My "Summer in Estes" is really almost up. I have about a week of work left. My parent's will arrive here on the fifth of august at which point I'll stop working, and then we'll spend some time together before heading to Madison, WI for my grama's 90th birthday party, and then back we'll all go to St. Louis. Hopefully mom and dad will have some extra space in their suitcases so I can fit all my new climbing gear in our luggage for the return trip. I'm starting to plan some hikes for us all to do when they come out here.
Before I leave I'd like to climb in some new places such as Boulder Canyon, Eldorado Canylon, The Flatirons, or some other new spot. There's deffinitly a bunch of classic trad lines on Lumpy that I would love to do if I had more time (Backflip, J Crack...), but I think it might be nice to visit some newer spots. I guess it depends on the people with cars mostly...
Unbeknown to me, my schedule was changed this week. Instead of working in the morning like I usually do on Sundays, I was scheduled for the afternoon. I unfortunately only realized this after waking up at 5:30 and going to work for half an hour.
This week the YMCA of the Rockies is hosting a convention of 1400 Baptists. 1400 people eat a lot of food. They also all seem to like eating early (i.e. before 6:00). It was a pretty crazy day.
Their collective numbers were, however, less impressive than their individual sizes. A significant fraction of our dinner guests had a lot of trouble confining themselves to one chair when they sat down. I conservatively estimate that upwards of three fifths of our guest were significantly overweight.
I had the job at dinner of greeting them and counting their numbers from the chefs, and spent a lot of my time at the front desk thinking about American waist lines, Bob Herbert's column today, and the basis of American hegemony. I don't think my jobs of waiting at the door, mopping floors, or stocking of plastic pouches of salad dressing are doing much help. Soon I'll be back at school though.
As a side note, did anyone know that a big pouch of Kraft ranch dressing has 330 calories, 320 of which are from fat?
I still don't understand the people who do this for a living, as a career.
People from all over the world work in food service at the Y. One of the biggest contingents is from Columbia, although there are a bunch of people from Turkey, and even one from Kazakhstan among other countries.
Their proficiency in english varies a lot. One of my friends, Luis, speaks exceptional english. I was talking to him about Hemingway and described his writing style as "terse", and then realized that he might not know that word. He did - but another American kid who we were also talking to didn't. (Luis didn't know the world clown though, so I guess it balances out.)
Some of my Columbian co-workers barley spoke a word of english on the other hand when they arrived so I've been learning some spanish. It's really similar to french, which I studied in school, so that helps a lot. Many of the roots are the same, and the basic structure of the grammar is almost identical.
Some of what I've learned has been just phrases, but I'm actually starting to learn the building blocks as well. I'm definitely learning it a lot faster than I ever learned french, but I guess that makes sense because I never spent almost half the day trying to speak french.
A lot of the words (palabras en espangol) I've learned are specifically suited to the work we're doing (to vacuum = aspirar, clean = limpiar, floor = piso, table = mesa, etc), but hopefully by the end of the summer I'll have a more general, if elementary, knowledge of spanish.
I'm pretty excited.
I also started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Columbian. I think Orhan Pamuk's "Snow" is next on my list, but I'll have to go into town and join the public library there to check it out.
While I came out here mostly to climb, I seem to spend a lot of time working. Uggh. The DMM slogan is "Climb now, work later", but sometimes I feel like I'm doing more of the converse.
I work five days a week, eight hours a day, and make $4.50/hr before taxes with food and housing as bonuses at the YMCA of the Rockies, Estes Park Center, in food service. I used to spend my shifts mostly in the dish room, but within the last few days I've been transfered to the walnut dining room.
The walnut room has a capacity of about 250 and usually serves conferences or conventions, though apparently we do weddings and stuff like that sometimes. Last week we had a convention of kids with cochlear implants and their families, and this week we have a conference of doctors. We usually have between 2 (like yesterday) and 6 (the day before) staff to run the place, which amounts mostly to "preparing" cold foods, cleaning, fetching more bowls and silverware and the like, cleaning, and cleaning.
I put the word preparing in quotes because usually it amounts to finding a box of premade food, 80-90% of the time made by Sysco, the food service giant, and putting it in a pan. I think the food we serve (and get served ourselves as part of our pay) is pretty gross, but some of the guests seem to enjoy it because I usually get one or two positive comments a day.
The two shifts each day are 6:00am-2:30pm and 12:30pm-9:00pm. My schedule is a mix of the two. The morning shift leaves time to go climbing after work. Usually the plan is to eat an early dinner around 5:00pm or so and then sport climb till dark. So far, I haven't really done anything exciting during the mornings before any of my afternoon shifts, but I'm hoping to change that. The weather is generally better in the mornings, but its just a matter of getting a partner to wake up and go.
Tomorrow is payday, so that's pretty exciting. I won't really get much money (~$300 for 80 hours after taxes) by normal people standards, but for me its enough because I don't have any substantial expenses. I plan to spend most of it on climbing gear.
