Innkeeping Innsights in Stowe

10 Reasons Why You Need to Ski Stowe in March

2012-01-31T08:47:00.002-05:00

The other day, Chantal and I skied, and we spent the whole time bundled against the knifing wind and horizontal snowfall. Conditions were great, and we had a fine time, but when we got in the car to go home, we looked at each other and said, “I can’t wait for March!”

March is the best month of the year for skiing in Stowe, and here are 10 reasons why:

1. The snow. It’s better in March. And more prolific. Statistically, March is the snowiest month of the year here in Stowe. So while your crocuses are struggling to poke their heads out of the ground, we’re still shoveling our driveways out and enjoying plenty of powder days. While I’m not going to make any predictions about this year, one year we received 10 feet of snow in March. March means snow in Stowe.
2. The sun & the temperature. It’s just milder in March. Winter’s back is broken the final week of February, and though we still get plenty of snow, the milder, moister air means more inches per snowfall. Sunnier days abound, too, as northern Vermont’s weather pattern changes, inducing spring’s advance. In March, we get rid of the neck gaiters and face warmers and frozen fingers and toes, and focus on why we fell in love with skiing in the first place.
3. Sugaring. March means sugaring, and if you’ve never experienced it, you got to come up and see it for yourself. Modern sugaring operations involved tubing and boiling, and the air is thick with the sweet smell of sweetwater turning into syrup every afternoon. There are several sugaring operations to visit in the area, where you can watch the magic and pick up a jug of Vermont’s finest to take home.
4. The empty slopes. I’ve never waited more than a couple of minutes in line during the month of March, and this includes Saturdays. This equals more runs per day. And this year, Stowe has installed electronic ticket readers and a brand new, high-speed quad, which translates into more time on the slopes.
5. St. Patrick’s Day. This year, the high holy day falls on a Saturday. So tell my, do you want to spend your St. Paddy’s Day in a crowded bar filled with weepy-eyed, seventh-generation Irish Americans singing “Wild Colonial Boy” and puking on the sidewalk, OR do you want to spend St. Paddy’s Day in a crowded bar filled with weepy-eyed, seventh-generation Irish Americans singing “Wild Colonial Boy” in Stowe with ski bunnies and ski bums? Plus there’s McCarthy’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day breakfast AND O’Grady’s Pub AND the frozen green waterfall under the gondola AND I’ll buy you a pint of Guinness--just ask!
6. The woods. If you’ve never experienced off-piste skiing, March is the month to try it, and Stowe’s side-country is the place to do it. From Angel Food to the Planets to the Bruce Trail to Snuffy’s Trail, Stowe has as many secret stashes of unadvertised trails off-piste as they do on-piste. And if you’d like a guide, just ask, I’d be happy to show you around.
7. Snowshoeing & “Shed Hunting.” If you take advantage of the Stowe card and ski Friday and Sunday for $69/day, you can take Saturdays off in March and go snowshoeing. You can go anywhere in the woods around here, and you can’t get lost. Why? Because all you have to do is turn around and follow your trail back out! Plus, March is the best month to go “shed hunting.” Every year, whitetail bucks drop their antlers at the end of the winter, and snowshoeing is the best way to hunt down those “sheds.”
8. Cross-country skiing. Okay, I freely admit that the closest I get to cross-country is my 2006 Volvo XC70, but in principle I love it. Plus, when I get old and start to wear out, I plan on becoming a cross-country skier--and why not? Trapp Family Lodge has one of the best ski areas in the east, and Stowe Mountain Resort’s Nordic area is world class, too. And there’s all that aforementioned sunshine, warmer temps, ski bums & bunnies, beer, etc. The great thing about cross-country skiing, in my opinion, is that you burn so many calories doing it, you can eat and drink more later. Isn’t that the point of life, anyway?
9. You don’t have to fly anywhere to experience spring skiing. In March, the weather is warmer, and that means that we’re just a car ride away (5 hours from NYC, 3 ½ hours from Boston, 2 hours from Montreal). And by spring skiing, I don’t mean gobs of gloppy, sticky snow. I mean tons of fresh snowfall and longer, milder days. I mean hanging out on the deck at the Octagon or by the fire pit near Spruce Base. I mean picnicking up at Sterling Pond and returning by Snuffy’s Trail. That’s spring skiing.
10. The hot tub. All winter long, in the depths of sub-zero weather, people are reluctant to jump into our outdoor hot tub, even though I tell them the water temperature is 104F. But in March, as the sap starts to flow, night temps hover in the mid-20s, so there are no excuses for NOT unwinding in the outdoor hot tub, under the stars, after a day of skiing. A glass of wine, soothing bubbles, you significant other…

I could go on, of course. There are scores of reasons to come and ski in Stowe in March. But you get the idea. See you on the slopes!

Dining in Stowe

2012-01-19T07:42:00.003-05:00

One of the things that passes for sport in Stowe is watching the restaurant scene. For me, the guy whose restaurant experience was defined by the running tab I kept at the 11th Chapter Saloon in Somerville's Union Square, this has been a revelation. That's a long way of saying I'm easily pleased, far from persnickety when I dine out. I still have to pinch myself in order to believe that someone's serving me food.

Recently, two new restaurants opened in Stowe, and we broke one of our cardinal rules of dining out: don't eat at a new restaurant for at least a month, until they've had a chance to work out the bugs. This is a philosophy validated recently by Seven Days food writer Corin Hirsch, who reviewed a new Burlington bistro. In the article, Hirsch patiently waits for the restaurant to smooth out its new wrinkles, and by all accounts, the wait was worth it. The article is a must read for everyone who rushed out to eat at Stowe's two new offerings and were underwhelmed.

As innkeepers, it's almost mandatory for us to check these places out as soon as possible. Right now we're in the middle of the busy ski season, and when people come through the door, the first question they ask is, "Can you recommend a restaurant?" And since there's no quid pro quo between us and the restaurants here in town (which I find shocking!), our recommendations are truly our own, based on our experiences and the feedback we receive from our guests.

