Rendezvous part deux

This post is part 2, continuing from the post below.

This is a view from the clubhouse of Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis, one of the properties that we support. The golf course is actually right outside of the national park, but as you can see they still have a pretty spectacular view of the mountains. My parents played the course while they were here and said that it was incredible.

This picture is from a place called Mormon Row. In the late 1800's the Mormon community in Utah was looking for places to expand and some of them came to Jackson Hole. Two families in particular inhabited a plot of land in the middle of what is now Grand Teton National Park. They built houses and barns that outlasted the families. These are some of the most photographed places in the park because there are tons of beautiful old barns sitting in front of beautiful old mountains. Also on most days there are bison roaming around the surrounding sagebrush.

This is the most famous of the old barns. It is made out of wood and mud, and it has been standing for about 100 years. Pretty crazy.

This is me and my friend Heather on top of one of the Tetons called Rondezvous. All summer people have been asking if I would summit one of the Tetons. All summer my answer has been no. It doesn't seem worth the risk to me. But today, Heather and I summited Rondezvous. You may ask, "Will, what made you change your mind?" To that I reply look at our feet. We're both wearing flip flops. You see Rondezvous is a ski mountain, better known as Jackson Mountain Ski Resort, and Heather and I rode the tram to the top of the mountain. (Interesting side note, for all you east coast people like me there is in fact a difference between a tram and a gondola. I'm not quite sure exactly what that difference is, but I know that there is one.) So summiting a Teton can be (technically) checked off of my list of things to do.

I have a lot more funny stories from the summer (telling the girl from "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers that she is beautiful, learning to two-step and watching Ryan drop Julia on her head, Julia falling out of her hammock. Three times.) and I definitely want to share them. Luckily in 4 days I will be in a place with significantly better internet. I also want to come up with some goals for my time in Colorado, so be on the lookout for a new post soon.

The day I summited Rondezvous

So I figured since I'm leaving the Tetons in four days now would be the time to give you all a photo tour of the park. Also, I finally figured out how to get photos off of my phone....

The picture to the left is the view from the back deck of the Lodge. The tallest peak that you see is the Grand Teton. It sits right around 13,700 ft above sea level. The lodge itself is at 6,860. For the first few days that you get here you can definitely feel the effects of the altitude. Some of us more than others. These pictures were taken when I first arrived here in May, and as you can see we still had a lot of snow. That white patch in front of the mountains is Jackson Lake. It was frozen solid until June.

These mountains may look familiar to you, Grand Teton National Park is used in all kinds of places from truck ads to the recent episode of Modern Family. In the park there are a few hotels. I work for Grand Teton Lodge Company. We are the largest concessioner in the park. We operate Jackson Lake Lodge, Jenny Lake Lodge, Colter Bay Village, Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis and starting next summer Flagg Ranch.

One thing that I think is super interesting is that the other sides of these mountains are not nearly this jagged. The Idaho side looks a lot more like Virginia with rolling foothills and rounded peaks.

Grand Teton National Park is located to the south of Yellowstone National Park. It is just about an hour drive to get to Old Faithful in Yellowstone. This picture is from late May. When we drove up to Yellowstone there was still 10+ feet of snow on the sides of the road, and we really couldn't see anything. Once you get up by the geysers the ground is a lot warmer dues to all of the volcanic activity. Because of this there was not really any snow at all around the geysers. Old Faithful is very touristy, with lots of people and families around, but its still a pretty incredible sight. I'm definitely glad I got to see it. I made three trips up to Yellowstone this summer and each time I got to see something crazy. There is tons of wildlife as well as incredible natural scenery. If you ever end up over here check out the lower falls. Its called the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and it is breathtaking.

This is me from the top of Signal Mountain, a pretty small mountain to the south of Jackson Lake Lodge. As you can see fall had begun in the Tetons. It is still pretty warm during the day (in the 70s, and even in the heat of the summer it never got much above 85). You can see that it is pretty smokey in the background. During the summer it is super dry, and so every year we get a lot of forest fires. In the park they really don't try to stop fires unless they are man made or threatening a building (which there aren't a lot of.) In fact some of the trees out here were made specifically for fires. The pine tree's pine cones don't open unless heated to a super-high temperature, which can only be reached in a long-burning forest fire. Fires clear out all of the dead growth and allow new trees to grow.

My internet doesn't like that I put all of these pictures in here, so I'm going to have to split this post in half.

