Monday, March 28, 2011

Of All the Places I've Lived (in Vail)

by Tracey Flower

In the spirit of apartment hunting, taking stock of my life and my pending six-year anniversary with Vail, I’d like to share a list of all the places I’ve lived since I’ve been here. A list that, in writing it, I realized tells the story of my time here, of where I’ve been, who I was and how I’ve grown.

All the place I have lived (in Vail):

  • May 2005-May 2006: My first home in Vail was Timber Ridge Unit N5. (NOTE: Timber Ridge is Vail Resorts employee housing and dirt-cheap because it’s dirty, old and likely to crumble at any moment. Also fondly known by nicknames such as The Ghetto and Timber Ritz, I’ve mostly bopped around units in this complex as the location and the price fit my needs to a T. Yes I get made fun of for it. Yes I’m slightly embarrassed to get off at the bus stop here. But at least the rent doesn’t break me.) This is still the address listed on my Colorado driver’s license and I was once refused a Town of Vail Library card because I had since moved from that address but never changed my license. I lived in that unit with three guys and it was quite the experience for someone who had up until that point lived with mostly women.
  • May 2006-November 2006: I moved into a two-bedroom condo in Simba Run, just down the road from Timber Ridge, with three of my girlfriends. It had a washer/dryer (jackpot!) in the unit and a pool and gym on the premise. We may have been twenty-something’s sharing bedrooms but we felt like we were living the highlife.
  • November 2006-November 2008: Timber Ridge Unit I8. The longest I’ve lived in one place since living in my parent’s house and I’m quite sure the longest anyone’s ever lived in the same Timber Ridge unit. Almost all of my closest girlfriends in Vail lived with me in that unit at one time or another, and our second winter in I8 marks the only six months when we were all single at the same time. Some of my favorite adventures in Vail housing moments happened in that unit.
  • November 2008-February 2009: Timber Ridge Unit K3. I lived here with two guys, one of whom was my boyfriend. He broke up with me. I moved out. End of story.
  • February 2009-April 2009: Timber Ridge Unit C5. This was the unit my friends were forced to move into when the house they were renting in West Vail caught fire one night. The fire destroyed the home and most of their belongings. I moved in, devastated, a few months later when my boyfriend and I broke up. We weren’t thrilled to be living in that place, it was crowded and the reasons we were there were lousy, but I must say at least we all had a place to go. 
  • April 2009-November 2009: My girlfriends and I moved out of C5 and into a townhome in the Telemark Condos. By far the biggest and nicest place I’ve lived since my parent’s house, it was a relief and a treat to be there after the winter we had all had. It had three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a washer/dryer. It had something like four floors and there was a pool on the premise. This was the only time in my life that I have had my own bathroom.  Alas, it was only a six-month lease and at 2,400 buckaroos a month (800 of those my responsibility) not really affordable. It was also the reason for the great landlord security deposit debacle of 2009, but that’s another story for another time.
  • November 2009-April 2010: Timber Ridge Unit K14. With all my former roomies either shacked up with their significant others or moved away, I was left to fend for myself so I sucked it up and went for the cheapest option for a room. I ran into a friend I knew through work when signing my lease and he moved in to the unit’s second bedroom. I’ve had better and worse roommates than this one but it was, in all, a pleasant living experience (and a huge weight off my wallet after that pricy condo). 
  • May 2010: Month of my botched move to Australia. I packed up my life and squeezed it into the world’s tiniest storage unit and whatever didn’t fit I gave away. I loaded up my oversized bags and headed home to Michigan, where I had planned to spend two weeks with friends and family before departing for Australia, where I was going to live for at least the next year. As we all know it turns out life had absolutely no regard for those plans and after a confusing, frustrating, upside down, life-changing month I was back in Vail.
  • June 2010-present: Timber Ridge Unit K14. And home again? My roommate was still in this unit when I returned, and still had all the stuff I had given him that wouldn’t fit in my storage unit, so I moved back in and reclaimed my stuff and my space (and, eventually, my life). He moved out about a month later and I enjoyed a summer of living alone before the housing office gave me two brand new roommates. It hasn’t been the most pleasant living arrangement ever but I’ve made it work and now I’m looking forward to what’s next, both in the world of apartments and for my life in general. 

What stories do the places you've lived have to tell?


Six Months at a Time

by Tracey Flower

As another season comes to an end here in Vail, it’s time to take stock of my life and solidify my plans for work and housing for the next six months. In May I will have lived in Vail for six years. In that time I’ve moved from one apartment to another nine times, and I’m getting ready to do it again.

Such is the life when you live in a place where rent costs a small fortune. I remember a conversation a few years ago with a friend who lives in Michigan about rent. She was shocked when she realized my room in a small condo was more than the monthly price tag on the house she and her husband were renting, 200 bucks more in fact. I envied her for a fleeting moment, and then I looked out my window at the Gore Range and remembered that steep rent is a small price to pay to live in paradise. As I tell bar patrons who regularly ask me how one affords to live here, you have to really love the lifestyle and not mind being a little bit poor.

Home sweet home with the Gore Range in view

While I’ve managed to consistently, if only barely sometimes, make ends meet in my six years here in Vail I must admit that re-configuring my life every six months becomes a pain sometimes, especially the moving part. But even as I daydream about finding that sweet spot in the world of high country housing, where long-term leases exist in harmony with reasonable rent and wonderful roommates (because, let’s be honest, few folks make enough to afford their own places around these parts), I wonder if I’m ready for such a commitment.

I’ve realized (happily) that Vail’s my home and I have no intention of leaving anytime in the near future. But I must admit I experience a small panic at the end of each winter and summer here, when seasonal jobs end and decisions about where to live need to be made, when everything’s flying up in the air around me, waiting for me to pull it all into place. But when it all comes together (and it always comes together) I feel such sweet relief that I have a plan, even if it is only for another six months. I almost feel incapable of planning my life out any farther than that. Perhaps that’s immature for a 28-year-old. Perhaps some of it comes from my botched plans to move to Australia. Whatever it is I don’t see it changing anytime soon. I’ve realized, however immature it seems or stressful it may be at times, that taking life six months at a time works for me, at least at this point in my life.


Check out my next post for a list of all the apartments I've lived in since I moved to Vail.