One-Way Ticket to Denver

I worked at Starbucks the first summer I lived in Vail. It wasn’t much fun and it didn’t pay well and that’s why I don’t work there anymore. It was, however, a good introduction to the kind of people who visit Vail. I’d always worked food and beverage jobs but until that summer every position had been in South Haven, Michigan. South Haven is a small town on the southeast coast of Lake Michigan and is to Chicago what the Hamptons are to New York City. I felt pretty confident in my ability to handle loud, impatient, ornery, rich tourists when I moved to Vail. I discovered while working at Starbucks, though, that Vail attracts a different breed of ornery rich tourists than my hometown and spent that summer learning how to handle them.

During my time working in Vail coffee shops I’ve seen grown men nearly cry over too much whip cream, been yelled at repeatedly for not offering Splenda, and dealt with 13-year-olds with credit cards and iPhones. My co-worker at Bailey’s Coffee House, which is located in a pavilion on the top of Vail Mountain, was once told she should do something about the poor cell service in the building. The man was very serious and held her personally responsible for the situation.

These people blend together in my head and it takes a unique individual to make an impression, to shine through a crowd of crying children, antsy fanny-pack wearing parents, and frantic foreign nannies. One fellow, a customer who came into Starbucks one day, was the type to make such an impression. He was so fascinating that I still think about him from time to time. He was a giant man, almost too tall to fit through the door. The overstuffed backpack he carried, his tattered clothing, wild dreaded hair, and offensive body odor immediately set him apart from the standard upper class Blackberry-toting Vail Starbucks customer.

He came into Starbucks three times that day. The first time he asked for a taster cup of coffee and he ordered it as if it was just that, a beverage rather than a shot-glass worth of coffee. He accepted the free sample and carefully added a calculated amount of cream and sugar to the small amount of brew. "Peace and love dudes," he said before he exited.

The man returned later with a Starbucks card, a gift a stranger had bestowed on him. He ordered a Venti Italian Roast and told a story about Ethiopians and Italians mixing bloodlines. He said something about there being Italian Ethiopians out there due to a promiscuous Caesar. His eyes were wild as he spoke, wandering in different directions, pausing on me for a moment then flying off in another direction. It was a bit confusing but he held the attention of most of the Starbucks staff and patrons for quite awhile.

I was a bit nervous the third time he came back because I found him to be both intriguing and intimidating. This time he got a slice of carrot cake on my recommendation. He talked about the places he'd been, from Africa to Denmark to Los Angeles. He talked about music and said he'd heard Coldplay once in Denmark and thought Chris Martin was a great guy. He said it as if he knew him and I thought for a split second that perhaps he did. He talked a lot about Starbucks too and said this location was one of the best he'd been too, although he'd been to some nice ones back in LA.

When he was on his way out a woman stopped him and gave him some money. He tried to refuse it, telling her that she had helped him. She said that he had helped her too and that people are just supposed to help each other out like that. He took the money, but it seemed like he really didn't want to, like he just took it as a way to thank the woman.

I saw him later sleeping on a bench in the Vail Transportation Center. As I sat there waiting for my bus I wondered about him. I wondered where he was coming from and where he was going. I wondered where he'd been and how he'd gotten here. I wondered where he'd grown up and how old he was.

A month or so later one of my coworkers and a customer were talking about homeless people and their place, or lack of place, in Vail. My coworker told the customer that a few weeks ago the Greyhound deposited a homeless fellow in Vail. The guy wandered around for a few weeks, came in and out of Starbucks, and slept in the transportation center. One day he came into the shop and said, "The police here are so nice, they just gave me a free one-way ticket to Denver."

Breathe

I was in Australia floating in the Pacific Ocean over the Great Barrier Reef with an oxygen tank strapped to my back, preparing to scuba dive for the first time and I was panicking. While the rest of the group practiced emptying water from their masks and other tasks I was hyperventilating. My mask was filling with water from tears and I was ready to jump back on the boat.

I should have expected the panic. A couple years earlier I had attempted snorkeling for the first time in Key West and it didn’t go well. I can swim and I’m comfortable in and around water; I grew up a few blocks away from Lake Michigan. But I have issues with swimming in the ocean, the vastness of it overwhelms me and the uncertainty of what is swimming around in it terrifies me. I couldn’t seem to master breathing through the snorkel on that trip, particularly while having a panic attack over being in the big scary sea. Every time I put my face in the water I lost control of my breathing and swallowed about a gallon of salt water. I had to refuse a rescue mission from the boat crew and was out of the water after only about five minutes.

This time, though, I was in Australia off the coast of Cairns, Queensland. The water was warm, still, and shockingly clear. After days of rainstorms the weather had cleared and finally presented us with a chance to see the Great Barrier Reef. I was panicking but I also didn’t want to chicken out this time.

I felt claustrophobic in the water and couldn’t train myself to breathe through the mouthpiece when I went under. The group was ready to move away from the boat and I had decided to give up when the guide grabbed my hand, told me to plug my nose with my fingers, and follow him. He didn’t give me a chance to protest and suddenly we were swimming deeper and farther away from the boat. I went through the entire dive holding my nose with one hand and maintaining a death grip on the guide’s hand with the other. Plugging my nose, though (despite the fact that I had a mask on and couldn’t breathe through my nose anyway), forced me to focus on breathing through my mouth, and taking slow deep breaths through my mouth forced me to calm down and focus on the moment. The experience was spectacular in a once-in-a-lifetime kind of way. I wrote in my journal that day, “I feel like I’ve faced and overcome a fear, the ocean still freaks me out but it was so well worth it. I truly hope we can preserve this place for future visitors…it has exceeded my expectations.”

People travel for many reasons—to sight-see, to relax, to teach, to learn—I went to Australia for all of the above, but mostly I went there to make a decision about the direction of my life at that moment. I had been living in Vail, Colorado for about two and a half years and been in my relationship for nearly three. I wasn’t particularly happy and I felt my life coming to a crossroads or, possibly, a dead end. I found myself in Australia with the intention of finding clarity and making a decision about a relationship I had been unsure about for awhile. I wrote in my journal while there, “I truly hope to be changed by this experience and that it has an impact on my life, I don’t think it’s possible for it not to.”

I gained strength and confidence in Australia. I returned from the trip and made the decision to end my relationship and move forward. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and the aftermath of it was chaotic and challenging. More than once I considered un-doing that decision. I didn’t though. I waded through the chaos and focused on calming myself by breathing like I was under water and the peace I felt when the chaos subsided was spectacular.