The day I threw up

So I figure I'm due for a new blog posting. I actually had planned to do this a few weeks ago, but the federal reserve was staying at the hotel I work and live at, so our internet was pretty much useless. But I'm back and ready to go. An update from my last post, Ryan is doing really well. He is actually in rehab back in Houston, so I can't visit anymore, but I'll be keeping in touch. He is continuing to walk and talk and pretty much blow everyone away

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I was thinking about what to write about in this post. I wanted to catch you all up on my life for the past almost four months, without writing every single detail. I decided that the best way to do this would be high-lows. For those of you who weren't in the octagon high-low's are when you take a few minutes to share your high point and low point of the week. I'll just share a few of the highlights, and lowlights, of the summer.

High #1- Learning to drive stick shift.

I've always had this a one of my life goals. For some reason manual transmission just seems a whole lot cooler that automatic. It actually came pretty naturally, except for when I stalled out in front of my friends....

Low #1- Filing.

The reason I am out in the Big Square States for the next year is because I have Human Resources job with Vail Resorts. This is really cool because Vail has properties in beautiful locations. This is also cool because I studied HR in school, and I now get to use what I spent four years in college learning. This is NOT cool because HR requires a lot of administrative work. And the people at the bottom of the totem pole (read: Will) have to do a lot of filing. This has gotten a LOT better over the course of the summer, but the first few weeks were not so fun.

High #2 Homemade Chinese food.

I actually had to take a break in the middle of writing this post because I had some friends over who made me homemade authentic Chinese food. One really cool thing about this job is that because we are a seasonal only resort we have employees from all over the world. China, Taiwan, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Spain, Russia, Mexico and Jamaica are a few of the countries represented. This evening some of my friends from China came over an cooked authentic Chinese food. It is definitely different from American Chinese food, but its delicious. Highlight: They boiled chicken wings in pepsi (which was surprisingly good).

Low #2 Snow in June.

It snowed here on June 13th. Enough said.

High #3 Biking.

I've gotten into biking since I've been out here. I recently got my own bike, so I don't have to beg or borrow them off of people anymore. I hope to bike down to Moose and back (yes there is a town called Moose. And incidentally town is sort of a strong word. There is a gas station and restaurant in one place, and they named that place Moose.) which should be about a 45 mile round trip.

Low #3 Food

I love food. Really love food. There are not a lot of food options in the park. Its about a 45 minute drive to Jackson, which is a nice town, but is missing a lot of the essentials. I mean, let's be real, they don't have a Q'doba or a Buffalo Wild Wings. In their defense they do have Chinatown which makes pretty good Chinese food.

High #4 Business trip

I know that most people don't like business trips because they have to take a lot of them, and they don't like traveling, and they have to leave their family. But since I'm already away from my family, and I have never really been on a business trip before I think they're great. I'm currently in a Starbucks in Denver where to they flew me for MAP (the program I'm in) orientation. In about 2 hours my boss will pick me up and we'll drive to Vail where I'm going to be certified as a Vail trainer. I'm staying at one of our RockResorts (our luxury brand) which is probably the nicest hotel I've ever been to. Its called the Arrabelle and you can check it out here: http://arrabelle.rockresorts.com/.

Low #4 Altitude

So I am born and raised in Virginia, and with the exception of a few short moments I have basically lived my entire life at sea level. Moving to Jackson where the elevation of the lodge is 6860 was a pretty big shock to my body. At high altitude you have to drink a lot of water, which for the first 3 days I didn't really do. On day three I went to orientation, where a number of our Jamaican employees and I were learning the ins and outs of the property. The whole morning I had felt a little off, but since it was only my 3rd day at work I didn't want to call in sick. I sat through the first half of orientation and when we had a break I decided I needed to step outside and catch some fresh air. When I got outside I almost immediately realized that was a mistake and I actually needed to get to a bathroom immediately. I started hustling back to the door, and just when I got to the group of Jamaican employees outside talking I threw up. 3 times. It was mortifying. I had to go inside and explain to my boss that I was sick and needed to go home. Everyone thought that I was hung over, and no one know me well enough to know that with the exception of one ill-fated wine tour (thanks James Morrissey) I don't drink that much. It was a really great way to start off a relationship with a new employer.

Hopefully a few stories will help everyone get a feel for what life is like out here. Hopefully my next post won't take quite so long for me to write, but I'm not making any promises.

The day Ryan woke up.

So I've put off starting this blog for a really long time now. The plan was to blog about my experiences out west and use it as a way to keep in touch with people back home. Unfortunately I am not very good at computer communication (i.e. FaceBook) so this has been a slow start. However, today has been such an amazing day that it seems fitting to finally start my blog. Today is the day that Ryan woke up.