A former innkeeper that we knew was famous for visiting restaurants during their opening week, and inevitably bad reviews followed the experience. After this week, we're going to go back to our original game plan of waiting at least a month, like Corin Hirsch. We'll send our guests out on restaurant recon missions, cataloguing their information. Then, in the off season, we'll hit these new restaurants again, when we'll hopefully experience them in a smoother environment.

Skiing! Vermont! Deals! Stowe! Really!

2012-01-12T11:59:00.001-05:00

There’s a great scene in the Mike Myers movie So I Married an Axe Murderer where the father of the Mike Myers’ character, Stuart Mackenzie (also played by Mike Myers, foreshadowing his multi-character talents later in the Austin Powers movies) decries Cololnel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame as one of five clandestined super-powers (called the “Pentaverate”) who control all aspects of our lives. (The others? The Queen of England, the Vatican, the Gettys, and the Rothschilds, of course.)

The best line in the scene occurs when Charlie Mackenzie (Mike Myers) asks his father, Stuart Mackenzie (also played by Mike Myers), “Dad, how can you hate the Colonel?” To which Stuart Mackenzie replies, nearly howling, “Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly, smart ass!”

Sometimes, that’s how I feel about advertising: just like Stuart Mackenzie.

The most recent conflict arose this week, when we had a cancellation before the Martin Luther King three-day weekend. This has traditionally been a strong weekend for innkeepers and ski resorts, but this year we’ve been hearing that things are a little soft. That may be because there’s no snow from about Bethel, Vermont, south, meaning that our traditional drive market--folks in suburban Boston, Connecticut, and New York--don’t have skiing on their minds.

The question isn’t “Should we get the word our about our unexpected vacancy?”; rather, it’s “Which way should we advertise our openings?” Facebook, Twitter, et al, are the logical choices, for their immediacy. But there’s also the question of this blog space, which has been a respite from the blatant and vacuous commercial applications found in other lodging blogs. This blog is a spot for me to honestly explore my experience as a writer and innkeeper, not to drop in obvious keywords about Vermont and ski specials and lodging and Stowe and winter activities and Vermont--did I mention Vermont yet?

Anyway, I think I’ll stay closer to the spirit of Charlie Mackenzie, and I’ll interpret his vision of the Colonel as the kind of crass commercialism that I believe has gutted the original spirit of innkeeping: “I hated the Colonel, with his wee, beady eyes! And that smug look on his face! ‘Oh, you’re gonna buy my chicken!’” Or rent my rooms. Oh, ohhhh.

The Ks, and other Morning Music

2011-12-31T17:19:00.002-05:00

Every morning during breakfast, I play music for our guests. I don’t play an instrument; instead, I choose tunes to pipe into the breakfast room and set the mood for the morning. This is serious business, and I put much thought into each morning’s selection: the right music sets the tone for the day, reflecting more than just my own tastes. How became not only the sous chef/dishwasher/disc jockey of the Auberge and what kind of music I choose is a story that stretches back to my inappropriate youth.

In the early morning hours of April 14, 1985, I locked myself into the on-air studio of WMEB-FM, the University of Maine’s student-run radio station, and began playing music that pleased me. It was a sophomoric act, a juvenile stunt, and although it was just after 3 in the morning, there were a lot of people listening. On a sprawling college campus like U-Maine Orono’s, there are always lots of people awake and listening in the darkness of Sunday mornings. And that was the problem.

That I’d locked myself into the on-air studio wasn’t a problem; as the scheduled disc jockey for that time slot, I was following protocol. At the time I was a junior at UMO, and a journalism/broadcasting major in love with radio thanks to my Boston roots, which were nurtured by the irreverence of Charles Laquidara and WBCN-FM. The problem was that I was supposed to be playing jazz--specifically jazz fusion, that electrified genre made most famous by Miles Davis’s 1970 album Bitches Brew. Other notables on the playlist included Weather Report, Pat Metheny, and Chick Corea. In other words, all the stuff I hated.

So instead I played The Clash, Elvis Costello, Aerosmith, and even the synth/pop band Animotion’s hit “Obsession.” Anything but jazz fusion. The program director wasn’t amused, and I soon lost that coveted 3 to 6 Sunday morning slot on WMEB. But the experience forged my taste in music (my years at the Snake Ranch notwithstanding), and informed my music selections when I later worked as a DJ for real money.

Fast forward to the 21st century and now I’m faced with the task of providing the background music for breakfast-goers. The easy default is some kind of inoffensive jazz: The Duke, Oscar Peterson--maybe even Satchmo. Stay away from the be-boppers and dissonant improvisors. They’re great, just not what I want to play at breakfast; they go better with vodka and cigarettes than orange juice and oatmeal.

Fortunately, I’ve got a decent backlog of music on my iTunes, and I’ve been able to offer a collection as eccentric as the Auberge. This week has featured French chanteuse Patricia Kaas, Je te dis vous, the aforementioned Oscar Peterson, Warren Zevon (with Warren you have to be careful of the corrosive, oftentimes sardonic timbre of his music, so I played Reconsider Me:The Love Songs, which was a big hit), and the best selling album of the 21st century, The Beatles’ 1. Up next is Sean Lyons’ Roar of Lyons, which is one of the boldest jazz albums of the last ten years. I also discovered an album in waiting in my iTunes collection: The Ks.

While combing through my music, I discovered that of all the thousands of songs I own, only 12 begin with the letter K. Since I’m partial to that letter, I thought I’d collect them all into one album, and put them in the regular Auberge breakfast music rotation. So here’s the track listing for The Ks, along with my comments.

1. “K.C. Blues,” Charlie Parker. This tune is off of my Essential Charlie Parker album. If you’re not a big fan of the early bebop pioneered by Parker and his crony Dizzy Gillespie, this is a nice way to ease into the style. “K.C. Blues” is largely devoid of the asymmetric phrasing and fast-paced melodic riffing that characterizes much of the bebop style, though at about the 2:40 mark Bird drops back into the song and gives a little taste of what it’s all about.

