A Few More Days of Peace

Walking down the streets of Vail Village during the busy season is a hazardous event. Swinging skis, sidetracked tourists, and temper tantrum throwing children are just a few of the obstacles one faces on the journey from the parking structure to the ski lift. Vail ain't no city, but the place does fill up. It’s a good thing it does, because in some way or another, that’s how we all find work. 

And do we ever find it.

Vail is not a cheap place to live, and since jobs are scarce 3-4 months out of the year, people make up for it by becoming veritable workaholics when jobs are aplenty. It’s not uncommon to have three or more gigs throughout the winter. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of having more than one employer—but even I seem to pick up those second jobs like a bad habit, because, that’s just how we make it work.

I'll sleep when...the snow melts.

But for now, the lazy fog of shoulder season has yet to lift. The streets are empty, the restaurants are slow, and there’s rarely a wait for morning coffee. Yes, our pocket books are slimming but it only takes 3 minutes to walk the entire length of Bridge Street! Which is fortunate since, once you arrive at the bar near the end and realize they have about as much going on as my great aunt’s house on pinocle night, the extra time is needed to run back to the bus before it leaves for home.

Don’t worry, this ghost town won’t be dead for long. The lifties arrive this week and the mountain opens soon after. Better enjoy the break now, the odds are, in a couple months we'll be thinking of this time fondly.

Homesick

It's not a feeling I experience very often and mostly it's because, I wonder, where is home?  I haven't lived in the same place for more than 10 months since I left my parents' home. And though I've been in Vail just shy of two years, I seem to move residences with the season, and the transient nature of the community makes it seem like a new place every year. You don't even qualify for local status until you've been here nearly a decade, so I've agreed to call this place home-base, but reticent to call it home.

Yet that is what it is.

Like most workers in a mountain ski town, I use the off-season to visit friends and family around the country. I'm fortunate to get to go to some awesome places, and I recently returned from New York.

It was beautiful. I went hiking through real fall leaves, the kind that actually crunch under your feet and turn colors other than aspen yellow. I canoed on a clear glass lake, ate an organic farm to table dinner at a candle lit picnic table--yes, it was that ridiculously idyllic. 

It was a great week.

But I was ready to come back.

I thought it was the trees I loved but in the forests of New York, with all its dense diversity and canvas painted scenery, I realized it was the mountains; they have a way of folding you in, holding your feet solidly to the ground even when your eyes wonder up and up to steep crags, jagged riffs.

I leave again today for Minnesota, where the scenery this time of year is nothing, in comparison to last week in New York. In the flat and open space between the small Midwest towns I'll drive through, I suspect I'll miss Vail even more, and though I'll enjoy my time with my family, odds are I'll harbor a thought with smooth content, the desire to come back home.

Snow Dancing in September??

I am out in the village some afternoon last week when it starts to snow—those big wet flakes that turn to slush as they hit the ground and make great snowballs for chucking at your friends. I smile. Who doesn’t like the first snow? A lady comes outside of a shop near the international bridge and starts spinning in lazy circles. She is waving her hands around and screaming in delight. My smile slips.

For the love of God, woman, it is too early for this kind of behavior.

Too early in the season, I mean.

Here’s the thing my snow freak friends: I know you want your powder already, but we could still have a solid month of good hiking left. We’re forward people thinking up here, and I like that, but let’s take a moment and enjoy the season we are STILL IN. The first day of autumn was only a week ago and it’s going to stay around until November 22***. I am going to put off snow dancing until then. In the meantime, why don’t we grab a sweater, take a walk in the backyard and watch what happens when the gold of the aspens meets the gold of the sun going down behind the hills? It’s very nice, and if you post a picture of it on Facebook all your friends will be jealous.

If you’re thinking of starting snow rituals already, just stop. You are only pissing off the gods, who probably don’t like greedy ski bums. We don’t need snow for another 6 weeks, all right? Petition them at THAT point, otherwise we might end up with eight feet in October and nothing more until February.

But, don’t worry, this will be my third winter here, and the past two years were nothing but lame shortcomings compared to seasons past…I’m thinking that means the odds are it’s gonna dump. 
  

***Actually, winter starts December 21, however, the resort opens on November 22, so I'll give you the earlier date on that technicality

Sorry Babe, It's a Powder Day

Sometimes on a good snow day I purposefully seek out a friend who skis slower than me so that I can look down from some sort of high-road perch at all the snowboard rats and ski bums in this place that accept the saying, “There are no friends on a powder day,” providing justification for them to ditch anyone who can't keep up on the mountain.

