The start of a new season. 2013

                My friend Ashley picked me up in Livingston. The new Executive Chef of the Park had bought a place out there. With the winter season coming to an end and the Chef needing some things done around his new money making real-estate, I had the opportunity to stay at his place for a week. Days before the end of the season he approached me saying that it would have been illegal for him to have me do work without him paying me. I didn’t have much running through my mind besides of finding a place to stay for two weeks. He started explaining more in detail and finished by saying that I could stay there as long as I needed. There was too much work to be done before the start of the park season and he could make one run out to the cabin and one run for groceries. I told him I would get back to him and let him know what the plan would be.

                I walked over to HR and Housing and got some good news from them. I called Chef and told him I only needed to be out there for five days. I survived on quesadillas, bologna and cheese sandwiches and hotdogs. I borrowed some money from my friend mike and headed out that way. Five days in a log cabin was a lot longer than I thought it would have been. I played Sim City off and on between watching shows on Netflix. I contacted Ashley on my phone and made plans for her to pick me up. She had a little problem finding the place but none the less she made it and we were headed back to the park. We stopped at the gas station for some drinks and smokes and were off. We caught up within ten minutes and then listened to some jams the rest of the way. It had been a while since I had a McDonalds and she had ordered one to many and passed it off to me; it was very enjoyable. When I’m out in the Park I rarely eat fast food. I try not to eat it when I go out to Livingston or Bozeman but sometimes it’s a nice taste of the “real world”.

                I made it back into the park and all the managers park wide were there in Mammoth doing their training and getting ready for the beginning of the season. Since I wasn’t an employee I was paying to live there about five dollars a day plus lunch and dinner coupons which ran four to six dollars. Still having five days before the rest of the employee would show up I made friends with soon to be management. I had already known a couple of the people from last summer that moved up the ladder and others I met for a brief moment before never seeing them again. The days were filled with some photography and the nights were filled with Cribbage and drinking. I had my own room upstairs next to the women’s bathroom which was one plus, the other benefit of that room was to walk in closets and a nice layout with or without bunk beds.

                My friends came in a day early and we drank that night. They woke me up and we headed down to the check-in at Gardiner. We showed up a half hour early thinking that would be enough time to get first in line but there were twenty people ahead of us. It was a little cold outside but nothing we couldn’t handle. Moments before the door would open some had pointed out a grizzly bear running across the plains that lye in front of Electric Peak. We all cracked jokes as to the doors would be opening soon because they just let the animals out. Check-in was quick and easy and as we were leaving, the line was about 100 long and another bus was dropping people off. I rode up the hill with Anna and the day had just started.

                The roads were still closed unless it was for business only so we were confined in Mammoth. We kept busy with cards, drinking and whatever movies we had available to us. A part of the day I kept to myself watching TV shows that no one else really cared for. When people would hang out they would grab me for a good time.

                The next day was filled with orientation. Short story is that it was boring and uneventful. Truly they need to offer to skip this to people who are returning or have been here for “x” amount of years. The money they lose to pay us to listen to stuff we have heard before is stupid. I understand if something changes, then bore me with the new boring changes, but please, don’t make me listen to the same PowerPoint about ecologics and mannerisms.

                That night a bunch of people were hanging out in the lobby of the dorm. The party in my room was going out for a cigarette and we reached the lobby door we all smelt five years of stench. It was the worst thing that could have been put inside of my nose. I’ve smelt the diaper of my nephew, (not on purpose) but if someone said, “Go this way to smell a smelly kid or go this way to smell a diaper”, I would have chosen option two. The stench clung to my nostril hairs and clothes. It would follow me like my shadow. I really got to the point where I had to tell the Dorm Resident Coordinator that he should do something about it if he can. If the kid needed a towel or soap, I would supply that and not ask for a donation, just a shower every day. It was horrible. The next day hadn’t changed and orientation started up. We came to the subject of cleanliness. I, sick of the smell, raised my hand and asked politely what we should do if someone has a potent odor? I was pretty much stared at like a dog that shit on the rug and got a response of, “say something to a manager or HR”.  In my head I thought, “Smell Something, Say Something”.

                I was the Pub Lead for the summer so my two person staff and I headed over to the pub with a manager for some training. We started by cleaning the pub from top to bottom. After that we had about eight hours of training. One staff member said that it was horrible Micromanaging and the other person I could tell didn’t really care. I knew from the beginning that the two would be quitting or getting fired. I was correct. The first one quit within a week and the second one got fired in two weeks. It came to a point that I was the only pub tender about a week. I did manage to get two days off in a row after a 13 day work week, but who was counting?

                My first day off I carpooled with seven people in a five person car to Chico Hot Springs. Chico has a nice sized swimming pool that is filled with spring water. We stayed there for a couple hours before heading back. During our stay in the pool it started to rain with the sun shining away from us. To our surprise a rainbow appeared. We all looked in awe and then a second one appeared. That’s when the cameras starting to going with some fake crying on how beautiful it was. We did end up getting a group photo in front of the two. A couple photos had to be taken due to the steam the pool was producing. Thank goodness for a designated driver. Every time I had a ride I was lucky enough to have a good friend that would stay sober for the rest of us. On the car ride home we found a head massager. It’s rather hard to explain but I’ll do my best. It’s like a whisk you would use for cooking but right before all the curves in a whisk, you would lop them off and put little rubber heads on the end so you wouldn’t cut anyone’s scalp. The amount of feeling that your skull can get from this would be equivalent to 1000 tiny, super small hands, breaking a fake over your head and having the yolk run down; if you have sensitive skin. We got back and changed and headed into the pub. There was maybe a couple days that didn’t go into the pub, maybe seven. Either I was working or I was drinking at my place of work.

                Being a pub lead was super awesome in the beginning. I was in charge and made sure everything was done properly. I made sure orders were done and I did my own schedule. Making my own schedule was awesome to a point of the season. I scheduled myself off with a hiking buddy for the first month or and a little more. Later on I met someone and still managed to do some hiking with Missy but then the person I was dating at the time started to working mornings and I had to commit to one or the other. Also, for the first half of the season, I had my room to myself until my friend from back home, Sam, came up to work in July. That also put a damper on things in the relationship but not too much. Sam never walked in on us, but there were some close times that were just too close.