2. “Kansas City/Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey,” The Beatles. This is actually a medley of two songs. The Leiber & Stoller classic “Kansas City” first hit #1 in the charts when William Harrison sang it in 1959. The song has been recorded more than 300 times. “Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey,” is a Richard Penniman (better known as Little Richard) original. In 1962, The Beatles were performing at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, when Little Richard, fresh from his return from gospel music, arrived to share the stage with them. LR coached The Beatles on their stage act, including teaching Paul how to imitate his instantly recognizable “woo” holler, which is featured on this song.

3. “Kashmir,” Led Zepplin. Okay, so the grinding, nerve-wracking assault of this song might not make the best sonic backdrop for croissants and homemade jam, but it’s a K. That driving guitar chord progression was said to have inspired Robert Plant to write the lyrics after a trip to southern Morocco. “Kashmir” is from LZ’s album Physical Graffiti.

4. “Keep Me In Your Heart,” Warren Zevon. This is the gut-wrenching plea by Zevon, from his final album, The Wind, which he recorded in the fall of 2002 and spring of 2003 immediately after being diagnosed with mesothelioma, which eventually claimed his life in September, 2003. The song isn’t so much a request to remember him as it is a reminder that he’ll always be there in the wind. The song pushed his final album to number 12 on Bilboard’s Top 200 album chart, his highest showing since Excitable Boy reached number 8 in 1978.

5. “Keep On Chooglin,” Credence Clearwater Revival. From their 1969 Bayou Country LP, this song is one of CCR’s more famous jams, chugging along for nearly eight minutes. “Keep On Chooglin” was overshadowed by the more popular “Born on the Bayou” and the #2 hit single “Proud Mary.”

6. “Keeping Out of Mischief Now,” Louis Armstrong. This comes from a great album called Satch Sings Fats, featuring Satchmo breaking out the Fats Waller songbook. For the uninitiated, this is a great representation of Armstrong’s style, featuring his crackling trumpet contrasting his gravelly voice, and a host of other instrument solos.

7. “Key to the Highway,” Derek and the Dominoes. This song is what’s known as a blues standard. First recorded by Charles Segar in 1940, versions of the song had been sung for decades by the early bluesmen of the South. Eric Clapton’s version comes from his Crossroads collection that I own. It’s one of the best of Clapton’s live recordings.

8. “The Kids Are Alright,” The Who. Originally released on the band’s first album, My Generation (1965), the song name was also used for The Who’s rockumentary film released in 1979. This song, along with “My Generation,” defined the Mod era and announced The Who as major players in the British Invasion.

9. “Kingdom of Days,” Bruce Springsteen. From Springsteen’s critically acclaimed Working on a Dream album, this song’s themes reflect new level of sophistication for the Boss. It still contains Springsteen’s trademark second person POV, but it slips into the first person plural and singular, invoking a totality of commitment.

10. “KItty’s Back,” Bruce Springsteen. By the time the Boss released The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, Springsteen was almost there, and by that I mean he was almost at the point of writing the kinds of sprawling classics epitomized on his next album, Born to Run. “Kitty’s Back” is one of those songs, featuring perhaps the most recognizable guitar intro in Springsteen’s repertoire, along with the kind of raucous story line seen in later classics like “Jungleland” and “Racing in the Streets.”

11, 12, 13: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” by Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Warren Zevon. About the only version of this song that I don’t have is Guns’n’Roses. All three versions are excellent, but I’m partial to Zevon’s, if only because of his lifelong commitment to religious criticism in his songwriting. Some Zevon fans thought he was selling out by including this song on his final album, and you can attribute it to the old axiom “There are no atheists in fox holes,” but I prefer to believe that Zevon was just giving a nod to something he was about to face.

14. “Know Your Onion,” The Shins. I don’t remember how this song or this band ended up among the 1,312 songs of my iTunes, but it’s a catchy, up-tempo tune that owes its jangling guitars to The Beatles and The Byrds.

15. “Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand,” The Beatles. This is the German language version of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” released in Germany in 1964. If you think The Beatles speak the German language exceptionally well, you’re right. They spent the better parts of two years living and performing in Hamburg, Germany. The B-side of this single was “Sie Liebt Dich,” also known as “She Loves You.”

And there you have it: The Ks, an original compilation, and extended meditation on music in the morning at the Auberge de Stowe.

Hospitality and True Grit

2011-12-21T12:50:00.003-05:00

A couple of nights ago Chantal and I were out at a local restaurant, invitees to a tasting of the chef’s new menu offerings. These tastings are semi-regular events in a ski-cum-restaurant town like Stowe: innkeepers and concierges from some of the swankier inns and larger hotels are wined and dined with the hope that they’ll send guests to that restaurant more frequently than they send guests to other restaurants. On this night, the food was spectacular, the wines excellent, the company extraordinary. It made me wonder what we were doing there.

It’s not that we never send guests to restaurants of that quality. In fact, with Christmas week just a few days away, it’s important for us to think about dining options for our visitors. Though we’ve positioned ourselves as Stowe’s meat-and-potatoes B&B, during the holidays people like to splurge a little, so it’s well worth our time to subject ourselves to an outstanding dining experience, if only to satisfy the research requirement. So we gleefully tolerated the lobster bisque with saffron, tender venison with a lingonberry reduction, and an apple tart thingy washed down with ice cider--which, if you haven’t had it, is like a Highland single malt Scotch crossed with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream.

Between courses and satisfied murmurings, conversation among tourist industry professionals turned into a little shop talk. The gentleman sitting across the table from me, who was employed by one of the larger resorts, easily had the most entertaining story of the evening. He told of the time when one of his guests--a statuesque blonde from one of Russia’s former protectorates--accosted him one day with her laptop.