It's not that I've never lost someone on a run and then hopped on the lift without them, but the blatant attitude of, “no friends on a powder day,” suggests that there is a measurable division separating our relationships from an activity we love. We shouldn't have to decide between the two, but often we do.

Maybe it's because I feel this way and I subconsciously attract friends with similar attitudes, but I seem to know an awful lot of girls in this town who really really like skiing, but aren't so obsessed with it that the idea of living somewhere without a mountain in the background is impossible. These women might rather, say, have a lazy morning in bed, than wake up in the dark and cold to catch first chair.

This, however, is not the choice their boyfriends would make.

And it's not like boyfriends are cheerfully calling out, “Come with me, we can do this together!” as they brew an extra cup of coffee. It's more like, “I know it's our anniversary babe, but we got 12 inches last night...I'll give you 6 later,” as they run out the door.

So how do we, the women who are super AWESOME but not crazy adrenalin junkies, respond?

1. We try to make it a couple's activity: 

But...usually we aren't exactly on the same page speed wise, and if you've ever had to wait for your visiting gaper friends and family to get down the hill you understand that isn't sustainable.
The other day my friend Gwen was commenting on her boyfriends inability to wait for her on the slopes, “My goal this year is for us to ride together once or twice, like actually together, not to just sit on the same lift for a few runs.”

Good luck, I say to her.

2. We fake enthusiasm, and not just for snow sports, people here are also crazy about their summer near death activities: 

My friend Hannah's boyfriend wanted her to enjoy mountain biking as much as he did, so they bought a new bike for her this season.

How does she like it?

“It terrifies me,” she confesses one day over lunch. Not in a good way.

3. We stick around, even when we are sooo over this dinky tourist ski town: 

“Everyone knows the only reason I'm still here if because of him,” Jenny admits,  “Everywhere else we've looked at is too far away from the mountain.”

And Jenny loves riding, she really does, just not to THAT point.

There's only so much a girl can put up with, and some of my friends have decided to ditch the dude and try out the "real world" that exists beyond this snow globe.  I imagine they'll find there the truth of the matter is that hobbies, and interests of all kinds, can drive a wedge through a relationship if you let them. Musicians hit the road, triathletes push through arduous training schedules, and career minded breadwinners stay late at the office.

In Vail it just happens to be the mountain in between. 

But is it really?

            Remember Jenny, who claimed to stay here just because of her man? 

They broke up a couple months ago.

She's STILL here.

Isn't that odd.
Maybe we like it more than we admit?

I read your blog, would you like a job?

It seems to me there are two ways of looking at employment. The mindset of my parents, 

“If it were fun, it wouldn't be called work,” 

which—though I'm certain in giving me this advice my parents hold my best intentions in mind—is a genuinely awful way to view the world, and contrasts greatly with the second, 

“Do something you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.”

which I am going to go ahead and agree with, taking the measurable risk of revealing my naive and optimistic nature to all. But seriously...

 There is no need to be miserable 40 hours a week.

Fortunately, finding something to do for that 40 hours in the Vail Valley is easy. An hour ago I opened up the Vail Daily and perused through no fewer 80 job postings, many I am qualified to fill just because I know how to smile and can read, and despite the fact that we are headed into the off season.

Granted, I make no promises about the quality of these jobs. In fact, most are probably awful soul-sucking positions that pay only enough to support an individual from paycheck to paycheck, but they are there, and they are easy to get. Look a little harder (i.e. forget the paper and make some friends…it’s not what you know after all…), and it is possible to find a few real gems: work that doesn't steal your soul, and pays enough money to cover rent, new skiis and Fireball shooters for free outdoor concerts. 

What else do you need? #checkwithmeintenyears

I am certain these gems exist because I was employed in one for the first year I lived here. I worked as a pastry cook and spent most evenings enjoying limited responsibility, minor supervision and completing tasks such as baking cookies, eating crème brulee, and decorating plates with chocolate sauce. I often went home wondering, 

“Am I really getting paid to do this?”

For the hitch-hiking, dumpster diving traveler I was upon arriving in this town, it was a pretty sweet gig.

Unfortunately, in the past two years my enthusiastic attitude has seasoned into “good natured” kitchen bitterness and instead of heading into work early to create new ice-cream flavors, I now put off the clock-in time for as long as possible, even if all I'm doing is lying prone on the locker room floor desperately working up the motivation to put on my chef coat and walk upstairs.

This will not do, I decided. 