That most likely doesn't make a lot of sense to the vast majority of you who I have not been keeping in touch with, so I'll go back to the beginning and we'll start from there.

I graduated from JMU on May 7th, and on May 11th my plane touched down in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. On the plane rides out I had the privilege of sitting next to a few people who were from Jackson and told me what to expect as I made my big move. They mentioned the snow, and the elk, they talked about the river and the hiking, and about how every summer people get severely injured, or worse. They talked about the tourists and how they wished there were less. I've found most of what they talked about to be surprisingly accurate.

When I arrived I was greeted in the airport by Jacqueline, a girl who normally works in sales but had been recruited to pick me up. Speaking of the airport, it is tiny. You get off of the plane on stairs that they roll up to the airplane and walk across the tarmac into the airport. There are two baggage claims. Its about a 40 minute drive from the airport to the hotel, and there is almost nothing between the two places. Having almost nothing between two places is pretty standard for Wyoming. Besides the mountains and animals there's not a lot here. There are lots of stories about things that happened for my first 3 months out here, but for now I'll just give you the highlights and fill in more later. For the first month I was out here it snowed. For those of you who don't know I am very affected by the weather. Snow is alright at christmas, or when you're skiing, but it is not ok in June. Snow in June sucks. So for the first month I was not a super happy camper.

One highlight of the first month was meeting a lot of really cool people. I hope to write about a lot of them in the upcoming posts, but for now I'll only mention a few. One thing I learned in college is how much I value just having a few close guy friends to chill with. There is something really cool about just being able to sit back and have a beer or smoke a cigar and just talk with some cool dudes. One of those guys out here for me was a guy named Andy. Andy is a pretty interesting guy, he has biked across the country and climbed all sorts of mountains. He loves pipes and good beer (he hates that I love Budlight/Coorslight). Andy also loves adventuring, which was fun for me. Once things were a little bit warmer we went hiking and bouldering and kayaking. Wyoming is a pretty amazing place when its not snowing. Through Andy I was able to meet another awesome guy named Ryan. Ryan is from Houston, Texas, but he goes to school in Lubbock (Texas Tech). Ryan is also a pretty adventurous guy, and has done his share of hiking. We share a common love for country music (and a special love for Carrie Underwood). Ryan and I were able to bike some as well as explore Jackson and get involved in the church that I attend. He taught a bunch of us to two-step, and almost convinced me to buy a pair of cowboy boots. Ryan's plan was to take a semester off of school and work out here until the season ends, which was really exciting to me, because most people are leaving in mid August.

On July 29th, on the way back down from summiting the Middle Teton Ryan lost control and fell 1,200 feet down a couloir. Amazingly there was a mountain rescue first responder who happened to be at the base of the snow field where he landed. They immediately went to work trying to stabilize him and keep him from getting hypothermia. The mountain rescue team was called and Ryan was flown out by helicopter to the base of the mountain where they stabilized him before flying him to Idaho Falls. Ryan broke his femur, pelvis and three vertebrae. He collapsed both of the lungs and sustained massive head trauma. They weren't sure he would make it at first, and then they weren't sure if he would be paralyzed, or if his brain would recover.

On day 6 in the ICU they took him off the paralytic, and he opened his eyes, but he could not move them or focus. By day 8 he had moved all of his limbs (not paralyzed!), but still could not do so on command. On day 15 they operated on his neck to fix the broken vertebrae. He also made the first facial expression he had made since the accident. About this time they said they were cautiously optimistic that he would one day (with lots of rehab and work) be able to speak and communicate again. And today, 18 days after the accident Ryan simply woke up. He is able to look around and point.He clapped when he saw a Saints jersey. They took the vent tubes out of his throat and he spoke!

This is honestly a miracle. There's no other words for it. I know that he has a long way to go, and I know that it wont all be easy, but its simply incredible that he woke up and spoke, that just doesn't happen.

This out west adventure is off to an interesting start. I'm learning a ton about Human Resources, and people, and the real world, and life, and God and myself. I've done tons of things I've never done before (white water rafting, driving a stick shift, biking 30 miles) and I know there are a ton more things to try. I hope to keep you all updated through this blog as I go out and do them. I'll continue to fill you in on my first three months here, as well as share new stories as they come up. I also hope to get some pictures on here so you can see what it looks like. Hopefully I won't wait quite so long before I write my next post.