What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Yes, I made it to my new home and my new job in the Rockies at, well, I’ll call it Bullwinkle Ranch (get it? Rockies... Bullwinkle...). I arrived in the area on February 1st and started work the following Tuesday... and have been working ever since. Today is my first day off, and, as I wrestle for bandwidth with all the South American snowboarders hogging the free WiFi offered in the lobby of my apartment building, I hope to get this update online for all.


First, to recap Lessons Learned from the move. Never, ever think it’s a good idea to rent a U-Haul truck, pack all your worldly belongings in it and tow your car behind it on your own, cross-county, in winter, with an elderly dog for whom getting in and out of said truck is comparable to you or I jumping in and out of a second-story window. To repeat: don’t do this. I did, hoping to save some money, but in the end, I feel it was a Bad Decision.


I should have known things would go badly when they gave me a truck with the Eye of Sauron on the side:





Yeah, I got the U-Haul with a giant Mississippi Sawbill painted on its side, which, when viewed through my apartment window, was nothing short of startling. At least to me, early in the morning, pre-latte.


A couple neighbors helped me get my enormous bed down the stairs and into the truck, as well as my two huge and unstable Ikea bookcases, but otherwise I did all the packing and moving myself, which was not the carefree, fun time one might imagine it would be.


It took an hour to get Wiley into the truck cab the first time, and he only got in when he realized there were no other options. Getting out of the cab was its own adventure, as he refused to let me carry him (he got in by climbing with his front legs while I cradled his back half). After he fell out a couple times attempting to get down, we settled on him launching himself out of the truck, me catching him mid-air and guiding him down to a mostly-soft landing, which provided much amusement for truckers at various rest stops along I-80.


Day One on the road was a nightmare, partly because it involved crossing Pennsylvania (I have a deep aversion to driving across that damn state... I would rather drive across Nebraska or Iowa. There, I said it.) but also because the whole way it was dark, sleeting rain. I made it to a crappy town in Iowa the following night, and Ogallala, Nebraska the next night. In the morning I saw this t-shirt at a truck stop, which I found really, really amusing (though maybe it was just the stress of travel):





By late afternoon of the fourth day, I made it to the place I’m renting month-to-month. It’s a ski resort hotel/condo/rental complex, so some people come for a couple days, some for a month or the whole ski season, or some just live there permanently, either as renters or owners. I’m in a studio apartment with a Murphy Bed and a kitchenette that costs as much as my two-bedroom, two-story apartment in New York did, but it was the only pet-friendly option I could find mid-ski season. I’m hoping to get a rental closer to work and cheaper in the spring or summer, once all the ski monkeys leave at the end of the season.


As you can see from the expression on Wiley’s face below, he and I have had a rough time adjusting to the high altitude (the apartment is at about 8500 feet). I can only guess he had the same screaming base-of-the-skull headache I had for the first four or five days, and both of us still have bloodshot eyes all the time. I’m told it takes a couple weeks to adjust to where your body is comfortable, and a couple months for the body to change physically (our vet back in New York, who went to school out here, said that within six months Wiley and I would both have thicker blood, though the change is temporary and reverts to normal once you’re at or near sea level for a couple days).





On the plus side, I’ve got free cable, semi-reliable free Internet and I’m living across the highway from the only supermarket for about 50 miles in any direction. One thing I noticed my first time here back in early January: the subtle way high altitude affects everything. All the potato chip and other snack bags inflate to almost-bursting because of the air pressure, as shown below (chips purchased for research purposes only, of course):




Then, there’s the job. You knew I’d get to that eventually, right? Well, here’s my morning commute:




The first couple days on the job were super-stressful. For starters, other than me, all the kitchen staff are lanky guys, they did not have uniform pants that would fit bootylicious me, so I’ve been wearing my old kung fu pants. Also, I walked in at a time when the second restaurant onsite was opening, a new coffeehouse onsite was opening and we had events for 80 and 120 people, as well as catering for an offsite party for 40. Oh, and I am the only pastry person period, which is kind of cool, but not when I walk in to a new kitchen with no pants, a screaming headache, bloodshot eyes and no real idea of Process or Where Things Are.


On my first day, for example, one of the sous chefs barked at me "Stables need four dozen cookies now!" and I could only think... is the dough made? Is it portioned already? Where is it? What temperature do I bake them at (altitude affects temp and baking times for everything, too)? Does he mean "stables" as in the place where they keep the horses or is it the name of a guest? Do I take the cookies somewhere or leave them on the rack or what?