I put in my two weeks, at which point I will have plenty of time to research job potential in this town and then post about it on the internets for all you readers (by which I mean, the few friends who actually skim through these entries after they accidentally click on them from my facebook updates).

So you have that to look forward to.

What else am I going to do? Well, follow dreams and stuff writing America's best new cheap paperback novel to sell out of the trunk of my car (actually, I can't afford a car, but just go with the imagery for a moment).

I’ll also be teaching yoga, an equally profitable endeavor.

You're right, Dad, Vail is not the best place to be a starving writer and yoga teacher...

...I know the odds, and don't laugh when you see me pouring your coffee in two months, but I'm going to go ahead and imagine it, some lucrative offer falling into my lap, along with the opening, 

“I read your blog, would you like a job?”

Vail Goes Dirtbag

The sun is out, the mud has dried up, and strangers are once again flooding the streets and filling out the night scene in my small mountain town. The off season has turned back on and the GoPro Mountain Games last weekend rang-in the official start to the summer.

Welcome back tourists. Would you like fries with that?

It’s a thought provoking experience, riding out the recession in a resort town. I have more friends than I can count using their college degrees to serve coffee to people who have more disposable income to spend in a few days than the average student's total loan debt (the current average is somewhere around $24,000).  By contrast, the average family of four who vacations in Vail spends around $30,000 for a week long vacation.

$30,000 for ONE week.

That’s $4,285 a day. 178 an hour. Approximately 3 dollars every minute.

I just got upset because I had to pay a 3 dollar fine on a dvd I returned late to the library.

Ski resorts are expensive places to visit and Vail ranks in as not only the most expensive resort in the country, but as the number one most expensive place to visit in the United States. Even in the summer.

Of course, not everyone spends $30,000 when they visit, but generally, the folks who vacation in this town have got some dough to spend. The Mountain Games are an exception.  These are peanut butter and jelly folks, camp-out in their car folks: dirtbag as it gets in Vail, Colorado. And I love them.

Granted, I don't have to work for tips.

So what's the trick to spending a weekend in Vail without breaking the bank?

Accommodations: Hotel rates are well into the hundreds around here. Don't stay in them. The best thing to do is to tell someone at the bar you're a pro-athlete and surf their...couch. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work. Fortunately, there are plenty of places to park your car or set up your tent and sleep for free. Over the weekend, people were spotted grilling and drinking 40s in the parking structure. The structure is free in the summer, but the ground slants and no one wants to sleep at an angle all night, plus, well, it's CEMENT. Better off driving up Red Sandstone or some forest land road and finding an open place to set up camp.

Food and Entertainment: Events like the Mountain Games provide an amazing assortment of free stuff. First of all, the spectating is one hundred percent free, and that can basically take up the entire weekend, and if you play your cards right, you can get yourself into a couple after parties that give out free beer and white zinfandel. Various venders peddle all sorts of goodies from braided survival rope key chains (do people ever really use those?), to granola bars and sports drink samples, collecting free stuff can not only score you plenty of repetitive calories, it also provides free entertainment. Just think of it like a scavenger hunt. Don't think you can survive off of samples all weekend? Just think about how much easier it is for you to get drunk when you buy happy hour beers before the free concerts!
But, if you absolutely MUST buy some food to eat, there are a few restaurants in Vail that are not ridiculously over priced. These are La Cantina (conveniently located in the transportation center next to public bathrooms, 'hello' showering in the sink), where you can buy a burrito combo for under 10 bucks and eat all the chips and salsa you can handle, Vendetta's, which features a 3 dollar cheese slice, Loaded Joes, whose mac-n-cheese will put you back a few dollars, and, if you're into pizza and willing to take the hike all the way across the interstate, Local Joes has got pies and drinks for cheap**.

Last weekend all of these places were SLAMMED. Obviously, these Mountain Games visitors have got it figured out.

Dirtbags, I salute you! Drink your 40s in the parking garage, leave large tipping to our regular costumers, you bring some flavor to the snow globe and though you don't exactly live that 'real life' my parents are still warning me about, I admire that you don't stroll across the street in full length fur coats. Granted, maybe it's just too warm...

Let’s shake it up, summer is here!

Odds are, it's gonna be good.

**Respective businesses please feel free to compensate me for this advertising (which reaches a plethora of readers ;)) via complimentary drinks and meals.

Exodus

When the mountain closes, the seasonal workers of Vail migrate en mass in a proactive attempt to shake off any haunting bitterness from spending the past five months holed up in the valley, catering to the needs of wealthy tourists. The destinations do vary, but from conversations held on the bus and bar stools, I gather that at least half of the Vail transient work force heads to Moab, Utah.*

So when Tod invites me on a trip to 'The Maze,'--an area for which the only information I am sure of is that it is located somewhere in the state of Utah, in general proximity to Moab (relatively)--I agree to come along.

