As you already know if you’ve visited the Riverside under our tenure as owners, it is purported that John Lennon slept at the Riverside Hotel – not exactly sure when, obviously before 1980. I was told this by the hotel’s previous owner, Abe Rodriguez, who even claimed to have a copy of the signed registration receipt. Abe mentioned that we would ultimately own that important little piece of history when we bought the hotel, but regretfully, that promise was never fulfilled. Caveat Emptor. This story was also verified as truth by some of the folks at Grand County Bank; I’m certain they wouldn’t lie to me.
Abe didn’t have a lot of details to pass along regarding Lennon’s visit, but did say that he stayed in what is known as the ‘Mil’ room, which is located at the southwest corner of the hotel. The Mil room is nice in that it is one of the larger rooms, as well as having the best views of the river, Mt. Bross, the town and the hills south of town. It is generally also the brightest room in the hotel.
When we bought the hotel and were in the process of redecorating, we thought it important to recognize the importance of this historic visit by hanging a picture of Mr. Lennon and a plaque detailing a short story of the stay in the Mil room. Julie scoured the internet for just the right Lennon picture, but nothing obvious stood out as the one we had to have; until we stumbled on a print in a dingy old shop on Chartres Street in New Orleans, of John standing in front of the Statue of Liberty waving the peace sign. You’ve probably all seen the picture, and we chose it because it seemed to sum up the John Lennon we loved and wanted to remember – still boyish and fun-loving – and it would have been taken around the time that John stayed at the hotel.
Julie was in charge of the picture, but I was in charge of the plaque. Tough to come up with an informative plaque when you have no information – I knew absolutely nothing other than ‘John Lennon stayed here’. So I did a little research and the first tie that I found to John Lennon and Colorado was that the Beatles played at Red Rocks Amphitheater on their first US tour in August of 1964. That Denver show was preceded three days earlier by a show in Los Angeles at The Hollywood Bowl. There it had to be! Here was Lennon in the Denver area, with three days unaccounted for. Surely he must have taken some tourist time to visit the majestic Rocky Mountains, Grand Lake, the National Park, the Colorado River, and naturally, The Riverside. But I needed a story for the wall, not just a string of dates where this could’ve happened; so I made one up.
Borrowing a little from Mr. Kerouac, the story went something like this. ‘On August 7th, 1964, after the conclusion of the Beatles concert at The Hollywood Bowl, John Lennon left the touring party and with two friends, drove east across the great American West, en route for the Beatles next show on August 11th at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver, CO. On the evening of August 10th, he pulled into Hot Sulphur Springs in search of a meal and a bed, and found the Riverside Restaurant and Hotel. He stayed in this room.’ I printed it, framed it and hung it in the room next to sink – the sink he would have washed in.
We always took visitors to the room when they toured the hotel, and watched with delight as they smiled at the thought of John Lennon one time habiting the space where they now stood. Many would get their picture taken in front of the plaque, while a few even went as far as to wash their hands in the sink. I often even offered guests the opportunity to vacuum the floor upon which he trod, or clean the windows through which he gazed, but never had takers.
Everything was going smoothly with the fabricated John Lennon legend until the arrival of Ms. Janet, one of our guests, who stayed in the John Lennon room one night while visiting the Rocky Mountains from California. Janet called immediate bullshit on the story, saying there was no way that Lennon left the group and drove across the desert with his buddies. In fact, she informed me that the first American Beatles tour was planned down to the second, and nowhere on the agenda would there have been a day away from the group for open time.
All right, so she caught me. But she was intrigued enough by the legend of his visit to do some research. Her job as a consultant in historical building and landmark preservation bent her towards a proclivity to get to the bottom of things and places. It wasn’t long after her visit that I received an email from Janet, detailing her best guess at when and why John Lennon would have visited The Riverside.
In the summer of 1974, four years after the breakup of The Beatles, John Lennon traveled to Caribou Ranch, a music studio in Nederland, CO, to record a few songs with Elton John; among them was Elton John’s cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Lennon was accompanied not by Yoko, but May Pang, Yoko’s personal assistant, who at the time happened to be assisting Yoko by taking care of John’s…uh…personal needs.
After the recording session, John and May struck out on their own for a few quiet days in the Rockies. They were spotted buying a pair of cowboy boots in Boulder, and there are a few snapshots in May Pang’s book of John in a mountain meadow, and John lying in a mountain stream, but beyond that, not much else exists as a record of their Colorado visit. Being the internationally famous icon that he was, odds are he travelled the back roads, visiting quiet, out-of-the-way places, all the while keeping a low profile.
When you say things like ‘back roads’, ‘out-of-the-way places’ and ‘low profile’, what on earth would spring more quickly to mind than Hot Sulphur Springs, CO. And Lennon wouldn’t have wanted to stay at a busy summer-time hotel, one with a bunch of nosey, autograph-seeking tourists; again, what better spot for solitude in a deserted hotel than The Riverside. It makes perfect sense to me.
So did he or didn’t he stay at The Riverside? And if he did, did he play Imagine on the piano in the bar; that same bar piano that I have for sale on EBay right now? Did he eat in the restaurant, and did he really use the utensils that I sold for $600 on EBay last month? We’ll never know for sure, but I’m going with Janet’s theory and Imagine that he did.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part VI………………………EASTWARD HO!
On Sunday, March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed and locked the doors of The Riverside for the final time. It was a beautiful evening – the kind that I grew to relish, the kind of evening that made all of the pain and struggles inherent of living in Grand County worthwhile. All of my favorite Grand County early evening accoutrements were on display, particularly the emerald blue eastern sky which starkly contrasted the pumpkin-colored alpenglow on the rise of Cottonwood Pass. Many an evening I sat in front of the hotel, regardless of the temperature or the crowd in the restaurant, (“Have you seen our waiter???”) and drank in that ‘has to be seen to be believed’ vista to the east. I guess I always new that our time in Hot Sulphur Springs would be relatively short lived – 5 to 10 years at best – and I took advantage of every opportunity to gaze at the surrounding spectra as if it would be my last. The time for my last gaze had come, albeit a lot sooner than I had either imagined or intended, and I witnessed that natural spectacle for the final time through eyes blurred by tears of both joy and sadness.
We’d succumbed to the forces that were thrashing our dream – the economy, the bank, our ineptitude and our newfound lack of desire due to all of the afore-mentioned. We were leaving good friends and a lifestyle in a vacation setting that most people only dream of realizing. The tears shed on the wings of such failings, such sadness, were expected and require no explanation.
Yet, there were also tears of joy?
Yes, tears of joy indeed, at the immitigable delight of a fresh start, in a new place; another exhilarating go at embracing the unknown. This speaks to why we left our Shawnee, KS comfort zone and did this crazy thing in the first place. We were the new pioneers, giving up the safety and security of our cushy life in the suburbs and packing up our belongings to head west into the unknown. And not unlike the old pioneers, that unknown held the promise of a radically different, and a hopefully better, way of life. We knew there were risks, both in the journey and at the destination, but we looked beyond the rational and forged ahead. We focused on the joy of change and the excitement of the unknown, concentrating on the glory of what could go right as opposed to the agony of what might go wrong.
I don’t wish the feeling of failure and nothingness at the end of the rainbow on anyone, but I can tell you that the feeling you experience at the onset of the quest is an elixir that cannot be reproduced, bottled or sold, not for any price. I also have many regrets about our ‘mid-life’ crisis, our westward digression, but one of them isn’t the indescribable feeling that you experience when you step off the ledge into the unknown.
And here we were, two short years later, stepping off another ledge. I was short of breath; my head swirled, and yes, melded into the burnt orange and azure eastern evening vistas, there were indeed tears of joy.
Back to reality, as our 2003 Suburban was absolutely crammed to the gills with stuff that we didn’t want in the moving van. Most of it was booze-related. Specifically, 50-60 bottles of wine, collectable stuff that I took better care of than my kids. And for good reason, damn it! Add to these a dozen Riedel wine glasses, very carefully packed, and my crystal Riedel phallic wine decanter. You look at this thing wrong and it breaks. No way its going in a moving van – even crated in a 4'x 4' x 6' box with 96-pounds of packing paper. We also had several crates of hard liquor that we took from the bar; stuff Julie and I didn’t drink, but you never knew when you were going to be invited to a ‘bring your own Grasshopper’ party down in Mississippi; If that call came in, I had the juice. Add to this our traveling clothes, last-minute nik-naks, some yard and garden things....and of course, Lucy.