Chef was also stressed with the new venues opening, and just kept throwing things at me (not literally): You need to come up with a new menu for the new restaurant in two days... we need A.M. and P.M. baked goods for the coffeehouse... I need five different kinds of desserts that will travel well for the catered event by 4 p.m. ... Instead of doing creme brulee, I want you to do an espresso creme brulee... Don’t forget to take inventory... Organize the walk-in... Help them plate all the courses for the dinner... I want to put a chocolate pudding cake on the menu tonight so find a recipe and make it for 120... Make three quarts of cream cheese anglaise for the line tonight... What do you mean you've never made creme anglaise with cream cheese?


Yeah, it was not so much baptism by fire as baptism by fire, hurricane and machine gun all at once.


The good news is, once I figured out things like where the bathroom is and how the ice cream machine works, everything else got easier. The workload lightened as well once the banquets were over, so I got to experiment a little and figure out things like what temperature to cook my sugar to when making pulled sugar. Water boils here at 198 degrees F, so all the sugar cooking stages like soft ball and hard crack are different and need to be figured out.


I worked seven days straight, about ten hours a day without a break, which I was expecting. Once I’m at work, now that the initial maelstrom has passed, I don’t mind the long hours, but I feel it when I get home and put my feet up.


The kitchen staff itself is the usual cast of characters. There’s an ancient Swiss guy I think of as Der Erlkonig Redux... grandfatherly and charming if he likes you, but Gott im Himmel help you if you’re not on his good side. He was the chef of his own restaurant for years before retiring. He got bored, so now he works at the ranch part-time, pretty much whenever he feels like coming in. He has a lot of awesome old-school recipes and, fortunately, he likes me so he’s been sharing them with me. On Monday, for example, I went in an hour early so he could teach me how to make strudel. But he also wanted to see how I made puff pastry.


"Zat’s not how I fold it," he said, making a dismissive face.


"I don’t fold it that way, either," added Chef, who happened to be walking past.


I said "it’s interesting how many different ways there are to fold puff dough," to them, but what I really wanted to say was Do Not Question The Laminator!


I baked some off as apple turnovers and am proud to say they were fabulously flaky, particularly great since I haven’t made any laminated doughs by hand (without the sheeter) in more than a year. They met with approval from Chef (Der Erlkonig Redux had already gone home for the day) and great enthusiasm from the line cooks, most of whom I really like. They’re basically a bunch of guys who like to ski and like to cook and play paintball and do other dudely things. Most of them are laidback and funny and hard workers who blast Korn and Metallica and even Hayseed Dixie on the boombox all day. I throw them my baking scraps (literally) and we get along.


This post has gone on forever, but I’ll just add one more tidbit: the weather. The last couple days have been fairly mild, but my first few days on the job, when I had the most stress, we were getting dumped on with snow. Then the wind. My God, the wind. You may have heard about winds of more than 100 mph clocked at a pass in the Rockies last week. That was the pass I had to drive over in the U-Haul, towing my car behind me. Good times. There were also a couple nights when the pass was shut down, as was the pass north of here, effectively sealing off the valley where I live and work from the outside world completely. This happens a couple times each winter.


One night, heading home from work, I hit a patch of black ice and spun downhill, crossing the road until my Focus smashed into a snowbank. I had to climb out the window because the driver’s side door couldn’t open. As luck would have it, a guy passing in a pickup used a tow strap to pull my car out. The following morning, when I popped the hood to give a neighbor a jump, I found the entire engine compartment packed with snow.


I went off the road the following night too, trying to make a turn into the employee parking lot, and again found a guy with a pickup and a tow strap able to pull me out.


It’s not my driving or my car at fault, either. Most mornings, as all the cooks arrive, the greeting is not "Good morning" or "How are you?" but "I went off the road at the junction of 40 and 83, how about you?" And, I reason, if I had a bigger car or SUV, the pickup Samaritans probably wouldn’t be able to haul my car’s sorry ass back onto the road.


The worst though is the blowing snow. Sometimes it creeps along the road like dry ice, sometimes it comes in airborne walls, like a thick fog bank that sweeps or just sits on the road, reducing visibility to nil. It was especially awful driving home one night with blinding snow, not knowing the roads yet but remembering "ok, there’s a steep downhill and a curve somewhere around here..." and being able to see nothing but white.


I’ll end here, since it’s finally sunny and Wiley deserves another walkies. Thanks for all the e-mails and comments... don’t forget to tell me what’s new with you, in detail at least as tedious as I have offered above!