The night before we leave, I decide I might as well do some research (mostly so I know what to wear).  The first link that pops up after I type 'The Maze' into my search page is a 2008 Backpacker article detailing the 10 most dangerous hikes in America. 'The Maze,' a specific area in Canyonlands National Park, with its difficult scrambles, lack of water, and tricky navigation (perhaps leading to the name), is number one.

Awesome.

Look I love nature, I really do, I do quite a lot of hiking and I have spent quite a few nights in a tent, but I’ve gotta admit: I don't actually know what I'm doing.

I consider staying in Vail and renting movies, but I know I'll never make it through the summer if I don't at least try to shake off some of the unbearable lightness of ski-town living. I decide to trust that Tod, or rather, his two friends Drew and Mark know what they are doing. On the ride out Mark informs me that he has brought both a compass and a map. These sound like good things to have.

The first day in Canyonlands we park the car by the trail head. The high lookout provides a clear view of at least thirty miles in all directions, filled with pretty much nothing but rocks. Yes, they are pretty cool looking rocks, colors ranging from red to beige to the green of scrubby looking juniper trees that give some scale to the gigantic twists and turns, but rocks none the less. It's hot, and as we descend a path called the 'Golden Stairs' I am already sweating, dreaming about a cold beer while trying desperately not to twist an ankle. Drew and Mark have sturdy hiking boots, and Tod has a solid pair of athletic shoes on, while I, in my infinite wisdom, deemed this trip to be a good place to try out my new Chacos. If Mike Fay could hike across the entire Congo in the same sandals, I figured I could last 4 days in Utah.

So not only am I struggling to keep up with the three dudes (two of whom, BTW, have leg strides that are CONSIDERABLY longer than mine), I'm also trying to keep rocks out from under my heels, and wondering if the sharp pain gathering in my achilles is part of the normal ‘break-in’ process of hiking in sandals.

The main part of the day is spent crossing the main canyon floor, and that’s not so bad, despite the heat, because it’s relatively flat. But, the descent down into ‘The Maze’ itself is sketchy at best, and as I am already tired, I resign myself to a state of denial, refusing to look over the side of the hairline crack in the rock I am stuffing the edge of my feet into as we follow cairn after cairn down the rocky walls.

At least I’m burning those off-season calories, I tell myself as I crawl into my sleeping bag early that evening.

In the morning, the situation improves a bit. The guys seem to have lost the need to RUN through the desert with heavy packs on their backs, and the fact that they are covered with bug bites, while I am not gives me a secret boost of confidence.

Clearly, nature loves me. And the fact that bugs are not buzzing around MY ears when they are driving my hiking partners insane, is a sign that the desert will NOT send rattle snakes to bite me, scorpions to sting me, nor throw me off high places to tumble to my death.
This realization/some-might-say-delusion, greatly improves my attitude, and when we decide to ditch our packs in the afternoon for some day hiking, it is pure magic. Liberated from the ungainly backpack, I feel like I can fly up the trails. Those twists and turns become geological wonders millions and millions of years in the making and the illusions created by the canyons themselves, the way how sometimes one canyon can't be separated from another is no longer an impediment to survival, but a powerful piece of art, like the drawings on the walls themselves, etched out by humans thousands of years ago.

My Chacos may not be the best modern footwear, but they are definitely more advanced than what those folks wore.

The more miles we hike, the more worries fall away, as they tend to do in nature, which is why so many people feel the need to strap 30 lbs of gear on their back and walk along a path into the woods. On the last night I clamber up a shallow canyon wall and meditate on rocks that now hum in tune with my heart as the sun goes down.
A smile, like a tick, keeps spreading across my face, even as we pack up the truck to leave.

“I have just come alive,” Mark says as we toast a beer, still cold from the car cooler, “Now I go back to slowly die.”

Until next time, I know he means. But why, when we face those odds, do we ever go back in the first place?

*this fact is in no way objective whatsoever   

Getting Out

Living in one place does offer certain conveniences I have come to enjoy. Example: I totally dig having a bed, regular income, and more than one set of clothes. But, I'm a vagabond at heart, and I recently realized that it has been several months since I have left the Vail Valley.

I'm going stir crazy and my roommate Tod is feeling the same way.

“Tod, should we hitch to Denver where we have plenty of friends to stay with?” I ask.

We look at each other.