The plan was to pull out of Hot Sulphur whenever we did, and drive as far as we could that evening. I didn’t care what time we left or how far we got; whatever it be, I didn’t want to spend one more night at The Riverside. I even had discussions with myself all day about the ultimate departure, and ‘not looking back’. You’d have to experience what I’d gone through the past eight months, with me living in Mississippi, Julie living in Colorado, the bank giving us the old jail house chi-chi, etc, etc, etc, before you'd understand why I wouldn't want to look back. I loved the place, I had great times and better memories, but I WANTED OUT OF GRAND COUNTY!
6:15 PM, the door was locked, hugs and tears to all assembled at our farewell. We climbed in the Suburban, backed out of the alley, and headed east on Grand Street. I hadn’t driven thirty feet, and in spite of what I promised myself I wouldn’t do, I looked back, into the drivers-side rear view mirror. It was a spectacular vision, as the magnificent white façade of that grand old girl was bathed in the luminescent orange glow of the setting sun. It was my favorite Grand County evening vision; it was alpenglow on The Riverside. I didn't take my eyes off of the place for the half-mile up Grand Street that I could still see her. In my last view of the place, she looked as beautiful as I’d ever seen her look. It was a 240-volt jolt reminding me of why I shucked it all to move west, move here. The tears flowed, unabated.
The rearview mirror view dissipated. We hit Highway 40, and headed east. The tears abated.
Eastward Ho!
On Sunday, March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed and locked the doors of The Riverside for the final time. It was a beautiful evening – the kind that I grew to relish, the kind of evening that made all of the pain and struggles inherent of living in Grand County worthwhile. All of my favorite Grand County early evening accoutrements were on display, particularly the emerald blue eastern sky which starkly contrasted the pumpkin-colored alpenglow on the rise of Cottonwood Pass. Many an evening I sat in front of the hotel, regardless of the temperature or the crowd in the restaurant, (“Have you seen our waiter???”) and drank in that ‘has to be seen to be believed’ vista to the east. I guess I always new that our time in Hot Sulphur Springs would be relatively short lived – 5 to 10 years at best – and I took advantage of every opportunity to gaze at the surrounding spectra as if it would be my last. The time for my last gaze had come, albeit a lot sooner than I had either imagined or intended, and I witnessed that natural spectacle for the final time through eyes blurred by tears of both joy and sadness.
We’d succumbed to the forces that were thrashing our dream – the economy, the bank, our ineptitude and our newfound lack of desire due to all of the afore-mentioned. We were leaving good friends and a lifestyle in a vacation setting that most people only dream of realizing. The tears shed on the wings of such failings, such sadness, were expected and require no explanation.
Yet, there were also tears of joy?
Yes, tears of joy indeed, at the immitigable delight of a fresh start, in a new place; another exhilarating go at embracing the unknown. This speaks to why we left our Shawnee, KS comfort zone and did this crazy thing in the first place. We were the new pioneers, giving up the safety and security of our cushy life in the suburbs and packing up our belongings to head west into the unknown. And not unlike the old pioneers, that unknown held the promise of a radically different, and a hopefully better, way of life. We knew there were risks, both in the journey and at the destination, but we looked beyond the rational and forged ahead. We focused on the joy of change and the excitement of the unknown, concentrating on the glory of what could go right as opposed to the agony of what might go wrong.
I don’t wish the feeling of failure and nothingness at the end of the rainbow on anyone, but I can tell you that the feeling you experience at the onset of the quest is an elixir that cannot be reproduced, bottled or sold, not for any price. I also have many regrets about our ‘mid-life’ crisis, our westward digression, but one of them isn’t the indescribable feeling that you experience when you step off the ledge into the unknown.
And here we were, two short years later, stepping off another ledge. I was short of breath; my head swirled, and yes, melded into the burnt orange and azure eastern evening vistas, there were indeed tears of joy.
Back to reality, as our 2003 Suburban was absolutely crammed to the gills with stuff that we didn’t want in the moving van. Most of it was booze-related. Specifically, 50-60 bottles of wine, collectable stuff that I took better care of than my kids. And for good reason, damn it! Add to these a dozen Riedel wine glasses, very carefully packed, and my crystal Riedel phallic wine decanter. You look at this thing wrong and it breaks. No way its going in a moving van – even crated in a 4'x 4' x 6' box with 96-pounds of packing paper. We also had several crates of hard liquor that we took from the bar; stuff Julie and I didn’t drink, but you never knew when you were going to be invited to a ‘bring your own Grasshopper’ party down in Mississippi; If that call came in, I had the juice. Add to this our traveling clothes, last-minute nik-naks, some yard and garden things....and of course, Lucy.
The plan was to pull out of Hot Sulphur whenever we did, and drive as far as we could that evening. I didn’t care what time we left or how far we got; whatever it be, I didn’t want to spend one more night at The Riverside. I even had discussions with myself all day about the ultimate departure, and ‘not looking back’. You’d have to experience what I’d gone through the past eight months, with me living in Mississippi, Julie living in Colorado, the bank giving us the old jail house chi-chi, etc, etc, etc, before you'd understand why I wouldn't want to look back. I loved the place, I had great times and better memories, but I WANTED OUT OF GRAND COUNTY!
6:15 PM, the door was locked, hugs and tears to all assembled at our farewell. We climbed in the Suburban, backed out of the alley, and headed east on Grand Street. I hadn’t driven thirty feet, and in spite of what I promised myself I wouldn’t do, I looked back, into the drivers-side rear view mirror. It was a spectacular vision, as the magnificent white façade of that grand old girl was bathed in the luminescent orange glow of the setting sun. It was my favorite Grand County evening vision; it was alpenglow on The Riverside. I didn't take my eyes off of the place for the half-mile up Grand Street that I could still see her. In my last view of the place, she looked as beautiful as I’d ever seen her look. It was a 240-volt jolt reminding me of why I shucked it all to move west, move here. The tears flowed, unabated.
The rearview mirror view dissipated. We hit Highway 40, and headed east. The tears abated.
Eastward Ho!
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part V…………………….A Fluid Farewell (continued)
I’d made 8, 10, 12 trips – I’d lost count - back and forth in my Sisyphean effort to keep the water from flooding our bathroom, but to no immediate avail. The water just kept coming, but from where? During bucket-running trip number X, I noticed the sound of running water as I ran past the laundry room. Instantly it registered to me, as I’d heard that sound before; the upstairs toilet in bathroom #2 was running, as occasionally the flapper valve in that toilet would stick. Not often, but occasionally. But the previous occasions of stuck flapper valves had always involved actual humans being upstairs, actually flushing the toilet. No one had been upstairs for an hour.
I dumped the bucket and ran upstairs to fix the toilet. "Holy Shit!" The bathroom door was locked. “You’ve got to be kidding me! The freaking bathroom door is locked!”
This would be the bathroom on the left, bathroom #2, for which we have no key. It wouldn’t be the bathroom on the right, bathroom #1, for which we have a key.
“All right” I said to myself, “Take a deep breath and gather your thoughts. Let’s see. Five of us have been in the house for the past hour, and none of us have gone upstairs. I’m certain of this, as we were all downstairs together, and all within earshot as the water started rising in our bathroom toilet; water from which I now know is from this running toilet. So within the last 10 minutes, this toilet flushed, the flapper valve got stuck, and now the door is locked.”
I didn’t have too much more time to stand around and talk to myself and examine the implications of obvious physical activity without the presence of physical beings. I ran downstairs and told my neighbor what was up, his wife stepping in to vacuum the water, while he took over the bucket-running duties. Darin still stood quietly in the office, with a mad grin on his face and a glazed look in his eyes.
