Catchin’ up

Wow.  I have so many things to write about, think about, talk about, etc., but it never seems like I have any time to properly journal them down.  This post will be a recap of a number of recent events, but I can’t guarantee that the chronology will be in order.

I’ll start with today, since it was the worst.  Not to be dramatic, but it was indeed the worst day I’ve had since I got here.

Two weeks ago, my lovely roommate Minji moved out, and on the same day, a friend of mine moved in.  His name is Jesse.  He works the night shift at the hotel, as a “house person,” who basically just has to be on call for clients through the night for whatever they need.  We were friends but hadn’t spent much time together before he moved in, seeing as we have opposite schedules and he lived in a different dorm.  But we had always gotten along really well, and just sort of decided to be roommates because I didn’t want to risk getting paired with a weirdo, which happens a lot here.  Meet Jesse:

Living with him had been amazing.  He left me nice notes, cleaned up after himself, was cautious not to wake me up when he’d come home at 5 am from his shift, and he even brought me candy at work.  Just a couple of days ago, we started decorating our room; it was so cool! We were going to make a fort, and pads on the floor where we could step and not get burned by lava…

Well, all of our fun came to an end this morning.  Really, last night.  He came back around midnight, to visit Rob and Matt and I in our room.  The first words out of his mouth were, “I think I’m getting fired tomorrow.”  See, at Xanterra, it is very easy to get fired.  Especially at the end of the season when they are trying to avoid paying people’s bonus, which they get if they finish our their contract.  Either way, Jesse was right.  This morning at 8 am, he woke me up with a hug, and a nod yes when I sleepily asked, “Are you?”

So what happened, to warrant him getting fired?  He jumped up in the Osprey dorm, and punched the ceiling tile…you know, those foam things that dormitories have…

Yeah, well, it broke.  And he got served an hour later with a ticket from the Rangers for vandalism.  Destruction of property results in instant termination here, even for something that stupid.  Jesse is perhaps the nicest person here, and he doesn’t get in any trouble.  Well, they just don’t care.

He has a court date tomorrow, and hopefully will be able to get the charges dropped and then perhaps get his job back.  That has happened, and it happened this season with my friend who got charged with marijuana possession and then had the charges dropped after going to court.  Fingers crossed.  I want my roommate back.   I am so very sad to be sitting here in our empty room.

I called out sick today and went to Cody with him, Rob, Kevin and Matt.  We spent time in the parking lot of Walmart, on the grass, just talking and enjoying each other.  That may very well be the last time I see him.  I hope not.

On a happy note, though, I had an amazing weekend, even though it started off with a bit of a mishap.  On Friday, I went to start up my car and pick up Danny and Greg to head to the Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival, and it wouldn’t start.  I thought, great, this was bound to happen eventually.  $500, you get what you pay for.  But then it occurred to me that I had lent my car out to Jesse, and I didn’t ask him if he put gas in it.  The gas gauge is broken on it, so you have to press the trip odometer each time you fill it, and then refill it every 300 miles.  The trip odometer read 395 miles.  It was out of gas.

Joe let me borrow his car and drive to Fishing Bridge, where there is a service station.  I left $20 deposit with the mechanic there to take a gas container back to Lake, fill up my tank, and return it.  Whatever, these details don’t matter.  The point of this is just that it took an extra two hours after I was ready to leave to actually leave, and we didn’t end up getting out of here until around 3.

The drive was 3 hours.  We stopped in Jackson for some booze and food, and then kept driving, into Idaho and then back into Wyoming and finally made it to the Grand Targhee Resort.

It was packed.  There were so many cars!  Our friend Andrew had walked up to the gate to meet us because he had a free parking pass, and when we went up to show them the pass, the lady said, “Did he just come past me, hop in your car and give that to you?”

“No.”  Danny replied.

“You sure?  That looked pretty suspicious.”

“Hey, can we buy camping tickets for tonight and not music tickets?”  Greg butted in.  It worked.  She was distracted by his question, forgot about the scandal, and let us through.

Andrew and Lauren had already set up our tents and had scoped out an awesome tent site.  We were in the trees, surrounded by other camps.  When we arrived, we were greeted by a bunch of other guys who were camping near us, and they were hilarious.

Fuckin hilarious.

