Five Long Days
Much, much has happened since I last blogged. I’ll go through the whole thing, beginning Thursday. I awoke at 4:00 AM Thursday morning, pulled on some clothes, carted a few suitcases and other items out to the car, and sleepily watched the lights go by on the dark highway as we drove north. The journey from Phoenix to Flagstaff via I-17 was completed in a mere hour and forty-five minutes, a record for us. But the longest stretch was still ahead, through the barren wastelands of northeastern Arizona and western New Mexico on I-40.
Having seen the scenery (if you could call it that) many times before, I resigned myself to my summer reading, which I am probably behind on, though I don’t like to admit it. I’ll go over all that later. Anyway, the book I was reading, In the Wake of the Plague, by Norman Cantor, is all about the effects of the Black Death on Europe. At the beginning, it was really dry and boring, but it got better and more interesting toward the end, as the author talked about different theories behind the cause of the Black Death and its political ramifications.
After I finished the book, Dad and I played stupid road games, and Zach (my brother) tried to join in, though he’s a bit slow when it comes to 20 Questions. Anyway, after much driving and some hairy moments when trying to find the right route near Espanola, NM, we reached my grandparents’ ranch in Buena Vista, Colorado, near Salida in the Colegiate Peaks area. We were all tired, of course, so we ate a dinner of lasagna and went to bed.
In the morning, everything had to be repacked, as well as lots of hanging clothes and such in large protective bags, and we were able to be off by 9:00 on the road to Denver. I should note that the whole reason for all this driving and clothes is that my uncle was getting married in Denver on the 26th, so about half a million people were all journeying from various corners of the world to attend the event. The day I rode with my dad, brother, and grandma to Denver was the 25th, Friday, also the day of the wedding rehearsal.
Upon reaching downtown Denver, and our hotel, the Magnolia, we unpacked lightly and then went out for a stroll around the 16th Street Mall, which is a pedestrianized street with buses and light rail as the only traffic. On both sides are numerous high-end shops and restaurants, and Denver Pavilions, a shopping center at the south end of 16th St, has a movie theatre, more restaurants, and a Barnes and Noble. So we walked around a bit, bought a few things (I got Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, a wildly popular cyberpunk novel that I somehow haven’t read yet), and then went back to the hotel to change for the wedding rehearsal (Dad was an usher, and Zachary and I were listed as junior ushers, though neither of us really did anything).
Anyway, we arrived at the hotel with less than 45 minutes before the rehearsal would begin (and the church was several blocks away), so there was a mad dash to iron shirts and such and get ready for it. Normally, a wedding rehearsal is a pretty informal affair, but there was a dinner scheduled for after the rehearsal at a nice Italian restaurant, and for some reason we needed to be super-dressed up for that. (In the end, there really was no need, but it was interesting to have to wear a dress jacket for the first time.)
The rehearsal dinner was good, with lots of food. Once it was finally over, the adults went to a bar in the LoDo district, and everyone under 21 went back to the hotel. My 18-year-old cousin Chanel and I watched a movie in my hotel room, and she had to flee back to hers when my parents got back.
The next day, the wedding day, went from lethargic in the morning to a flurry of activity in the afternoon as the appointed time approached. I skipped out on breakfast at Sam’s No. 3 in favor of a long lie-in, but I later went with my dad and brother to Union Station and Invesco Field (at Mile High) so that we could take a picture of the Broncos’ infamous home stadium to use for a dartboard. (Both my parents and I are die-hard Chiefs fans.) We hurried back via light rail to 16th St. in order to meet up with the other men at a sushi bar while the women went to tea at the Brown Palace Hotel, near the church where the wedding was to take place. However, the sushi bar was closed, so we went to ESPN Zone instead, a big sports bar with dozens of live television feeds (even in the bathrooms) and lots of games, somewhat like Jillian’s at Desert Ridge in Phoenix.
After some really good cajun chicken sandwiches and 125 points worth of games, we went back to the hotel to change into tuxedos for the wedding. This didn’t take long, and we were soon on a bus on 16th St, zooming toward the church. Then the wedding happened. I’d describe it better, but everyone has seen a wedding, either in real life or on TV, and it really wasn’t much to talk about. The tuxedos and dresses and flowers and decorations were nice of course, but there really isn’t anything else worth mentioning. Though the wedding was almost exactly half an hour long, the pictures afterward (which I, as a wedding party member, had to be present for) were exhaustive and took over an hour to finish. When they finally were, everyone marched on over to one of the two Qwest Communications towers dotting the Denver skyline and took the elevator up to the 37th floor, where the reception was held.
For the first hour or so, I somewhat enjoyed the reception. There was the small fact that there seemed to be more people at the reception than at the actual wedding (about 200 attended, as far as I know), but otherwise it was fine. Since I had built the website for the wedding, everyone knew me as the “website guy” or the “15-year-old child prodigy” or “that kid who know computers good”. I didn’t mind this back at the rehearsal dinner, but it was beginning to get on my nerves by the reception. Eventually I just tried to avoid having to talk to people, preferring to eat or drink or ride elevators up and down with my cousin and brother. The kids (my cousin, brother, and I) left at 11:00, since all of us, even Chanel, who was 18, were getting bored with the whole thing. I think we’d come to the conclusion that weddings, and all events tied to them, are more for adults than for children or teenagers, and that the only reason that we were invited to come was so that our parents could show us off. So we were of course thankful when it was all over.