Three or four times during our ownership this bathroom door had been inadvertently locked by guests. You’d think that I would have gotten a new lock with an actual key, but noooo, I’d found a cheaper way around this problem, as I was able to pry the door molding ajar with a putty knife then use a small saw to jimmy the lock. I would have run to get that prying tool and small saw, but I knew it a wasted effort as they were probably packed in a 36”x24”x24” box with 24 pounds of packing paper, labeled “BATHROOM #2 JIMMY TOOLS”. The box was certainly well hidden in the moving van; in fact, all of my tools, and anything that even resembled a tool, was in a box in the van.
At this point, I was literally running around pell-mell downstairs, resembling something like a wild-eyed, sweaty, fleshy pinball, as I ran from this room to that, looking for something, anything, that I could use to get in that bathroom. I’d run by the large silverware tray four or five times - the silverware tray that contained 150 knives, any of which would have worked beautifully for both the molding pry and the lock jimmy process – before it hit me like a big “W”. I grabbed a knife – a simple dinner knife – ran upstairs and within a matter of seconds, pried open the molding, jimmied the lock and silenced the toilet.
The water stopped rising. The bucket brigade ended. Darin was still smiling.
The ghost had to be laughing hysterically, proud as a peacock of his final Seinfeldian prank. If there are multiple Riverside ghosts, I’m certain there was back-slapping, high-fiving and exploding fists as well. While humored, I’ll hope that they were also heartbroken at our impending departure – we were not only good stewards of their domain, but even better foibles for their ghostly folly.
To be concluded................
I’d made 8, 10, 12 trips – I’d lost count - back and forth in my Sisyphean effort to keep the water from flooding our bathroom, but to no immediate avail. The water just kept coming, but from where? During bucket-running trip number X, I noticed the sound of running water as I ran past the laundry room. Instantly it registered to me, as I’d heard that sound before; the upstairs toilet in bathroom #2 was running, as occasionally the flapper valve in that toilet would stick. Not often, but occasionally. But the previous occasions of stuck flapper valves had always involved actual humans being upstairs, actually flushing the toilet. No one had been upstairs for an hour.
I dumped the bucket and ran upstairs to fix the toilet. "Holy Shit!" The bathroom door was locked. “You’ve got to be kidding me! The freaking bathroom door is locked!”
This would be the bathroom on the left, bathroom #2, for which we have no key. It wouldn’t be the bathroom on the right, bathroom #1, for which we have a key.
“All right” I said to myself, “Take a deep breath and gather your thoughts. Let’s see. Five of us have been in the house for the past hour, and none of us have gone upstairs. I’m certain of this, as we were all downstairs together, and all within earshot as the water started rising in our bathroom toilet; water from which I now know is from this running toilet. So within the last 10 minutes, this toilet flushed, the flapper valve got stuck, and now the door is locked.”
I didn’t have too much more time to stand around and talk to myself and examine the implications of obvious physical activity without the presence of physical beings. I ran downstairs and told my neighbor what was up, his wife stepping in to vacuum the water, while he took over the bucket-running duties. Darin still stood quietly in the office, with a mad grin on his face and a glazed look in his eyes.
Three or four times during our ownership this bathroom door had been inadvertently locked by guests. You’d think that I would have gotten a new lock with an actual key, but noooo, I’d found a cheaper way around this problem, as I was able to pry the door molding ajar with a putty knife then use a small saw to jimmy the lock. I would have run to get that prying tool and small saw, but I knew it a wasted effort as they were probably packed in a 36”x24”x24” box with 24 pounds of packing paper, labeled “BATHROOM #2 JIMMY TOOLS”. The box was certainly well hidden in the moving van; in fact, all of my tools, and anything that even resembled a tool, was in a box in the van.
At this point, I was literally running around pell-mell downstairs, resembling something like a wild-eyed, sweaty, fleshy pinball, as I ran from this room to that, looking for something, anything, that I could use to get in that bathroom. I’d run by the large silverware tray four or five times - the silverware tray that contained 150 knives, any of which would have worked beautifully for both the molding pry and the lock jimmy process – before it hit me like a big “W”. I grabbed a knife – a simple dinner knife – ran upstairs and within a matter of seconds, pried open the molding, jimmied the lock and silenced the toilet.
The water stopped rising. The bucket brigade ended. Darin was still smiling.
The ghost had to be laughing hysterically, proud as a peacock of his final Seinfeldian prank. If there are multiple Riverside ghosts, I’m certain there was back-slapping, high-fiving and exploding fists as well. While humored, I’ll hope that they were also heartbroken at our impending departure – we were not only good stewards of their domain, but even better foibles for their ghostly folly.
To be concluded................
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part IV...............A Fluid Farewell
On March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed the doors, gave a local caretaker the keys, tearfully hugged our close friends’ goodbye, and drove out of Hot Sulphur Springs, away from the Riverside Hotel. The flood of emotions that came with that action were literally metaphorically a flood - a massive, violent, lifting, rumbling jumble of both destruction and cleansing; washing away the old and clearing a way for our ultimate rebirth. A flood is the perfect metaphor for what occurred, as we stood back, helpless, and watched a force much greater than us sweep over and destroy our dream, and despite our protestations and earnest but futile efforts, take that dream and leave us with little more than the reckoning of what comes next. What hopefully comes after a flood, provided it didn’t kill you, is rebirth, reorganization and the realization that you got smacked hard, but you’re still alive and, Thank God Almighty, you’re able to smack back.
What destructive force took us under? The list is as long as a Grand County winter and it would be small of me to blame first and foremost anyone but myself for my bad business acumen. Couple that with a horrible economy in an out-of-the-way place whose sole existence and economy is based upon discretionary income – the first type of income that goes south in a bad economy. Add to this volatile mix the local financial institution, the supposed backbone of this beautiful, rugged but financially strapped area, run by a bunch of wealthy ranchers that combined a lethal mixture of financial naiveté, avarice and a moral compass that would make you pray for Somali pirates as your business partners. The final F-up would be our poor choice of location – a small, out-of-the-way town whose only raison d’être is to draw a select group of clientele to a hot springs complex that ranks at the bottom of all hot springs complexes in the State/Country/World. We’re catering to a very small, very select group, going to the (arguably) worst of all possible very small, very select places. No knock on those that love the place, as we did, but honestly, it’s a very select group; and a depressed economy can be a financially fatal time to cater to a select group. Oh well, I’d been lucky in life up to this point; odds dictated that there eventually had to be a bump in that road.
The packers were supposed to show up on Thursday, March 18th, and the moving van on the 19th to load us up and take us to our new world. But Colorado had a parting gift for us – a blizzard the morning of the 18th that shut down I-70, Berthoud Pass and most of Grand County; to this point, the largest snowfall of the year in this snow/water starved environ. Unfortunately the ski slopes closed the weekend before – no question, timing is everything. The blizzard put the move back two days, with the packers now scheduled to arrive on Saturday, March 20th, and the moving van on Sunday the 21st.
When I awoke early on the morning of the 20th – the first day of spring – the temperature in Hot Sulphur Springs was a robust 18 degrees……below zero. While there were innumerable things I would miss about living in Grand County, CO, the blissful memory of greeting spring with 18 degrees below zero would be tossed quickly into the recycle bin. As the packers had to have doors open to move in and out of the building, the temperature for most of the morning – in the hotel – was below zero. Recycle bin that memory as well.
I learned something interesting about the relocation industry that day, especially those involved in corporate relocations – the kind where the company picks up the total tab. I would have assumed the cost of the move was based upon mileage and cubic feet of truck space; in fact, it is based upon gross weight. This would explain why a packer would use a 24”x12”x12” box, loaded with 3-4 pounds of packing paper, to carefully and thoroughly wrap a box of paper clips, a roll of scotch tape, a small stapler and a pencil holder from the top of our office desk. In total, the carton and its contents weighed 7 pounds – the actual contents (things I would have thrown away vs. packing) weighed less than a pound. We had large moving boxes – 36”x24”x24” – containing two 8- ounce lamp shades, secured by reams of packing paper, total weight approaching 15 pounds. Oh, and they also charge per box and per 1000 sheets of packing paper. They were nice people, but what a racket!