“Make internet work,” she demanded, in her best Ivan Drago voice. The gentleman, eager to please after separating madame from several hundred dollars per night, applied to the task and flipped open her laptop, only to find himself confronted with the Cyrillic alphabet. Hmmm, he thought, how difficult can it be to find the “connect to internet” button. He smiled and cheerfully began tapping away. Finally, after several minutes and much huffing on madame’s part, voila, the machine logged onto the hotel’s wireless signal. The gentleman triumphantly returned the laptop to its owner, who marched away, presumably satisfied.

As the owner and operator of my own business, it’s hard for me to get my head around this story. My hat’s off to the gentleman for throwing himself at the challenge, and for succeeding. He takes his job seriously, and it shows: he’s the best. I’m a far more imperfect man. But the exchange makes me wonder: does the amount of money involved in a transaction warrant the behavior of the principals? Or is there room for degrees of difference?

Regular readers of this blog know that faced with the same situation, I would not have allowed madame in the front door. Then again, madame’s driver probably exceeded the speed limit as she passed the Auberge on her way to Luxuryville--that’s to say she’d never stay here...unless, or course, her sugar daddy drops her, and she only has enough money to stay at a place like the Auberge. Perhaps I’m being a bit extreme (it’s my blog) but price-shifting is a phenomenon we’re well acquainted with. Over the past three years, we’ve seen many new guests come through our doors happily relating how in the past they shelled out twice as much to stay elsewhere, but now they were happy to stay with us in order to save a few quid.

The Auberge and its ilk will always be here. When young couples or families don’t have a lot of money to spend and they’re looking for affordable accommodations, we’re here. When their earning power increases and they can afford to stay at luxury places where slamming down a laptop and saying, “Make internet work!” is acceptable, we’re here. And when those same people are pinched by their pocketbooks, but they still want to enjoy Stowe, we’re here. Imperfect, uneven, impertinent, we’re here.

I’m reminded of that great scene in Charles Portis’s novel True Grit, when the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf suggests that he considered kissing the story’s fourteen-year-old girl and narrator Mattie Ross. Mattie retorts LaBoeuf’s abuse of authority by telling the Ranger his untoward advances will be met with justice. This angers LaBoeuf, and in a moment of foreshadowing, he tells Mattie that she’s crossed a line. But Mattie is undeterred; she dismisses the Ranger with a tossed-off line that maintains her humanity and dignity. It’s a lesson we try to apply not only to all the transactions here at the Auberge, but in all phases of our lives, where petty demands can’t be satisfied by the shifting of a decimal point.

The Charlie Brown Syndrome

2011-12-08T08:51:00.003-05:00

I saw a friend in town the other day, and after we’d been talking for a few minutes he asked, “Are you doing any writing?” My stomach caved in on itself, which was great for my profile, but lousy for my soul. Am I doing any writing? What are you writing? How’s the writing going? All questions writers dread, unless we’ve just inked a five-book deal with Doubleday, or a sold another screenplay to Universal. Otherwise, the question provokes consternation, remorse, guilt, and hopelessness. Or, as I like to call it, the Charlie Brown Syndrome.

Good ole’ Charlie Brown, in case none of you got it, grew up to become a writer. According to an article published in Psychology Today, Charlie Brown was a classic neurotic, “prone to depression and anxiety and paralyzing fits of over-analysis.”

Well, maybe writers aren’t all classic neurotics, like our Peanuts pal, but the question of what we’re writing can make us feel that way. The problem is that we’ve gone around writing things all our lives, and so people expect us to do that--write. Many of us have foolishly acquired MFAs, raising the bar further. Some of us have even published, in magazines, literary journals, and--worst of all--books. Thus the world looks at us and expects us to write.

But that’s not why we became writers, why we pursued the classification, or why we wrote anything in the first place. No, the real reason we became writers was the same reason a lot of people picked up guitars and played rock’n’roll: To meet girls. (This is true for many women writers I know, too.) Most of the writers I hang around with are about my age (the middle age, that is), and we’ve all been paired up with significant others. With meeting girls out of the way, that leaves only the writing to face.

That, and the rest of our lives, and often it’s the rest of our lives that defeat the writing. It’s not that I’m not writing at all--you’re reading this blog post, aren’t you? And have you checked out my personal Facebook page? How about my business’s FB page? And I just built two online classes that I’ll be teaching next semester--about a novel’s worth of words there. There’s also the correspondence--sometimes I feel like one half of the Jefferson-Adams duo, scratching out my thoughts by the light of a whale oil lamp deep into the night.

But none of that’s really writing. Writing is the thing you’re working on now. The novel. The screenplay. The short story. The scholarly article for The Writer’s Chronicle called “First Tracks: Warren Zevon, Alice Munro, and the Importance of Opening Stories.” The memoir. Whatever. That’s the writing, not the other stuff.

So when I saw that friend (by the way, I was in the gym at the time, working out, which is also not writing), I gagged when he asked, “Are you writing anything?” Oh, sure, I’m writing lots of stuff. Aren’t your reading any of it?

The (White) Elephant in the Room

2011-11-13T16:11:00.001-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I was perched 20 feet up in the air, reclining in a hunting tree stand located on the corner of our property in northern Vermont. With my gun cradled in my lap, I relaxed and worked my way through a bag of peanuts I’d brought to stem the boredom. The woods were noisy with a firm breeze that pushed the tinder-dry leaves around. I unbuttoned my jacket and took off my gloves. It was 50 degrees outside.

This was opening weekend in Vermont’s annual deer hunt, and it got me thinking about skiing. If there’s common ground between skiers and hunters, it’s snow. Skiers love snow because of deficiencies in their childhood that turned them away from engaging conventionally in society, instead pursuing monetarily unfulfilling lives as ski bums, while hunter love snow because it makes tracking deer easier. It also makes seeing them easier. And by the second weekend in November, skiers are thinking seriously about the upcoming season, even as some ski bums, like me, try to balance the mania for skiing with the fever of hunting.

I’m not a dedicated early-season skier; I like plenty of snow around before I venture out. While this may exclude me from true “bum” status, it also lets me spend more energy on my other non-revenue generating hobby, hunting. But I’ve been thinking a lot about skiing this year, and the reason is new gear.