But the night didn’t end there. We watched a movie on HBO in my room for a while, and Zachary was being dumb and goofing around with a soccer ball. Even after repeated warnings from my cousin and I, he idiotically jumped from one bed to another and injured his mouth on my big toe, which happened to be there at the time. I was somewhat annoyed at this point, since my toe hurt just as much as his mouth probably did, and I had warned him that if he didn’t stop screwing around, someone would get hurt or something would get broken.
But when he started whimpering and crying like a baby, curled up in a ball on the bed, acting like I had been the one who had injured him, that was the final straw. I promptly told him that he might as well stop trying to be a victim and get me in trouble, since it had been his fault in the first place. He retorted that I should have moved my feet. I told him he shouldn’t have jumped. He went quiet at this point, knowing that I was right, but he continued to cry and act like he was mortally wounded, though I don’t think he even bled. I went back to watching the movie, ignoring him and telling him to buck up every once in a while. Eventually, after he had convinced himself that all his problems were my fault, he jumps on me, knocking off my glasses but otherwise leaving me uninjured (he’s pretty weak, even for an eleven-year-old). My cousin Chanel left at this point, not wanting to get into the fray.
I went and washed off my glasses in the bathroom, checking them for scratches, and when I came back, Zachary was preparing to leave. Everything is my fault, he shouts at me, no one loves him or cares about him, he hates it here, he wants to go home. Still seething somewhat from his inability to take responsibility for hurting himself, I almost wanted to just let him go. But what would happen when my parents returned and found he had run away? That didn’t sound like a good prospect, so I made to restrain him. He fled and caught an elevator, leaving me to stand there shocked in the hotel room, wondering what to do. He had never run away before, and now here I was with the task of getting him back to the room before my parents had noticed. Before going after him, I called down to Chanel in room 338 immediately, telling her what had happened. She agreed to help look for him, and we met in the lobby. We checked both exits from the hotel out to the street, but we didn’t see him. Now somewhat alarmed, I suggested we check the hotel fitness room, where we had gone earlier, before watching the movie.
He wasn’t there. The man at the front desk hadn’t seen him either, so Chanel and I went back up to my room, up on the 6th floor. And there Zach was, waiting for an elevator. He made to get into the elevator as we stepped out of it, determined to get away. My sudden rush of relief was eclipsed by frustration at his will to get away from me as I held him by his arms and tried to drag him back to our room. He threw another tantrum, kept saying how no one liked him and everyone thought he was stupid (he doesn’t do much to keep them from thinking that, I told him), and how his life was horrible. There followed a mildly embarrassing scene (we were still by the elevators) where I had to try to talk Zach out of his intentions with my cousin looking on, chuckling. I told him all this stuff about how people did care about him and love him and whatever, though I didn’t really feel like I meant it.
Zach was eventually subdued, and Chanel left and Zach and I went back to our hotel room. He went into the bathroom and stayed there for 15 minutes, crying or sniffling or something. I offered him a half-drunk Dr. Pepper that was in the fridge, but he refused it and lay down, crying, on the bit of floor space between one of the beds and a window. I left him there, knowing that he wasn’t going to listen to me. After another 15 minutes (during which I read a book), Zach got tired of breathing dust and clambered into bed, obviously still angry because I had seen that he wasn’t “man enough” to spend the whole night down there in pitiful, sniffling, silence.
We had been sharing a bed, the other one, that I was now reading on, belonging to my parents. Knowing that Zach wasn’t going to want me sleeping next to him after his little fit, I read another chapter, made sure he was asleep (and not secretly planning to run away again), and went to bed in my parents’ bed. My mom and dad didn’t try to move us when they came back, and they haven’t said anything about it. Now, however, I’m beginning to wonder if Zach got up and let them in when they returned (they didn’t have a key), and then told them everything, probably making it seem like I was the guilty party. He’s the kind of kid who would do that. My hypothesis was reinforced when my mom remarked after he got me a Dr. Pepper today, “He’s such a good brother, isn’t he?” with enough fervor that it made it sound like I wasn’t a “good brother”.
Sure, I was kind of mean to him when he was having a nervous breakdown, and I do have a tendency to rag on him a bit, mainly because he does such stupid and irrational things sometimes. But even then, I don’t think that makes me a “bad brother.” I really try to be nice to him sometimes, to do things for him, but then he does something to irk or hurt me, and that kindness is converted into a desire for vengeance. Up until about a year ago, I would try to execute on that desire within seconds of the wrong that was committed. But lately, maturity, I guess, has come in the way, and the desire is no longer there. Even then, my parents see what’s going on, and, as recently as in Kohl’s a week ago, my dad told Zach that if he didn’t stop tormenting / touching / annoying me, I could do whatever I wanted to him and my parents would look the other way. Now, I’m no jock, but beating up a sixth-grader isn’t exactly hard, especially when you know him well enough to anticipate what he’ll do. So Zach stopped after that. But that wasn’t enough to keep him from starting up again the next day, and the next, and the next.