Sunday arrives, along with the moving van, and the 10AM thermometer reads 30F; that’s a 50 degree swing from the previous morning. It took the movers until about 4:00 PM to load all of our furniture, appliances, a 1300-pound gun safe (cha-ching!) and 123 boxes of various weights, shapes and sizes. As the movers emptied a room, we cleaned behind them, as our intent was to leave the place spotless for future sales showings, then get out of town before dark. At 3:00 PM, I did the final upstairs walkthrough. We’d left all of the furnishings in the rooms, so there wasn’t the empty feel that our downstairs living quarters would offer. A sad, slow walkthrough, room by room, filled me with a thousand memories – things like “I’ve made this damn bed a thousand times” and “I’ve scrubbed this damn toilet a thousand times.” I said my final goodbye – aloud, in case I wasn’t alone - knowing that I’d made that bed and cleaned that toilet for the last time.
I joined Julie downstairs, watching as she made her final pass with the vacuum. Speaking of doing something 1000 times, Julie knew every square inch of that floor from the handle of our Riccar, and I know for certain that her vacuuming memories would soon be joining a few of mine in the recycling bin. We were joined by a few remaining friends as we wrapped things up, preparing to leave the Riverside forever, as the owners. I needed to make a final pit stop in our bathroom before heading out, and I headed back to our living quarters for what I thought would be the last time.
Business completed, I gave one final flush, and watched in horror as the water in the bowl began to rise. Oh my, how could this be? After all, it was business #1, not the number of business that typically clogs a toilet. I quickly shut the water off, and headed to the tool room to retrieve the plunger. Needless to say, I’d done this more than a few times in this plumber’s nightmare of a house.
Plunge. Plunge. Plunge………nothing. Damn!
One other time during our ownership did the plumbing main back up – I’ve chronicled this New Year’s Day nightmare in a previous blog. But that clog was the result of full hotel rooms for 3 straight days, which equates to pretty extensive number two-ing. We’d had no guests in the hotel for the last two weeks; I couldn’t imagine how – and why now, why today – we could have a clogged main sewer line.
I checked another downstairs toilet, and sure enough, the main was backed up. I shut the water off to all of the toilets, and stood looking at the throne in our bathroom, wondering just what in the hell I was going to do about this. And as if a switch had been turned on, the water in our stool began to slowly rise. Holy crap! I’d shut the water supply off. What could be causing this? In a matter of seconds, the water began flowing over the brim of the bowl, onto the just cleaned and disinfected tile floor. My neighbor came running when he heard my screams, and quickly surveying the situation, he ran to the tool room to grab the wet vac. He began vacuuming the water out of the bowl – it took less than 10 seconds to fill the 5-gallon vacuum canister. I grabbed the 40+ pound bucket and moved outside as quickly as I could, dumping it into the street in front of the hotel. I won’t get graphic here, but suffice to say, the water wasn’t fresh and clear. Back and forth I went, filling the vac and dumping the water into the street, all the while the water continuing to slowly rise.
(An important aside to this part of the story; Darin, the local mortician who had seriously considered purchasing The Riverside, was standing in the empty office, watching quietly as I ran back and forth, gently carrying, so as not to spill it on the cleaned floors, the 40 pound buckets full of flotsam and jetsam before dumping them into the street. I've never seen the face of a man who’s just learned that he’s been given a death sentence commutation, but I was pretty certain that was the look I was seeing on Darin's face.)
Where in the hell was the water coming from?
To Be Continued....................
On March 21st, at 6:15 PM, we closed the doors, gave a local caretaker the keys, tearfully hugged our close friends’ goodbye, and drove out of Hot Sulphur Springs, away from the Riverside Hotel. The flood of emotions that came with that action were literally metaphorically a flood - a massive, violent, lifting, rumbling jumble of both destruction and cleansing; washing away the old and clearing a way for our ultimate rebirth. A flood is the perfect metaphor for what occurred, as we stood back, helpless, and watched a force much greater than us sweep over and destroy our dream, and despite our protestations and earnest but futile efforts, take that dream and leave us with little more than the reckoning of what comes next. What hopefully comes after a flood, provided it didn’t kill you, is rebirth, reorganization and the realization that you got smacked hard, but you’re still alive and, Thank God Almighty, you’re able to smack back.
What destructive force took us under? The list is as long as a Grand County winter and it would be small of me to blame first and foremost anyone but myself for my bad business acumen. Couple that with a horrible economy in an out-of-the-way place whose sole existence and economy is based upon discretionary income – the first type of income that goes south in a bad economy. Add to this volatile mix the local financial institution, the supposed backbone of this beautiful, rugged but financially strapped area, run by a bunch of wealthy ranchers that combined a lethal mixture of financial naiveté, avarice and a moral compass that would make you pray for Somali pirates as your business partners. The final F-up would be our poor choice of location – a small, out-of-the-way town whose only raison d’être is to draw a select group of clientele to a hot springs complex that ranks at the bottom of all hot springs complexes in the State/Country/World. We’re catering to a very small, very select group, going to the (arguably) worst of all possible very small, very select places. No knock on those that love the place, as we did, but honestly, it’s a very select group; and a depressed economy can be a financially fatal time to cater to a select group. Oh well, I’d been lucky in life up to this point; odds dictated that there eventually had to be a bump in that road.
The packers were supposed to show up on Thursday, March 18th, and the moving van on the 19th to load us up and take us to our new world. But Colorado had a parting gift for us – a blizzard the morning of the 18th that shut down I-70, Berthoud Pass and most of Grand County; to this point, the largest snowfall of the year in this snow/water starved environ. Unfortunately the ski slopes closed the weekend before – no question, timing is everything. The blizzard put the move back two days, with the packers now scheduled to arrive on Saturday, March 20th, and the moving van on Sunday the 21st.
When I awoke early on the morning of the 20th – the first day of spring – the temperature in Hot Sulphur Springs was a robust 18 degrees……below zero. While there were innumerable things I would miss about living in Grand County, CO, the blissful memory of greeting spring with 18 degrees below zero would be tossed quickly into the recycle bin. As the packers had to have doors open to move in and out of the building, the temperature for most of the morning – in the hotel – was below zero. Recycle bin that memory as well.
I learned something interesting about the relocation industry that day, especially those involved in corporate relocations – the kind where the company picks up the total tab. I would have assumed the cost of the move was based upon mileage and cubic feet of truck space; in fact, it is based upon gross weight. This would explain why a packer would use a 24”x12”x12” box, loaded with 3-4 pounds of packing paper, to carefully and thoroughly wrap a box of paper clips, a roll of scotch tape, a small stapler and a pencil holder from the top of our office desk. In total, the carton and its contents weighed 7 pounds – the actual contents (things I would have thrown away vs. packing) weighed less than a pound. We had large moving boxes – 36”x24”x24” – containing two 8- ounce lamp shades, secured by reams of packing paper, total weight approaching 15 pounds. Oh, and they also charge per box and per 1000 sheets of packing paper. They were nice people, but what a racket!
Sunday arrives, along with the moving van, and the 10AM thermometer reads 30F; that’s a 50 degree swing from the previous morning. It took the movers until about 4:00 PM to load all of our furniture, appliances, a 1300-pound gun safe (cha-ching!) and 123 boxes of various weights, shapes and sizes. As the movers emptied a room, we cleaned behind them, as our intent was to leave the place spotless for future sales showings, then get out of town before dark. At 3:00 PM, I did the final upstairs walkthrough. We’d left all of the furnishings in the rooms, so there wasn’t the empty feel that our downstairs living quarters would offer. A sad, slow walkthrough, room by room, filled me with a thousand memories – things like “I’ve made this damn bed a thousand times” and “I’ve scrubbed this damn toilet a thousand times.” I said my final goodbye – aloud, in case I wasn’t alone - knowing that I’d made that bed and cleaned that toilet for the last time.
I joined Julie downstairs, watching as she made her final pass with the vacuum. Speaking of doing something 1000 times, Julie knew every square inch of that floor from the handle of our Riccar, and I know for certain that her vacuuming memories would soon be joining a few of mine in the recycling bin. We were joined by a few remaining friends as we wrapped things up, preparing to leave the Riverside forever, as the owners. I needed to make a final pit stop in our bathroom before heading out, and I headed back to our living quarters for what I thought would be the last time.
