Riding the Roof of America

I worked my first shift at Cecilia’s last night.  Cecilia’s is both a local hot spot as well as a renowned bar that tourists flock to for late night cocktails and dancing.   Apparently, this is the only “club” type bar in town and is one of the main nightlife attractions.  I was at the door checking ID’s for the night.  The bar was crowded with locals who weren’t overly thrilled about getting carded by the new bouncer; but for the most part everyone warmed up, understood, and was happy to introduce themselves to the rookie on board.  It is my understanding that things pick up when the tourists come in to town.

It seemed as though most every drunk patron of Cecilia’s wanted to explain the relationship between the locals and the tourists to me.  It is a symbiotic, love-hate, relationship that people appear to be truly adamant about.    This is what I understand so far (in a nutshell): the locals rely on the tourists to come in and spend their hard earned money in town to sustain the thriving micro economy and thus create a pool of jobs that the locals occupy; the locals need the tourists.  On the other hand, the tourists need the locals to fill the basic jobs that make Breckenridge so great – operate their fancy hotels, ski lifts, grooming machines, etc.  There is some resentment from the locals towards the tourists.  The locals are proud of their town and work together to keep it afloat, feeling protective of their turf as a result.  The tourists, who are here for a few days or a week, rape and pillage the local goods with no remorse and have no consideration of the efforts taken to maintain and preserve “their” town.  Of course these are all generalizations, but for the most part I feel as though I understand the subtle conflict.

There are a couple types of local.  There is the “New” local such as myself.  We come out for 5 or 6 month lengths of time  and at the end of our stay we surrender our local status and abruptly return to reality at the end of our stay.  The New local has a chance of solidifying the local status and becoming one of the following two categories of local.   First is the Bro/Brahs – “chiller bro’s.”  The Chiller Bro is a type of local that goes with the flow.  You can spot them in town by the extremely bright, clashing colors of their snowgear or by their ridiculously long hair and facial hair.  Their language is more relaxed and words seem to flow out of their mouths in a lazy, slightly stoned type of annunciation. The “Chiller Bro” seems is a character like one would expect to see straight out of a cartoon.  They work basic jobs and have aspirations of snowboarding for the entirety of their life.  Finally, there is your everyday, high county, average Joe, local.  This person has felt the complexities outside of mountain life and has established a prioritized list of life goals… skiing and snowboarding would fall somewhere in the middle.

Overall it was a pretty good experience.  Meeting people was definitely a plus; I’m going to have to figure out whether or not the hours are too overbearing.  Getting home at 4:00 am to wake up at 7:00 am for fresh powder might not be entirely convenient, nor will working at night when I have guests visiting.   The pay is definitely on par and it seems like a position where I will meet loads of people … I’ll have to weight the pro’s and con’s.  I was informed that I will have to work New Years eve, for a hefty sum of cash, but there is something about working on New Years eve that kills me.  I’m dead after last night and will be working late again tonight: debating whether or not to ride at this point.  We are supposed to get a storm later today which is affecting my scheduling at this point in time.  I might declare it a “lazy day” and save myself for tomorrow when there is some freshness on the trails.

Cheers!

P.S. Opening day at Breckenridge was awesome.  They only had a couple trails open but the conditions were solid and it was beautiful outside.   Chris and I took a quick 5 or 6 runs and called it quits.