve told previously in this blog the best story relating to Portal Number Two, and for the six of you who’ve already read this story, my apologies.
The Second Portal of Hell
It was January 2nd, 2009, the butt end of a busy holiday weekend. I was back in our living quarters taking my shower, getting ready for the evening, when I noticed the shower drain wasn’t draining so well. Out of the shower, I then notice the toilet is also backed up. Our newly remodeled and re-plumbed living quarters had already had a few issues with the plumbing, so I cursed the plumbing issues and the half-assed contractor who did the half-assed job, quickly got dressed and told Julie I’d plunge later, as the dinner rush had started. I’m not long in the kitchen when I see that one of the sinks, one that is supposed to be used only for washing hands but is also frequently used by our cooking staff as a dump sink for food stuffs, has standing water and isn’t draining. I throw my first bona-fide fit in front of the help since owning the hotel – cussing, throwing things, yelling “how many times have I told you not to dump food in the sink!!” at everyone but no one in particular. They weren’t impressed. I then notice the floor drain isn’t draining. I was then quick to deduce that there was a pattern, a pattern that I’d seen once before – I knew we had a clogged main sewage line.
The State of Colorado Department of Health & Environment – the folks who oversee the safety and sanitation of our restaurant – have a pretty basic rule about not being able to prepare or serve food without access to a free-flowing water and waste disposal system. Damned pesky bureaucrats! I had no choice but to close the restaurant; a nearly full restaurant, with a nearly full bar waiting for tables, as well as numerous reservations for tables later in the evening. My hope was that I could get this problem solved in time to at least re-open in an hour and accommodate the evening’s second seating. But wait a minute….I suddenly remembered we weren’t in Kansas anymore. I remembered that you can’t get a plumber in Grand County to show up for a scheduled job at 10:00 on a Monday morning (unless maybe it’s to fix the dispensing valve on your beer keg), let alone answer an after hour emergency call on a Friday night. I tried my best, going alphabetically through all of the Grand County plumbers, all of whose ads touted “24 Hour Emergency Service”, and got not one, not a single one, who could make it to The Riverside that evening.
(Shortly after moving to Hot Sulphur, one of my neighbors told me a story about how they went to one of the local plumbers who lived across the street from them on a Saturday, and begged him to come fix a plumbing emergency. They promised double the amount, in cash, that he would necessarily get for such a job. “Please, Please, Pleeeeze” they begged of him. His simple and direct reply was “I’m not feeling it today.” I’ve come to learn that is pretty much the working man’s mantra in Grand County.)
I was left with no other option than to call my friend Tony, (who lives up the street and is an excellent plumber), of whose good and reliable nature I hate to take advantage. Tony is in Denver and unable to help, but as luck would have it, Tony’s company has a plumber, Ron, on call, and he also lives in Hot Sulphur. I call the number, but it goes to voice mail; I leave my pleading message with Ron, and then go to my second-to-last resort.
I send my son Scott up to the Barking Dog Pub in search of another local plumber who has the same name as a deceased rock star, (first name rhymes with “Jan” and last name rhymes with “Hogleberg”), and is known to frequent the Barking Dog. More to the truth, he lives at the Barking Dog and is occasionally known to frequent his house. (I don’t mean to malign that un-named plumber, as he has saved our plumbing bacon on more than one occasion, and were he to read this blog and figure out who I’m talking about, I thank him for his past fine efforts on our behalf.) Scott triumphantly returns with good news – no, the deceased rock star-named plumber isn’t there, but there was another plumber sitting at the end of the bar who volunteered his services, and he would be down shortly. And who says only the Irish have such fine luck?
In walks our Johnny-on-the-spot plumber, Ron; this would be Tony’s Ron who was on call that evening. Did I say “in walks”? Perhaps I should say in reeled, in staggered, in swayed, in teetered, in lurched, in weaved; Mr. Roget doesn’t yet have a synonym for the one word you would use to aptly describe Ron’s’ mode of locomotion. I direct Ron, with great effort, back to the kitchen, where he immediately spots the backed-up hand sink. Without saying a word, he plops himself down on the floor and begins to attempt to dismantle the P-trap under the sink. I say to Ron, and I was being very dramatic at this point by raising my voice, waving my arms about and pointing in all directions, “It’s not the P-trap! We’re backed up in our bathroom, we’re backed up in the bar, we’re backed up in the kitchen; WE’RE BACKED UP EVERYWHERE. THE MAIN IS BACKED UP!!” Ron looks up at me and, uttering his first words of the night, says “Shlow down a minute, will ya?” He then turns his glazed eyes back on the P-trap, which he successfully dismantles, and watches as the turbid water rushes from the sink drain into his lap.
I help a very wet and still very drunk Ron up from the floor, and lead him to the main hotel lobby, where the entrance to the crawl space, which contains the main plumbing lines, is located. Down into the space we go, and I point out the main sewage discharge line. Ron looks all around the crawl space as if he was looking for an “Easy” button, or perhaps a detonator that would blow this plumbing problem into the next county. Remember, he’s having a tough time with his equilibrium, so the sight of this man half hunched over in the 5’ tall crawl space looking and pointing at the pipes all about him took on the appearance of a drunken sailor swatting at bees below deck in a violent sea.
Ron finally gets his bearings, and faces me with his assessment of the situation. He also delivers this assessment in a dramatic fashion, similar to my aforementioned dramatic outburst in the kitchen. “Everythings backwards down here. Thish pipe ish running backwards, thish pipe should be goin th’other way. Whoever built thish thing got it all screwed up!” He then proceeds to crawl slowly and carefully up the steps, and sits on the edge of the crawl space, his legs dangling over the abyss, his elbows on his knees, and his face buried in his hands. He doesn’t move for 15 minutes. When he finally stirs – I wasn’t there to see this but heard it second hand – he gets up, says not a word to anyone present, then staggers/reels/teeters/sways/weaves/lurches his way out the front door and into the cold, dark, January night.
In walks one of our kitchen employees, who happens to have a drug connection who is also a plumber. (This drug connection thing is not uncommon in Grand County, or in the restaurant business.) I previously mentioned that the dead rock star-named plumber was my second-to- last resort – this drug connection plumber was indeed my last resort. That story about “I’m not feeling it today,” - that might also be this guy. But then I figure, “What do I have to lose?” At the very least, I’ll have more fodder for the blog.
Enter Plumber #3, the most unreliable plumber in Grand County. That’s like being the worst sinner in Las Vegas or the biggest drunk at Mardi gras, or…..you get the point.
Not only am I stunned that he showed up when summoned, but he’s bright eyed, he’s clean, he’s sober, and he’s ready to tackle the problem. All those present, at least those who knew this gentleman and his predilections, could’ve been knocked over by a puff of bong exhaust.
Four hours and $400 dollars later, our local hero has the lines flowing free. He worked down in that fetid crawl space from 8:00 until midnight, flushing the line with a high pressure “jetter”, and then cleaning up the offal responsible for the clog. This was a job so nasty and so incredibly filthy, that the Dirty Jobs guy on TV would’ve hired it out; and our man did it with a smile. No matter what Plumber #3 didn’t do before, or what he may yet not do in the future, the night of January 2nd will forever be known in local lore as the night that Grand Counties most infamous slacker plumber, actually plumbed, and in doing so, saved our bacon and allowed The Riverside to continue to serve some of Grand Counties finest food in a sewage-free environment, per the State code.
To be concluded........
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