Business completed, I gave one final flush, and watched in horror as the water in the bowl began to rise. Oh my, how could this be? After all, it was business #1, not the number of business that typically clogs a toilet. I quickly shut the water off, and headed to the tool room to retrieve the plunger. Needless to say, I’d done this more than a few times in this plumber’s nightmare of a house.
Plunge. Plunge. Plunge………nothing. Damn!
One other time during our ownership did the plumbing main back up – I’ve chronicled this New Year’s Day nightmare in a previous blog. But that clog was the result of full hotel rooms for 3 straight days, which equates to pretty extensive number two-ing. We’d had no guests in the hotel for the last two weeks; I couldn’t imagine how – and why now, why today – we could have a clogged main sewer line.
I checked another downstairs toilet, and sure enough, the main was backed up. I shut the water off to all of the toilets, and stood looking at the throne in our bathroom, wondering just what in the hell I was going to do about this. And as if a switch had been turned on, the water in our stool began to slowly rise. Holy crap! I’d shut the water supply off. What could be causing this? In a matter of seconds, the water began flowing over the brim of the bowl, onto the just cleaned and disinfected tile floor. My neighbor came running when he heard my screams, and quickly surveying the situation, he ran to the tool room to grab the wet vac. He began vacuuming the water out of the bowl – it took less than 10 seconds to fill the 5-gallon vacuum canister. I grabbed the 40+ pound bucket and moved outside as quickly as I could, dumping it into the street in front of the hotel. I won’t get graphic here, but suffice to say, the water wasn’t fresh and clear. Back and forth I went, filling the vac and dumping the water into the street, all the while the water continuing to slowly rise.
(An important aside to this part of the story; Darin, the local mortician who had seriously considered purchasing The Riverside, was standing in the empty office, watching quietly as I ran back and forth, gently carrying, so as not to spill it on the cleaned floors, the 40 pound buckets full of flotsam and jetsam before dumping them into the street. I've never seen the face of a man who’s just learned that he’s been given a death sentence commutation, but I was pretty certain that was the look I was seeing on Darin's face.)
Where in the hell was the water coming from?
To Be Continued....................
Monday, April 26, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part III……………………………Making Like The James Gang
As Billy Banker never said anything in our subsequent discussions like “How dare you infer that Hell won’t have me!”, I never found out whether or not he read the original unedited letter that I inadvertently sent; (or was it really inadvertent – is there such a thing as a physical Freudian slip?) After what they did to us, I would’ve loved to have the opportunity to scream those nasty things to their face. And for the record, I would like them to rot in hell. And I also believe that hell is too good for them. And yes, Big Fat Hairy F-You!! It’s not like they could do anything worse to us than they are currently doing; (“Oh yea? Well if that’s how you feel about us, we’re gonna double foreclose on your property!”) so why not let them know how we really feel about them.
Billy Bankers only response to the letter was a terse email saying that there was no written record that I’d ever requested a line of credit, and when questioned, Betty Banker told him she’d never promised us a refinancing, and finally, that he was left with no choice but to proceed with the foreclosure process. Well, I had written proof of our credit line discussions in the form of my bank-approved business plan; and as for Betty Banker lying to Billy Banker about not promising us a refinance – who would ever expect her to tell the truth about anything? I’m certain she looks in the mirror every morning and lies to herself about her not actually being a lying, heartless, thieving bitch.
After reading the email, the reality of our situation was paralyzing, suffocating; it literally took my breath away. And couple getting this email prior to an afternoon meeting with my largest account – me getting Billy Banker’s email then having to sit all afternoon in a rather tense meeting, acting to the assembled crowd as if my entire world hadn’t just come to an end. Oh yes, then I had to call Julie, still fighting it out at the hotel in Colorado, with the news that Billy Banker and his scythe-wielding, sulphur-breathing she-bitch-from-hell may show up at any moment and demand that she vacate the premises. I had no idea what to expect, as I’d never had anything happen like this before. Julie was only slightly hysterical beyond the point of being consolable.
Our next step involved finding a real estate attorney who was licensed in Colorado. I was led to a highly recommended gentleman with a pricy firm whose first words to me, after I explained our dire situation, were “Mr. Paradise, I want you to calm down and relax. They can’t throw you out of your house or take your possessions. There is nothing about this situation that can’t be fixed.” So calm down I did as the attorney laid out the options.
Option #1 involved getting current on the loan– he echoed my friend’s opinion, that in this economy the legal system would look very harshly upon the bank if they tried to foreclose on a current loan. We can then fight them in court as to the validity of the ‘material change in the operation of the business’ reason for calling the note. However, Option #1 involved us coming up with a lawyer-load of money for legal fees, (it could ultimately cost $50,000 - $100,000) and we still had the potential for a downside if we didn’t prevail in court. Well heckfire, if I had $50,000 or $100,000, I wouldn’t be in this mess; so, cancel Option #1.
Option #2 was to move heaven and earth, pull a rabbit out of my hat, part the Dead Sea and then find a buyer for the hotel in the next 60 days. In the 10 months the hotel had been on the market, we had one potentially serious buyer, and he backed out when the sale of the adjacent hot springs fell through – it was kind of a package deal. So I didn’t hold a lot of hope for coming up with someone in 60 days, and certainly not someone who would buy the place for a reasonable sum.
Option #3…… walk away. That's right.....just walk away. Walk away from our investment, our equity, our labors, our memories, our friends, our dream, our successes, and sadly, our failure. Walk away from a lot of good things, but more importantly, walk away from a boatload of bad things. It’s referred to as a 'Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure’. You simply give the bank the deed to the property, the bank excuses the indebtedness and you walk away clean.
No more $5000/month mortgage payments, no more $1000/month electric bills, no more $750/month water bills. (Yes, that’s right; our water bill, regardless of usage, was a fixed $750/month.)
Most importantly, no more Julie and I living apart.
When the lawyer explained this to me, and how easily it could be accomplished, I literally exhaled all of the air I’d been suffocating on since early that afternoon. I began to breathe normally again. The tightness in my jaw and chest relaxed, this time without being the normal result of swilling a couple of Bombay’s. The massive weight and profound stress that had been burdening me the past two years slipped off of my back like a cheap kimono.
Just walk away.
But what about our equity and all that we’d invested? Equity is only equity if you sell X for Y. There wasn’t a chance in hell of us selling X for Y anytime soon, yet the thousands of dollars in monthly expenses would continue indefinitely – the biggest percentage being never-to-be recovered interest to those slimy, scum-sucking bastards at Grand County Bank. Realistically, how much longer could we continue to fund this financial Waterloo, all the while living like paupers in Mississippi?
Knowing that all of the pain and suffering could be over, and we could begin to live a normal life again, albeit broke, for the price of something that may never have existed or been attainable anyway, was almost too good to believe. When I explained the situation to Julie, I could hear her smile over 1000 miles of fiber optics. No question it SUCKS that it ended the way it did, BUT IT ENDED, and the peaceful feeling of realizing that it was finally over was worth more money than you can ever imagine.
To Be Continued……….
As Billy Banker never said anything in our subsequent discussions like “How dare you infer that Hell won’t have me!”, I never found out whether or not he read the original unedited letter that I inadvertently sent; (or was it really inadvertent – is there such a thing as a physical Freudian slip?) After what they did to us, I would’ve loved to have the opportunity to scream those nasty things to their face. And for the record, I would like them to rot in hell. And I also believe that hell is too good for them. And yes, Big Fat Hairy F-You!! It’s not like they could do anything worse to us than they are currently doing; (“Oh yea? Well if that’s how you feel about us, we’re gonna double foreclose on your property!”) so why not let them know how we really feel about them.
Billy Bankers only response to the letter was a terse email saying that there was no written record that I’d ever requested a line of credit, and when questioned, Betty Banker told him she’d never promised us a refinancing, and finally, that he was left with no choice but to proceed with the foreclosure process. Well, I had written proof of our credit line discussions in the form of my bank-approved business plan; and as for Betty Banker lying to Billy Banker about not promising us a refinance – who would ever expect her to tell the truth about anything? I’m certain she looks in the mirror every morning and lies to herself about her not actually being a lying, heartless, thieving bitch.