Last spring I decided to make a big switch in my telemark skiing setup, abandoning cable bindings for the newer NTN (new telemark norm) system. I began by buying a pair of Crispi Evo boots, the first new ski boots I’ve had in 13 years. That was followed up by a search for new bindings. The NTN by Rottefella is a counterintuitive looking beast. And it’s rare. Finding one at less than retail prices was difficult, and after I’d been sniped a couple of times on eBay, I found a pair for sale by some local skiers. As fate would have it, we had a connection to the seller, and that connection was Iceland.

A couple of winters ago, we hosted this wonderful couple from Iceland, who were here to ski the backcountry of Vermont. We hit it off with them, and they explained that Iceland has some of the best wild skiing in the world. There are places in Iceland that can only be accessed by boat. The trip involves sailing into one of the many fjords found along Iceland’s coast. From there, skiers hike and skin up the heights of the mountains separating the fjords. After reaching the top, it’s a breathtaking schuss down to the ocean, where the boat (after sailing around the point of land) is waiting to pick you up. Yeah.

Anyway, while they were here, the couple visited with some mutual friends down in Moretown, Brian Mohr and Emily Johnson of Ember Photography. Brian and Emily, in addition to being astonishing photographers (seriously, visit their website and check out their photos) are also adventure skiers, and they’ve skied some of the most exotic locales in the world--including Iceland. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that the person selling the NTN bindings was Brian. Vermont’s like that. Instead of six degrees of separation, we have about two and a half.

In chatting with Brian, I discovered that he’s got a new website called AdventureSkier.com, which will make you forget about deer hunting and flip the ski bum switch inside you. I also learned that he had already been skiing. What about the white stuff? I asked. After all, the weather hadn’t been very cold so far this fall, and aside from a dump of snow that affected mostly southern Vermont, we were snowless. Edgeless skis was the explanation, proving that you don’t have to have the white elephant in the room in order to kick off the ski season.

Now that I’ve got my new bindings, I’ll be thinking more and more about skiing. The snow always arrives here in Stowe. Last year, we started out slowly, too, before ending up with a record setting snow year. And, as evidenced by Brian and Emily, you don’t need a ton of snow. Just the right gear and love for getting out there. In the meantime, think snow.

Nematode and Other Amphibian Dangers

2011-10-30T07:45:00.003-04:00

It's a physical law of the universe that your own customs agents are tougher on you than they are with folks from other countries. When Chantal and I lived and France and drove to Zurich to visit her aunt, getting through Swiss customs was pretty stressful, especially since we were usually smuggling in roast beef and Scotch. But coming back through into France was just miserable, and we were toting nothing then but fond memories. No matter how often we said, "Rien a declarer," we were hassled.

It's much the same now when we cross back and forth across the U.S.-Canadian border. Going into Canada, the border agents simply want to know the same three questions: What is the purpose of your trip? How long will you be staying? Are you leaving anything in Canada? Last week Chantal and I drover her mother up to the airport in Montreal, and after I answered the last questions, "No," he hesitated. "You're leaving your mother-in-law, right?"

Haw. It was a rare moment of levity with a customs official, and we appreciated the laugh.

But we've had our share of dustups upon our return to the States. Our own agents are ever-vigilant for the things we U.S. nationals may be trying to smuggle back into our own country, things that are only available in Canada, like Cuban cigars, smoked meat, and socialized medicine.

One time Chantal borrowed a friend's car to drive someone to the airport in Montreal. Upon her return to the States, the customs official noticed a bag of dog food in the car.

"Where did you buy that dog food?" he asked.

Chantal, a seasoned border-hopper, knew how to talk to customs officials: answer only the question you were asked; volunteer nothing. "I didn't buy it. This is my friend's car, as I told you."

"Where was that dog food produced?" The tone was Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator.

"I don't know where it was produced. It's not mine."

"If it was bought in Canada--"

"Look, if it was bought in Canada, the language on the bag would be printed in two languages, French and English. So take a look." Chantal had breeched a long-established protocol of only engaging when questioned. But she had the customs official cornered.

Nonplussed, the agent let her pass.

We had another interesting episode last week. While up in Montreal, we visited our favorite market, the Atwater Market. Autumn is a great time to go to the market, because all the fall fruits and vegetables are in, including dozens of varieties of pumpkins, apples, and flowers. The display is colorful and the foods inviting. After a cup of coffee at Premier Moisson, we browsed the shops and stalls, picking up a couple of cans of flageolet beans and some cheese. Then we saw some leeks that looked so perfect we had to get them.

Savvy travelers know that normally bringing fruits and vegetables back into the States is a no-no. We knew that, too. But we figured that since they were local produce, it would be okay. Not so. When the customs official asked what we were bringing back, the leeks were a flag. We were sent off to the side parking area to await the fruits and vegetables expert, who explained to us that we couldn't prove that the leeks had originated in Canada. They could have been flown in from Asia.

Or worse, he said, they could contain nematode. If you bombed biology in college like me, nematode is a parasitic roundworm. There are actually something like 28,000 species of nematode, but for the sake of our leeks, there were two that came into the discussion. One variety was the good variety that ate bug-hating critters like cutworm. The other was a the evil variety, called pest nematodes, that hitch rides on unsuspecting crops, like leeks, and spread themselves around, killing crops. Invoking the false binary so often used when good and evil are allowed into the discussion, the customs agent explained that they had to destroy the leeks in order to save them. It was Ben Tre all over again.

Chantal tried arguing logic: Don't the deer and other critter that leap unchecked back and forth across the border carry nematode, spreading it?

"Thanks, folks, and have a nice day." Customs agents have their orders, and while we're glad they're on the ball, that kind of vertical thinking can be concerning.

This shouldn't sway anyone from spending a day up in Montreal when visiting northern Vermont. Just remember that cans of beans are okay, but fresh fruits and veggies are evil.

Why We Need a Fence--or at Least a Big Dog--Between Us and Canada

2011-10-30T07:18:00.004-04:00

Author's Note: There are a thousand stories in the fleece-wearing North Country; this isn't one of them.