Someday, maybe I’ll run away just to not have to put up with him. I have no problem with my parents, or with anyone else I know, but Zach and I are just never going to get along. Thank God I can graduate in three years (or maybe two, if I try really hard).
So that was that. And Zach came to me Sunday afternoon (when we were back at my grandparents’ house) and said he was sorry, but he still is just as bad as he always was. Maybe the problem is that I’m too sensitive, but since there’s no way I can fight back against him without my parents punishing me somehow, it doesn’t take long for my blood to get to the boiling point. Maybe the problem is that my parents punish me for annoying / hitting / antagonizing Zachary, but they don’t punish him for doing the same to me. Even when they know I’m only fighting back, I still get yelled at.
Anyway, getting back on track here, Sunday was just a travel day, so we didn’t do anything remarkable. Oh, but we did find some wood which we used to dam up the irrigation ditch running next to the garage, but the dam doesn’t hold water very well. Someday we’ll do a full damming project and divert the water around the dam construction zone so that we can build a better one. I dunno if my grandparents would appreciate having a lake, though. Enough water flows through the ditch that a small one could form overnight.
Monday, today, began early, since we had to get up and get ready to go whitewater rafting. We ate lunch (we being about 20 people all staying at the Ricketts ranch at once) at the rafting place and got into the river at about 12:30. Only 14 actually rafted, the others preferring to stay behind and watch the two young children, Aden (2), and Sophia (0.5). Of course, I went rafting. The area of the Arkansas River that we went down had Class 1-3 rapids, which are about as high as you can get without being 16. Since Zach and this fifth cousin of mine, Scott, are both 11, we won’t be doing any Class 4s anytime soon.
Anyway, I rode in a raft with my dad, Zach, Scott, Scott’s dad Bruce, this guy named Jeff, and someone else whose name I’ve forgotten. The guide was in the back with Scott, steering the craft and shouting orders to us lowly paddlers. I make her sound like drill sergeant (spl?), but Ally was actually pretty nice, and she got us through the rapids in one piece, which is always good. We went over stretches of water called by such names as “Big Drop”, “Zoom Flume”, and “Toilet Bowl,” and we emerged generally unscathed. Toilet Bowl was the only problem area.
You see, Toilet Bowl is a huge whirlpool, as you may have guessed already, and in order to pass through it, you have to go directly into from the left, over a small drop, and then paddle quickly to avoid being capsized or sucked around in circles. We paddled as furiously as possible, but the left side of the raft, the side that I was on, got pulled over to the base of the small drop. The left-siders couldn’t paddle, since the drop was rocky and the water going over it shallow, so the raft was sucked underneath it slightly, flooding the left side with water and tipping the raft so that the right side was partly in the air. Being on the doomed left side, I dragged myself in my clumsy life-jacket over to a rope that went down the center of the raft and grabbed it to keep my from falling out. Somehow, the paddling of the right side and the shifting of the weight of all of the left-siders (everyone did the same as I did) got us out of the spot, and we were safe. None fell out of the boat, but I was soaked thoroughly from the chest down from being on the low, flooded side of the raft. Being wet felt pretty good, until it became overcast.
Sunburnt and wet, but happy after 12 miles of rapids and perilous drops, we boarded the rafting company’s big gray bus and were driven back to the company’s office upriver. The journey was dangerous in itself because the windows kept fogging up with everybody’s breath, and the driver could barely see as he negotiated the dirt road as it wound up a small mountain, around cliffs and such. This was no Butterfield Canyon (a place in Utah where my dad almost drove us off a thousand-foot drop), but it would have been bad to drive off the road all the same.
Since I’m posting this, we obviously made it home alive, in time for a quick tip in the hot tub and then a dinner of barbecued brisket and beans and potato salad and Texas toast. Not bad. And after dinner was a killer game of basketball, with Bruce (Scott’s dad) and I against my brother, Jeff (a thirty-ish friend of my uncle’s), and Scott. Zach was labeled “Kobe” by Jeff because he never passed to anyone and couldn’t seem to make any shots, but I was on fire for fifteen minutes or so, in which I sunk shot after shot before burning out, the high mountain air making me desperately short of breath (the ranch is at 8000 feet, surrounded by the highest concentration of 14,000-foot peaks in the U.S.). All in all, it was great, and it was nice to see Zach getting made fun of by an adult for a change.
Even after an eventful day, I’m no worse for wear, though my arms are sunburnt pretty bad. It’s funny, my right arm is burnt worse than my left because it was the one in the sun for most of the time (I was on the left, the river flows south), so my “tan,” if you could call it that, will be somewhat uneven. Oh well.
Before I go to bed, which in my language actually means get into bed and stay up reading for four more hours, I’ll leave you with a quote:
“Gimme beer! Gimme Die Coka!” - Aden, who is two years old, throwing a fit at dinner. It was funny.
Update
July 1, 2004, will mark one year of Organon.