After reading the email, the reality of our situation was paralyzing, suffocating; it literally took my breath away. And couple getting this email prior to an afternoon meeting with my largest account – me getting Billy Banker’s email then having to sit all afternoon in a rather tense meeting, acting to the assembled crowd as if my entire world hadn’t just come to an end. Oh yes, then I had to call Julie, still fighting it out at the hotel in Colorado, with the news that Billy Banker and his scythe-wielding, sulphur-breathing she-bitch-from-hell may show up at any moment and demand that she vacate the premises. I had no idea what to expect, as I’d never had anything happen like this before. Julie was only slightly hysterical beyond the point of being consolable.
Our next step involved finding a real estate attorney who was licensed in Colorado. I was led to a highly recommended gentleman with a pricy firm whose first words to me, after I explained our dire situation, were “Mr. Paradise, I want you to calm down and relax. They can’t throw you out of your house or take your possessions. There is nothing about this situation that can’t be fixed.” So calm down I did as the attorney laid out the options.
Option #1 involved getting current on the loan– he echoed my friend’s opinion, that in this economy the legal system would look very harshly upon the bank if they tried to foreclose on a current loan. We can then fight them in court as to the validity of the ‘material change in the operation of the business’ reason for calling the note. However, Option #1 involved us coming up with a lawyer-load of money for legal fees, (it could ultimately cost $50,000 - $100,000) and we still had the potential for a downside if we didn’t prevail in court. Well heckfire, if I had $50,000 or $100,000, I wouldn’t be in this mess; so, cancel Option #1.
Option #2 was to move heaven and earth, pull a rabbit out of my hat, part the Dead Sea and then find a buyer for the hotel in the next 60 days. In the 10 months the hotel had been on the market, we had one potentially serious buyer, and he backed out when the sale of the adjacent hot springs fell through – it was kind of a package deal. So I didn’t hold a lot of hope for coming up with someone in 60 days, and certainly not someone who would buy the place for a reasonable sum.
Option #3…… walk away. That's right.....just walk away. Walk away from our investment, our equity, our labors, our memories, our friends, our dream, our successes, and sadly, our failure. Walk away from a lot of good things, but more importantly, walk away from a boatload of bad things. It’s referred to as a 'Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure’. You simply give the bank the deed to the property, the bank excuses the indebtedness and you walk away clean.
No more $5000/month mortgage payments, no more $1000/month electric bills, no more $750/month water bills. (Yes, that’s right; our water bill, regardless of usage, was a fixed $750/month.)
Most importantly, no more Julie and I living apart.
When the lawyer explained this to me, and how easily it could be accomplished, I literally exhaled all of the air I’d been suffocating on since early that afternoon. I began to breathe normally again. The tightness in my jaw and chest relaxed, this time without being the normal result of swilling a couple of Bombay’s. The massive weight and profound stress that had been burdening me the past two years slipped off of my back like a cheap kimono.
Just walk away.
But what about our equity and all that we’d invested? Equity is only equity if you sell X for Y. There wasn’t a chance in hell of us selling X for Y anytime soon, yet the thousands of dollars in monthly expenses would continue indefinitely – the biggest percentage being never-to-be recovered interest to those slimy, scum-sucking bastards at Grand County Bank. Realistically, how much longer could we continue to fund this financial Waterloo, all the while living like paupers in Mississippi?
Knowing that all of the pain and suffering could be over, and we could begin to live a normal life again, albeit broke, for the price of something that may never have existed or been attainable anyway, was almost too good to believe. When I explained the situation to Julie, I could hear her smile over 1000 miles of fiber optics. No question it SUCKS that it ended the way it did, BUT IT ENDED, and the peaceful feeling of realizing that it was finally over was worth more money than you can ever imagine.
To Be Continued……….
Monday, April 19, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part II - You Can Edit That Out, Can't You?
I called a good friend, who is an attorney, with my devastating news. Devastating on two fronts – the obvious one where I realized that all that we’d invested, both financially and emotionally, and all that we’d accomplished the last two years at The Riverside was at the stools edge, ready to topple into the bowl and be flushed down the toilet. But perhaps even more disturbing was me coming to grips with my naiveté regarding the banks total manipulation of us and our money. I trusted them implicitly, viewing them as my most essential and necessary partner in this venture. Learning that they were anything but a partner, in fact, they were an adversary, made me question my core ability to comprehend the most basic mental tasks – reasoning, deducing, anticipating, obviating, etc.
I also always thought I was a pretty good judge of people – well go right ahead and throw that notion to the four winds. To think that this bank lady that I trusted so entirely – I can’t begin to tell you the information I shared with her, not only financial but personal – was probably the most devious, evil, dishonest person I’d ever encountered. It was as if I decided that it was probably OK to try and French kiss a hooded cobra. I sat in this woman’s office and cried both in sorrow as I recounted my financial situation, and in joy, as she told me everything would be alright. Little did I know that as I was pouring out my heart & soul, her hands were under her desk sharpening a scythe that would make the Grim Reaper envious, while her gentle demeanor was masking what she was really probing for as she looked at me with her comforting eyes; namely, the best part of my fleshy personage to whack away at with that toad sticker she was honing.
My lawyer friend was fired up when I told him the situation, saying “just because the bank says it’s so doesn’t mean it’s so! Let’s put these bastards on notice that you’re not going to just sit back and let them have their way.” His thought being that in these tough financial times, and with the current national and legal mood regarding financial institutions, that there wouldn’t be a judge in the world that would let them take our hotel from us if we were current on our payments. But first and foremost, I needed to go on record with the bank and write them a letter detailing some of the issues – the fact that they lied regarding a refinancing, and another heretofore unmentioned issue of them promising, and then reneging on a line of credit.
When we were in discussions regarding our loan before purchasing the hotel, it was discussed at length and I was promised a line of operating capital, which was to be secured by the equity we had in the hotel. It was detailed in every cash flow statement, every operating statement, and explicitly discussed in my business plan; all of which were approved by the bank loan officer, the loan committee and the board of directors. I would have never considered purchasing the hotel without a line of credit. Not even close. Take that cash infusion out of my five-year projections and the venture would be dead after two years, as all of my numbers reflected.
When the time came to sit down and request the line, about 10 months into the venture, the loan officer had me give him year-to-date financials and a write up on the general state of the business, including improvements we’d made to the hotel and actual sales and expense numbers vs. budgeted numbers. I complied, and off he went to the loan committee for what I was assured was a done deal. (I wasn’t asking for much – less than 5% of the equity we had in the hotel – just enough to get through the end of the year until the busy holiday season refilled the coffers.)
When I received the news that, in fact, the line of credit was denied, I said to the banker, “We’re dead”, and he didn’t deny it. As previously mentioned, every financial blueprint I’d come up with had that line being essential to our survival; I never figured it any other way.
So a letter was written that detailed what I felt were misrepresentations by the bank that were critical in the failure of the business. My job in writing the letter was to enlighten Billy Banker regarding some of the past history, regardless of his professed lack of interest in “past history.” The letter was to be written in three parts, part one being “we were promised this”, part two was “you welched on your promises”, and part three, to be completed by my lawyer friend, was “now here’s what we’re going to do if you don’t make things right.” I had no clue as to the legal what we can and what we can’t do, so I let the lawyer have at that.
I write parts one and two, and when I get to part three, I decided to have a little fun and vent, as I knew my friend might get a kick out of it, and it might make me feel a little better. In lieu of the legalese that my friend would supply, I started part three of the letter with “So, Grand County Bank, all I can say is BIG FAT HAIRY F**K YOU! You lying, thieving pack of bastards can rot in hell, assuming hell will have you!” Then I emailed the letter to my friend.