There are few things more pleasurable for an innkeeper than getting away after a long stretch of consecutive busy seasons. In Stowe, we innkeepers call it “Getting the *%&# Out of Dodge.” One of the things Chantal and I love to do is escape to Montreal. Visiting Montreal is also a great activity for guests staying with us. But getting to Montreal requires crossing the porous U.S.-Canadian border (at least it’s porous on the Canadian side; our side is tighter than a frog’s keister, and that’s watertight). While getting out of America and into other countries might be easy, some recent guests of ours found out that getting back in requires more than just charm and a passport.

Going back and forth to Canada used to be a lot easier. Because of all the illegal immigrants swarming south into America in order to flee Canada’s social healthcare system in favor of our private, punishing, prohibitive method of underinsuring the populace, crossing the border has become a stressful task. The War on Terror has also touched the U.S.-Canada line of demarcation. Canadian terrorists, disguised as flannel-clad, referendum-crazed, poutine-eating Quebecers trying to invade our country and kill us with bags of their stronger Canadian dollars (coins referred to revealingly as “loonies,” which can be stuffed into socks to create weapons of cash destruction), have forced us to tighten up the border crossing, sometimes with disastrous effects. Take the example of the subversive group called “The Irish Ladies” who stayed recently at the Auberge.

On the surface, The Irish Ladies were three good-humored women, ostensibly from Ireland (though I didn’t ask for their birth certificates when I checked them in--an oversight on my part; they could have been born anywhere), who stayed with us in September. The first flag of concern that I ignored was their gender. We all know the problems women have caused through the ages, from Eve to Hillary Clinton to Muammar Ghaddafi. But because we were in the throes of a busy foliage season, and quite nearly out of our minds from answering the same questions over and over again (“Where’s the color? Where’s the damage from the hurricane? Where’s the mint for my pillow?”), we let our guard down, enchanted by their lilting accents and credit cards.

The second warning sign was that they were traveling together: where were their menfolk? Were they sexually liberated subversives drawn to Vermont for some kind of abominable three-way civil union? They claimed that they worked for an international relief organization, exactly the kind of communist cover story three middle-aged, female Irish terrorists would use to gain access to the U.S. Furthermore, they arrived on the weekend of Stowe’s British Invasion celebration, our annual patriotic celebration of all the things our colonial forefathers spilled their own blood to rid from our country, like the superfluous “u” in words like “harbour” and “bush,” and punctuation placed outside quotation marks. Clearly these gals were were out to sabotage all the Aston Martins, Union Jacks, and tea drinking partiers that had flooded Stowe. Fortunately, after a couple of well-placed bourbons, I was able to think on my feet and come up with a plan to rid us of these leprechaun-loving Irish rovers: I’d send them to Canada. Surely those coin-loving socialists would sign them up immediately for unemployment benefits, ridding us of them forever.

So the next morning, after their tea (Who the hell drinks tea in the morning? Irish subversives, that’s who. Everyone knows that tea is the beverage of uninformed anarchists around the world), they set off for the Canadian frontier, and we breathed a sigh of relief. Imagine our disappointment when they showed up for breakfast the following day. Out of politeness, I asked about their trip to Montreal. They giggled and told us they didn’t quite make it. Seems that when they arrived at Canadian customs, they discovered that one of them forgot her passport back in her room (a likely story from globe-trotting international relief workers--if that’s what they really were). It also seems that by the time one reaches Canadian customs, one is technically already in Canada, and if one has forgotten one’s passport, one has technically entered Canada illegally. As the ladies told me this, I thought to myself, “Okay, what’s the problem? Don’t the Canadians love you Irish socialist/terrorists?” (Or was it “terrorist/socialists”? Or “socio-terrorists”? Or “terro-socialogues?” Or just “terrestrialists?”)

Apparently, since Canada has a little-brother complex, they’d begun copying everything we do here in the U.S. When big-brother U.S. tightens its borders, little-brother Canada tightens its borders. When big-brother U.S. tanks its economy, little-brother Canada invades us with its “loonies.” And so on. You can see the problem with this derivative little-brother behavior. Everything becomes tiresome, and terror-loving Irish women benefit.

Back to the Irish ladies, one of whom had just entered Canada illegally:

They were informed by the Canadian customs official that they now had to re-enter the U.S. To help, she gave them a note saying they had only gone as far as the customs booth. When the U.S. customs official saw this note, he laughed, ripped it up, and threw the Irish lady without a passport into a special room that had a television tuned to a famous cable news channel. Her two comrades were told that if they ever wanted to see their friend in O’Donohue’s on Merrion Row in Dublin again, they’d have to drive back to Stowe and get her passport--if, in fact, she had one.

Back down to Stowe drove the two co-conspirators, regaling themselves with the gorgeous views provided by the Vermont countryside, while their accomplice rotted in her cell, forced to endure the 24-hour news cycle decrying the decline and fall of the American empire. At one point two customs officials came and quizzed her about things Irish, peppering her with a series of questions that nearly unhinged her: “If you’re so Irish, tell us who directed John Wayne in The Quiet Man?” And, “In the movie The Quiet Man, how many fights did the Irish guy and John Wayne get into?” And, “Why wouldn’t Maureen O’Hara fall in love with John Wayne right away?” And, “How come John Wayne allowed Barry Fitzgerald to interfere with his relationship with Maureen O’Hara?” And “How can you tell that The Quiet Man didn’t really take place in Ireland?”

To the last question, the detained Irish lady could only shake her head and cover her face. The customs officials were triumphant: they had broken their suspect. (By the way, the answer to the last question is horses. That whole horse racing scene in The Quiet Man is bunk. Everybody knows that the Irish have nothing to do with horses. In fact, the only accurate parts of the movie are John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, and all the drinking and fighting.)