“Nah, let's just go west,” he says.

In an act of desperate wanderlust, we head out the door, intending to go wherever the first car that stops is headed.

As I walk outside I realize I am a little chilly. I'm wearing my spring hiking jacket, and leggings, which  do match my frog hat and mittens...but don't really provide any real warmth. This is fine, I figure, since I am certain we will be offered a stay in some fabulous mansion by some stranger we meet before the night arrives.

The second car we hop into is a minivan, driven by a gregarious Asian lady named Jenni headed to Glenwood Springs.

Ten minutes into the ride and she's already offered me a job (teaching her and her daughter how to bake), and a place to stay for the night. These things happen when you hitch-hike.

“I give you the key,” she says, “And you sleep there tonight. I just check with my roommate. She's a teacher. Very nice.”

I have half a mind to refuse. This is just too easy. We can't find a place to stay already, we've only been on the road an hour.

Turns out it doesn't matter since she can't get a hold of her roommate anyway. Instead, she drops us by the Glenwood Springs hostel, “You can stay here. Only 12 dollars a night!”

Yeah right lady, I don't even have to look at Tod to know he's thinking, we don't pay for accommodations when we travel!

It takes us an entire hour to hitch out of Glenwood and during the wait I realize that I am legitimately cold. And the sun is still out. “I think maybe I should have worn more clothes,” I mention to Tod.

He just shakes his head.

A truck finally pulls over, and the driver is headed to Carbondale. After some conversation in the car, the man decides to drive us out to some hot springs south of the town. It's lovely...complete with naked hippies and everything.

We soak for a half hour and then decide to make it our goal to get to Silverton, where we have contacts. It's a little ambitious, but we've had such good luck catching lifts up to this point that we believe it's a possibility.

In the meantime, the sun starts hiding behind the mountain tops, and I start jumping up and down and running paces along the side of the road to keep warm.

Cars pass. They do not stop.

Ah...the emotional roller coaster that is hitch-hiking.

Fortunately, someone always stops. Eventually.

Unfortunately, sometimes they do not stop fast enough for you to get where you want to go before night fall, when hitching is basically impossible.

This is how we end up in Montrose, about an hour short of Silverton.

“I once CouchSurfed here with an older couple that used to hitch hike. Let's go to their house and see if they are home,” Tod suggests.

Good plan.

We walk, basically forever, across the entire town, which stretches a length of some miles.

As the outside temperature falls, we consider our options if the couple is not home. They are:

1.                  Get drunk at the local brewery and have a competition to see who can get invited home first (Fact: I would have won, hands down)

2.                  Visit a local liquor store and walk around town for a few hours with a solid buzz, and then eat it off by eating pancakes and drinking bottomless coffee at Denny's

3.                  Visit a local liquor store and then break into an ancient popcorn wagon parked in an alley off the main drag and spend the night huddled on the floor

I pray the couple is home.

Finally, we reach the house. Not a single soul in sight.

At this point, I imagine the conversation I am going to have with my co-workers when I get back, “So, let me get this straight: you took your weekend off and decided to hitch hike, an activity that involves the possibility of rape and death, in order to get to a humdrum town in the middle of no where, to spend the night nearly freezing to death, just to turn around the next day, again with the possibility of rapage and death, and head back to Vail where you have food, shelter and skiing and hiking out your back door?”

Um, yes.

But...I have this new high-tech device called a smart phone!

 Which means we have one more option: to send out some last minute CouchSurfing requests to every single person that lives in Montrose. We drop into the Target, and as soon as my fingers start working again, Tod and I take turns sending out messages.

We haven't even left the parking lot when my phone rings.

“Hi!” the voice says, “You just sent me a couch request. Do you need me to pick you up?”

“Yes! Yes!” I say, and tell the voice where we are.

“Whohoo!” I holler when I hang up.

“Who was it?” Tod asks.

“I don't know!” I say, “But they have a blue truck!”

Thank god for CouchSurfing.

Our CS saviors are Lindee and Jeff, who make a delicious cup of tea and offer us a marvelously warm bed. The next day we have breakfast with Lindee and then she drops us off at the edge of town.

We hitch straight back to Vail.

When we make it back, I jump in the shower. Hot water has rarely felt so good.

Ok Ok...so it wasn't our most successful trip ever...and you're probably thinking this hitch-hiking thing is a waste of time, but that's the thing: 

“It's a dangerous thing, stepping out your door...You step into a road and if you don't keep your feet there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”

                                                                                                                                             -Bilbo Baggins

Sometimes, you just have to play the Odds.