He sent me back an edited version, changing some of my text in parts one and two, and adding the all important legal piece at the end of the letter. He used that Microsoft Word program where the deletions are shown in red with a line through them, and the additions are in blue. I cleaned it up, or so I thought, and sent it on to Billy Banker. I then went to lunch. After lunch, I decided I’d open the email I sent to the banker and re-read the letter, trying to get the feeling Billy Banker would get when he opened and read this legal tour de force.
“Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit!”, I said to myself; I inadvertently sent Billy Banker the original, the one where I end it with “So, GCB, BIG FAT HAIRY F-YOU!”
I thought I got rid of all of the colorful deletions and additions; especially that real colorful part at the end of my original letter. But nooooo; unfortunately, and again with very bad timing, there are still some applications in Microsoft Word that I’ve yet to master.
So really really fast, I sent another version – this time as clean as our bank account – to Billy Banker in an email that said “Please disregard the previous draft submission. Clean version attached.”
To be continued……
I called a good friend, who is an attorney, with my devastating news. Devastating on two fronts – the obvious one where I realized that all that we’d invested, both financially and emotionally, and all that we’d accomplished the last two years at The Riverside was at the stools edge, ready to topple into the bowl and be flushed down the toilet. But perhaps even more disturbing was me coming to grips with my naiveté regarding the banks total manipulation of us and our money. I trusted them implicitly, viewing them as my most essential and necessary partner in this venture. Learning that they were anything but a partner, in fact, they were an adversary, made me question my core ability to comprehend the most basic mental tasks – reasoning, deducing, anticipating, obviating, etc.
I also always thought I was a pretty good judge of people – well go right ahead and throw that notion to the four winds. To think that this bank lady that I trusted so entirely – I can’t begin to tell you the information I shared with her, not only financial but personal – was probably the most devious, evil, dishonest person I’d ever encountered. It was as if I decided that it was probably OK to try and French kiss a hooded cobra. I sat in this woman’s office and cried both in sorrow as I recounted my financial situation, and in joy, as she told me everything would be alright. Little did I know that as I was pouring out my heart & soul, her hands were under her desk sharpening a scythe that would make the Grim Reaper envious, while her gentle demeanor was masking what she was really probing for as she looked at me with her comforting eyes; namely, the best part of my fleshy personage to whack away at with that toad sticker she was honing.
My lawyer friend was fired up when I told him the situation, saying “just because the bank says it’s so doesn’t mean it’s so! Let’s put these bastards on notice that you’re not going to just sit back and let them have their way.” His thought being that in these tough financial times, and with the current national and legal mood regarding financial institutions, that there wouldn’t be a judge in the world that would let them take our hotel from us if we were current on our payments. But first and foremost, I needed to go on record with the bank and write them a letter detailing some of the issues – the fact that they lied regarding a refinancing, and another heretofore unmentioned issue of them promising, and then reneging on a line of credit.
When we were in discussions regarding our loan before purchasing the hotel, it was discussed at length and I was promised a line of operating capital, which was to be secured by the equity we had in the hotel. It was detailed in every cash flow statement, every operating statement, and explicitly discussed in my business plan; all of which were approved by the bank loan officer, the loan committee and the board of directors. I would have never considered purchasing the hotel without a line of credit. Not even close. Take that cash infusion out of my five-year projections and the venture would be dead after two years, as all of my numbers reflected.
When the time came to sit down and request the line, about 10 months into the venture, the loan officer had me give him year-to-date financials and a write up on the general state of the business, including improvements we’d made to the hotel and actual sales and expense numbers vs. budgeted numbers. I complied, and off he went to the loan committee for what I was assured was a done deal. (I wasn’t asking for much – less than 5% of the equity we had in the hotel – just enough to get through the end of the year until the busy holiday season refilled the coffers.)
When I received the news that, in fact, the line of credit was denied, I said to the banker, “We’re dead”, and he didn’t deny it. As previously mentioned, every financial blueprint I’d come up with had that line being essential to our survival; I never figured it any other way.
So a letter was written that detailed what I felt were misrepresentations by the bank that were critical in the failure of the business. My job in writing the letter was to enlighten Billy Banker regarding some of the past history, regardless of his professed lack of interest in “past history.” The letter was to be written in three parts, part one being “we were promised this”, part two was “you welched on your promises”, and part three, to be completed by my lawyer friend, was “now here’s what we’re going to do if you don’t make things right.” I had no clue as to the legal what we can and what we can’t do, so I let the lawyer have at that.
I write parts one and two, and when I get to part three, I decided to have a little fun and vent, as I knew my friend might get a kick out of it, and it might make me feel a little better. In lieu of the legalese that my friend would supply, I started part three of the letter with “So, Grand County Bank, all I can say is BIG FAT HAIRY F**K YOU! You lying, thieving pack of bastards can rot in hell, assuming hell will have you!” Then I emailed the letter to my friend.
He sent me back an edited version, changing some of my text in parts one and two, and adding the all important legal piece at the end of the letter. He used that Microsoft Word program where the deletions are shown in red with a line through them, and the additions are in blue. I cleaned it up, or so I thought, and sent it on to Billy Banker. I then went to lunch. After lunch, I decided I’d open the email I sent to the banker and re-read the letter, trying to get the feeling Billy Banker would get when he opened and read this legal tour de force.
“Ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit ohshit!”, I said to myself; I inadvertently sent Billy Banker the original, the one where I end it with “So, GCB, BIG FAT HAIRY F-YOU!”
I thought I got rid of all of the colorful deletions and additions; especially that real colorful part at the end of my original letter. But nooooo; unfortunately, and again with very bad timing, there are still some applications in Microsoft Word that I’ve yet to master.
So really really fast, I sent another version – this time as clean as our bank account – to Billy Banker in an email that said “Please disregard the previous draft submission. Clean version attached.”
To be continued……
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Losing Life Riverside
Part I - Black Tuesday
It should be no revelation to those that knew us and our situation that we were struggling to make a go of it at The Riverside; we were struggling hard. I didn’t move by myself to an apartment in Mississippi for the view. Our timing flat sucked in purchasing a business that had no record of profit, in a real estate market that, arguably with maybe an idiot, is the worst real estate market since real estate markets were valued. Like my grammar and my luck, our timing couldn’t have sucked more worser.
But ‘woe is me’ aside, we did everything we could to keep the place afloat. Thank God for Ergon. And Thank God for the fine folks at Grand County Bank, who promised to work with us in re-doing our loan to make the monthly nut more affordable. In October of 2009, when we were struggling to keep current with our payments, the bank sent us an angel who promised us that if we got current on our 1st mortgage and paid up another short term loan they’d given us, our loan would be refinanced, allowing us a reduced monthly payment where we could keep our mortgage current with only my job revenue. This sweet-faced, seemingly innocent Bank VP – she could be mistaken for an ex-nun – looked us in the eye and promised us a sanctuary from the impending financial doom, provided we did our part in getting current. Our part included depleting both Julie’s and my retirement accounts, which we gladly did in an effort to satisfy the bank and pave the way for a new financial future. Even better news, as in early December, our ex-nun bank angel brought a savior to The Riverside, a savior who was brought in from the outside to help us with our situation. Julie made them coffee, showed them around the hotel, and bid them off with the feeling that our fate was in the hands of these caring, helpful souls. There was a light at the end of the financial abyss, provided we kept up our end of the obligation.
As promised, and with much effort and at the expense of vendors and creditors, we paid the bank every owed cent by years’ end; a gut-wrenching process, but what a feeling of relief when the bill was paid.
During this process, in early November I received an email from our realtor, which brought news to which I was uncertain of its affect regarding our situation – Grand County Bank had been issued a “Cease and Desist Order” from the feds. A modicum of research – Wikipedia, I think – told me that this is what the feds do before they barge into your bank unannounced and seize it at 4:30 PM on a Friday afternoon; a not-so-gentle last warning to ‘get your financial shit together’, or you’ll quickly have no financial shit to get together. This wasn’t a surprise to me, as I’d weekly seen numerous foreclosures on $600,000 weekend getaway homes, crumbling Grand County businesses and a major financial sinkhole in a 36-hole golf course/fly-fishing resort, on the banks of the Colorado River, that went totally tits-up 1/3rd of the way through the development process – all on the balance sheets of Grand County Bank.