Finally the Irish lady’s friends returned with her passport, and it turns our she’s Irish after all, even though the customs officials--who, because of their location on the border between Vermont and Quebec, are experts on accents--claimed that her Irish accent didn’t sound very Irish at all. Everybody had a good laugh and a drink of Irish whiskey, which is spelled with an “e” like American whiskey, which makes it okay to drink with U.S. customs officials who have detained you because of your phony Irish accent and convoluted plan to re-enter America and threaten us with terror, even if it is boozy, parodic Irish terror.

Coda: The Irish ladies had a good laugh about all this. Can you imagine? Doesn't anything bother those people?

Why the song "Happy Birthday" is rarely sung on TV

2011-09-23T07:01:00.002-04:00

It’s my birthday, and I’m grumpy.

Not because I’m another year older. I’m really not another year older; I’m just a day beyond yesterday, and glad for it. No, my grumpiness is an amalgamation of irritations, not the least of which is this whole notion of birthdays and celebrations. My birth was hardly an accomplishment. All I did was survive a trip down the birth canal 47 years ago into the hands of an OB-GYN at Quincy City Hospital. After cleaning me up, the doctor took the cigarette out of his mouth and said, “Congratulations, it’s a boy.” My mother took the cigarette from her mouth and said, “Thank you, doctor.” I took the cigarette from my mouth and said, “Anybody got a light?”

You’re probably thinking my grumpiness stems from nicotine withdrawal, but I gave up smoking cigarettes 35 years ago. Maybe it’s innkeeping that’s got me down. Like birthdays, innkeeping is cyclical, adhering strictly to the annual solar movements. We mark our progress by the seasons: ski season, mud season, summer, foliage, and stick season. I’m foliage, the end of summer, the beginning of autumn. We’re about to embark on an intense couple of weeks that will last until the end of October. This anticipation puts innkeepers on edge as we await the arrival of fickle travelers obsessed with finding the best colors.

More likely, though, is that my grumpiness is due to birthday fatigue. In my family, September is a month for birthdays. My niece Catalina starts things off prematurely with a birthday on the last day of August. Then my son Brendan celebrates his day on the first of September. The next day is my nephew Daniel’s birthday. On the third its my other nephew, Connor. September 8th is my oldest son Seamus’s birthday. September 11, besides being a day of national infamy, is our wedding anniversary. My Irish brother and writing Waffenbruder Chris Millis celebrates on September 13. Another niece, Emily, was born on September 16th. If that’s not enough action, both Bruce Springsteen and Ray Charles got to September 23rd before I did.

Even closer to the truth is my recalcitrance. I despise celebrations in my honor, and I eschew attention. I’m happiest as wallpaper, listening, internalizing, pondering. It’s ancillary of being, in the words of my friend Rouvy, “a loner with a loner’s point of view.” The perfect day for me would involve getting up at 0500 and pounding a pot of coffee. Then I’d like to go hike through in the woods for about three hours, working things out in my head. Then I’d like to read and sip Henniez bubbly water. After that, it would be nice to go out to dinner with my family at Haddad’s Ocean Cafe, where I’d order the fisherman’s platter and drink beer from 8 ounce bar glasses. Then, home, with a bottle of John Jamesons and a prayer for the Red Sox.

My grumpiness might have to do with the history of birthdays. The idea behind the birthday celebration is hokey and speaks to man’s ignorance. While nobody really knows when humans were able to tie the event of someone’s birth to the position of the sun on its travels through the sky, we do know that with the arrival of the calendar, this task became easier. The celebration arose because early people thought that the day of someone’s birth was also likely to be the day of his or her death. The evil spirits that would carry off a soul could be warded off by gathering loved ones and offering gifts, like electric razors and barbecue aprons. Ironically, this pagan custom was originally shunned by the early Christian church. The birth of Christ wasn’t celebrated until 1935 when FDR, as part of the New Deal, pushed through the Shopping Recovery Act, mandating that we all celebrate the birth of Christ each year by buying cheap plastic crap we don’t need and going into debt.

But the regular world doesn’t stop for birthdays. For innkeepers, rooms still need to be cleaned, phones need to be answered, and guests need to be welcomed. For fathers, sons--especially the one who just bought a 1986 Firebird with a Corvette LT-1 small block V8 engine--still need to be lectured. Dogs still need to be walked. Cats need to be shooed off the table.

And as for singing "Happy Birthday" to me, you should be prepared to pony-up. The Warner Music Group, which owns the rights to the song, collects about $2 million a year in royalties. That's why you rarely hear the song sung on television and film. And I'm sure they're monitoring Facebook and Skype from their bunkers, just waiting to hear the opening notes wafting up to their lawyers.

So thanks for your good wishes. You’ve banished the evil spirits. You’ve done your part for the economy. But I’m still grumpy, and you know what? It feels kind of nice.

Irene, Fall Foliage, and the Media

2011-09-08T08:04:00.002-04:00

On Sunday, August 28, at about 9:00 a.m., Hurricane Irene weakened to a tropical storm as it made landfall around Coney Island, New York. For the rest of the day Irene traveled into the heart of New England, and while her winds diminished, she had accumulated a staggering amount of moisture from Atlantic waters that were one to three degrees warmer than average. Irene dumped those waters onto Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, western Massachusetts, and Maine, before moving northeast into Canada's maritime provinces.

Many communities in Vermont were devastated; Stowe was not one of them. All day Sunday we sat in the breakfast room and watched sheets of rain fill the stream that runs through the backyard. Finally, at five in the afternoon, the river overflowed its banks for the second time this year, and only the second time in the 11 years we've lived here. The river creeped halfway up the backyard, winked seductively at the pool, then receded.

Some of the secondary dirt roads were washed out in Stowe, but they were quickly repaired, and our community came through the storm just fine. Others, like Waterbury, were inundated. My Volvo garage, Snowfire Auto, lost all their vehicles, and their offices were trashed. The state offices were flooded, and the computer system for the school I teach at, Community College of Vermont, lost its servers for over a week. Further downstate in central Vermont, the picture was far worse.