The first person I met was named Grant.  ”Grrrrrrrrrant,” he said.  It is really impossible to describe him here, but he is by far the funniest person I have ever met.  He could hardly stand, and at one point was just standing up in an ahtletic sort of squat position, as if he was unsure of how to stand otherwise without toppling over.  It was like he was a stand-up comedian.  He was standing in front of an audience of strangers, moments after meeting us, telling ridicilous stories.

“You know how I knew my brother was a tough guy?  When we were six, some hooligans came to my door tryin to cause trouble.  We lived in a place that had trees, you know?  Like pine trees.  The fuckin kids were like ‘hey man!  we’re gonna rub pine needles on your hands, dude.’  And my brother was like, ‘yeah, whatever!  I can take some fuckin pine needles!’ And he just didn’t give a fuck!”

That’s Grant.  He pulled me aside at one point, to tell me he was sorry if he seemed like an asshole…he said his ex-girlfriend had told him that he just couldn’t help but be an asshole…he was sorry for that.  I thought he was hilarious.

We met some other kids, I forget their names, but they were also pretty funny.  They encouraged us all to do this thing called a “Dunkaroo.”  It’s when you dunk your head into a cooler full of ice/ice water, and hold your breath for as long as you can, while people count aloud.  You try to keep it there as long as possible, and when  you can’t hold it any longer, you come up and have to immediately shotgun a beer.  Sounds like a frat party, huh?  Well, I didn’t dunkaroo, but it was fun to watch others do it.  Some old guy walked by at one point, and we peer pressured him into a dunkaroo.

These are the three steps to the dunkaroo, as demonstrated by Grant:

The first night of the festival was really just a camping party, watching Grantperform his comedy act, and sitting around all together.  I fell asleep in my hammock pretty early, but woke up around 1 am, to the sound of amazing bluegrass jamming all around me.  I got out of my hammock and walked around.  There were at least 200 people outside, wandering between areas of jam sessions.  I couldn’t find anyone I knew, so I just sat on a log and listened for a while.  A dude came up to me, asked me where I grew up, and apparently grew up in New Hope, PA, the town over from where I grew up.  Small world.

I went back to my hammock around 4 am, and slept like a baby.

The next day, we woke up, got our tickets for the music, and just began having a great time.  It was just awesome.  The music was on the mountain, and there were food and retail stands everywhere, with people selling awesome things.  I didn’t have any money to buy anything, but it was fun to look around at people’s artwork and stuff.  And the music was just fantastic.  Donna the Buffalo, and Leftover Salmon rocked my world.  We spent the whole day outside on the mountain, and I had the time of my life.  We were all one big group, the 5 of us from Lake, and then our 10 new friends…Grant, Mark, the two brother’s whose names escape me, Ian, Vince, etc.  It was awesome.  Although, somewhat of a frat party.

It was good to get back to Yellowstone after the crazy world at Targhee.

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Honorable mention must go out to a camping trip that I forgot to mention, that took place my birthday weekend.  It was pretty much the most fun I’ve had camping since I got here.  We had an amazing group of people, which I think made it what it was:

Jana, Daniel, Megan, Howie, Mackenzie, Max, Andrew and Magda.  We all left together, in three cars, and drove south to Flagg Ranch, which is right outside of the south entrance to Yellowstone.  It’s a little camping area on a Lake, and it’s nice because it’s free and the campsites are well maintained.

We got there around 6, and there were already people next to the campsite we wanted.  I got out of the car and asked them if it was ok if we camped near them, because we might be loud.  They said it was no problem.  Nice neighbors!

Max, Andrew and I decided to go to the general store a couple miles away and get food for the group so we could eat over the fire.  I picked out some NY strip steaks, for 6 bucks each, and potatoes and onions.  We got back and Daniel and I started getting creative with our marinades.  We made some with beer, whiskey, Worcestershire sauce, etc.  And they were delicious.

Not much more should be said about that night, besides, it was super fun.  At one point, Daniel and I decided to go do damage control on our neighbors, to make sure they weren’t having a miserable time with us next to them.  We went over and offered them a bottle of whiskey, which they happily passed around.  We talked to them for about an hour, after which point I decided to go to the bathroom.  When I came back, Daniel was nowhere to be found.  Until I took a couple more steps, and there he was, sleeping in the grass.

It was one of those nights.

Super fun, and so much love.  We all just enjoyed each other’s company, and had an amazing time by the fire sharing stories and thoughts.

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That’s pretty much all there is to catch up on.  Meren gets here on Saturday, and I really just can’t wait.