All of a sudden it dawned on me that Grand County Bank giving us a loan might not have been the vote of confidence I was looking for in higher financial powers having an educated insight into the potential success or failure of our dream. Throughout the process of our buying The Riverside, Julie would ask me “I wish we could get a sign as to whether or not we’re doing the right thing.” I would answer, “The banks will give us that sign. If we can’t make this work, they’ll have smart people that will blow my numbers out of the sky and we won’t get a loan.” I naively relied on the bank, knowing every last one of our intimate financial details and relying upon my ‘worst-case-scenario’ 5-year pro-formas, to tell me whether or not we had a viable business venture. What a fool I was.
January came and went without news from our sweet angel from the bank regarding our refinancing. At the end of the month, I sent her a brief email saying “waiting to hear from you re our refinancing. Don’t want to get another month behind…” February came and went, with no news from the bank. I was worried, but I knew that our angel was working behind the scenes to make our path easier. But now I was coming up to being two months behind on the mortgage.
Tuesday, March 2nd, the Grand County Bank savior sent me an email. “Mr. Paradise, you are two months behind on your mortgage. Make payment immediately or we will begin foreclosure proceedings.” Wow! I’d never met or spoken with him, but Julie said he was a nice guy who said he wanted to work with us; this email was a little chilly. I called our new friend and explained that I’d held off making payments as I was waiting to hear from the bank regarding my promised refinance. If need be, I could make the January payment immediately, and the February payment by March 15th.
This is where the story turns. This is when I realized there was more at play than us being late with the mortgage. Billy the Banker told me how it was going to be:
“Mr. Paradise, first and foremost, you need to take that money and hire legal counsel. Regardless of whether or not you get current, we are going to declare you in default. You have a clause in your loan that states if there is a material change in the ownership, management or operation of the business, and you living in Mississippi with plans to close the hotel April 1st certainly qualifies as a material change in the operation of the business, the bank can declare the loan in default. We are going to exercise that right.”
“But what about our refinancing? All we want to do is hang on to the place until we can sell it.”
“Mr. Paradise, the Cease & Desist order that we are operating under doesn’t allow us to refinance your loan.”
“Wait a minute!!! Betty Banker promised us that if we got current, we would get refinanced, and you’ve been under the Cease & Desist since early November. Did she just flat lie to us to get every last penny we had before you called the loan?? She knew we couldn’t refinance yet she strung us along until we drained our retirement accounts and handed them over to you??? She seemed so sincere. How could anyone be that evil and not be doing life somewhere?”
“Mr. Paradise, that’s past history. I’m only concerned with the here and now.” (That is a direct quote.)
It was at this point that the disdain and vitriol that I usually reserve for the legal profession was now borne by those in the banking profession – particularly these lying Grand County bastards. In fact, I now needed to embrace the legal profession, as it was my only course for being able to deal with this den of thieves.
To be continued…..
It should be no revelation to those that knew us and our situation that we were struggling to make a go of it at The Riverside; we were struggling hard. I didn’t move by myself to an apartment in Mississippi for the view. Our timing flat sucked in purchasing a business that had no record of profit, in a real estate market that, arguably with maybe an idiot, is the worst real estate market since real estate markets were valued. Like my grammar and my luck, our timing couldn’t have sucked more worser.
But ‘woe is me’ aside, we did everything we could to keep the place afloat. Thank God for Ergon. And Thank God for the fine folks at Grand County Bank, who promised to work with us in re-doing our loan to make the monthly nut more affordable. In October of 2009, when we were struggling to keep current with our payments, the bank sent us an angel who promised us that if we got current on our 1st mortgage and paid up another short term loan they’d given us, our loan would be refinanced, allowing us a reduced monthly payment where we could keep our mortgage current with only my job revenue. This sweet-faced, seemingly innocent Bank VP – she could be mistaken for an ex-nun – looked us in the eye and promised us a sanctuary from the impending financial doom, provided we did our part in getting current. Our part included depleting both Julie’s and my retirement accounts, which we gladly did in an effort to satisfy the bank and pave the way for a new financial future. Even better news, as in early December, our ex-nun bank angel brought a savior to The Riverside, a savior who was brought in from the outside to help us with our situation. Julie made them coffee, showed them around the hotel, and bid them off with the feeling that our fate was in the hands of these caring, helpful souls. There was a light at the end of the financial abyss, provided we kept up our end of the obligation.
As promised, and with much effort and at the expense of vendors and creditors, we paid the bank every owed cent by years’ end; a gut-wrenching process, but what a feeling of relief when the bill was paid.
During this process, in early November I received an email from our realtor, which brought news to which I was uncertain of its affect regarding our situation – Grand County Bank had been issued a “Cease and Desist Order” from the feds. A modicum of research – Wikipedia, I think – told me that this is what the feds do before they barge into your bank unannounced and seize it at 4:30 PM on a Friday afternoon; a not-so-gentle last warning to ‘get your financial shit together’, or you’ll quickly have no financial shit to get together. This wasn’t a surprise to me, as I’d weekly seen numerous foreclosures on $600,000 weekend getaway homes, crumbling Grand County businesses and a major financial sinkhole in a 36-hole golf course/fly-fishing resort, on the banks of the Colorado River, that went totally tits-up 1/3rd of the way through the development process – all on the balance sheets of Grand County Bank.
All of a sudden it dawned on me that Grand County Bank giving us a loan might not have been the vote of confidence I was looking for in higher financial powers having an educated insight into the potential success or failure of our dream. Throughout the process of our buying The Riverside, Julie would ask me “I wish we could get a sign as to whether or not we’re doing the right thing.” I would answer, “The banks will give us that sign. If we can’t make this work, they’ll have smart people that will blow my numbers out of the sky and we won’t get a loan.” I naively relied on the bank, knowing every last one of our intimate financial details and relying upon my ‘worst-case-scenario’ 5-year pro-formas, to tell me whether or not we had a viable business venture. What a fool I was.
January came and went without news from our sweet angel from the bank regarding our refinancing. At the end of the month, I sent her a brief email saying “waiting to hear from you re our refinancing. Don’t want to get another month behind…” February came and went, with no news from the bank. I was worried, but I knew that our angel was working behind the scenes to make our path easier. But now I was coming up to being two months behind on the mortgage.
Tuesday, March 2nd, the Grand County Bank savior sent me an email. “Mr. Paradise, you are two months behind on your mortgage. Make payment immediately or we will begin foreclosure proceedings.” Wow! I’d never met or spoken with him, but Julie said he was a nice guy who said he wanted to work with us; this email was a little chilly. I called our new friend and explained that I’d held off making payments as I was waiting to hear from the bank regarding my promised refinance. If need be, I could make the January payment immediately, and the February payment by March 15th.
This is where the story turns. This is when I realized there was more at play than us being late with the mortgage. Billy the Banker told me how it was going to be:
“Mr. Paradise, first and foremost, you need to take that money and hire legal counsel. Regardless of whether or not you get current, we are going to declare you in default. You have a clause in your loan that states if there is a material change in the ownership, management or operation of the business, and you living in Mississippi with plans to close the hotel April 1st certainly qualifies as a material change in the operation of the business, the bank can declare the loan in default. We are going to exercise that right.”
“But what about our refinancing? All we want to do is hang on to the place until we can sell it.”
“Mr. Paradise, the Cease & Desist order that we are operating under doesn’t allow us to refinance your loan.”
“Wait a minute!!! Betty Banker promised us that if we got current, we would get refinanced, and you’ve been under the Cease & Desist since early November. Did she just flat lie to us to get every last penny we had before you called the loan?? She knew we couldn’t refinance yet she strung us along until we drained our retirement accounts and handed them over to you??? She seemed so sincere. How could anyone be that evil and not be doing life somewhere?”
“Mr. Paradise, that’s past history. I’m only concerned with the here and now.” (That is a direct quote.)
It was at this point that the disdain and vitriol that I usually reserve for the legal profession was now borne by those in the banking profession – particularly these lying Grand County bastards. In fact, I now needed to embrace the legal profession, as it was my only course for being able to deal with this den of thieves.
To be continued…..
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