Media coverage of Irene was, for a 72-hour period, intense, as well is should have been (since 1980, it was the 10th most covered storm by the media; the 10th deadliest storm, with over 21 fatalities; and it was the 8th costliest storm, with over $14 billion in damage). Had this storm wavered a litter farther west, New York City could have received the bulk of her rains. One of the things we in Vermont are struggling with is the blanket branding we received during the news coverage: Vermont is a varied state, and not all parts were equally affected. North Central Vermont was spared much of the flooding; Burlington emerged unscathed.

Folks that are planning trips to New England to enjoy the spectacular fall foliage should do so with confidence. To check on road closings in Vermont, visit Vermont511 and check out the interactive map. Just about every business in Vermont is open, so travelers will find everything they need to enjoy the stunning autumn leaves.

And Stowe? In the next week or so, the colors up on Mt. Mansfield will begin to change, slowly trekking down the hillsides, until they reach their peak glory here in the valley where our village is located. That happens at exactly 2:37 p.m. on Sunday, October 2. So come grab a seat to one of the greatest shows before they're all gone. Leave your umbrellas at home, but don't forget your cameras.

A Brief History of Innkeeping in the 20th Century

2011-08-26T07:47:00.004-04:00

Here's the next chapter from the innkeeping memoir I've been revising. Already I've changed the title to A Brief History of Innkeeping in the 20th Century. Remember, this is the Beta version, so feedback is appreciated.

Chapter 3: In which: I beat you with numbers; We doubt our ability to make it; and the link between lobster fishing and innkeeping is revealed.

Read Chapter 3: Thinking by the Numbers: Innkeeping for Dreamers and Beancounters

An Annotated History of Innkeeping in the 21st Century

2011-08-01T11:46:00.003-04:00

Here's the next installment in the serialized, beta-version presentation of An Annotated History of Innkeeping in the 21st Century.

Chapter 2: "What's in a Name?" In which: The Auberge gets a name, and you get to know why; We almost don't get to buy the place; FedEx: When you absolutely, positively have to have a job with a big company in order to have access to affordable health insurance; Conflicts of interest; and all the footnoted minutia you've asked for in your thoughtful cards and letters.

Here's the link to Chapter 2.

An Annotated History of Innkeeping in the 21st Century

2011-07-27T08:05:00.005-04:00

What began out of frustration for my attempts to find a publisher for my memoir The Innkeeper's Husband has turned into a full-scale rewrite of the book. With it comes a new title: An Annotated History of Innkeeping in the 21st Century.

Several weeks ago Chris Millis and I were talking about novel-writing techniques, and we discussed the idea of annotating a novel, a la David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest. As I was contemplating the fate of The Innkeeper's Husband, I started to think about this method as a way of injecting something more textual into the book, something that would divorce it from a strict narrative. Though the original draft contained articles from a regular column on innkeeping that I'd written several years ago as chapter bridges, those columns felt like asynchronous intrusions.

So, on a whim, and while I'm getting close to the end of another novel I'm working on, I dropped what I was doing and reworked The Innkeeper's Husband into An Annotated History of Innkeeping in the 21st Century.

What's more, I decided to serialize the rewrite as I complete each chapter so that everyone out there in pajama land can enjoy or be aggravated by my efforts. Totally up to you.

Here is the Introduction and Chapter 1. And please remember, this is the Beta version. (That's the inchoate version, for you smarty pants.)

My Morning Muse

2011-07-16T11:47:00.000-04:00

It didn’t start out as a deliberate act; many of these things don’t. There was no planning, no discussion. In fact, most people didn’t realize it until the event had passed. And after the first couple of days, it faded into the background with no protest, no uproar, no pleading. Perhaps the most noticeable effect was that there was no noticeable effect. Life went on.

That not always how it works out for everyone who stops drinking coffee. Most people get headaches, become irritable, or find themselves nodding off at ten in the morning. When I stopped drinking coffee over Memorial Day 2010, none of that happened. In fact, what I noticed over the next few weeks was a mellowing, a smoothing out of my day, and a quicker drift to sleep at night.

For years I’d risen with or before the dawn, pounded coffee, and slew dragons. I didn’t really start drinking coffee on a daily basis until I met Chantal. She imported this excellent coffee from Louisiana called Community Coffee. It was rich and sharp and she drank it black and it made me forget the large regular with two sugars (“lahhge regulah with two sugahs) that I sometimes ordered at Dunkin’ Donuts. Thus began my coffee drinking career.

When we lived in France we had access to a tremendous selection of coffee, muscular, aggressive roasts of pure Arabica beans. The French drink coffee as a way to hydrate themselves. They drink it in the morning, they dunk their cigarettes in it throughout the day, and they drink it at night to fall asleep. They don’t drink it out of mugs. Rather, they drink it in short cups, perpetuating the illusion of continuous consumption. Funnily enough, Chantal and I preferred the coffee we could buy in Germany, which was less edgy. We made frequent cross-border forays for this coffee, which we drank with breakfast.

Back in the States (and a couple of years later when we moved to Canada) coffee became a tool when we had children. And by tool I mean a drug in the sense of something we say to our kids all the time: “Don’t do drugs.” With the advent of erratic sleeping patterns comes the total dependency on coffee to survive the daylight hours. I discovered the joys of iced coffee, which could be spiked with chocolate syrup, cream, coffee liqueur, or whiskey, depending on the time of the day.

When I went to work for FedEx, coffee became a piece of equipment for me. Like many of my purple-and-orange brothers and sisters, reporting to work at oh-dark-thirty for a day of driving required gasoline and coffee to keep up the 14-hour days I logged. Like all couriers, I began to orchestrate my delivery route with my need for coffee and bathrooms. While we loaded our trucks, the morning discussions among couriers revolved around toilet talk: who had the best john, and what could we do when we were “out of range.” My favorite technique was called the “mirror adjustment.” A courier would pull over to the side of the road and adjust the mirror on the passenger’s side of the truck while he secretly peed on his right front tire. Another courier pointed our that all the water bottles that littered access road to the FedEx station I worked in back in Mass were filled with urine. “It’s all the coffee we drink,” he explained. “What are we supposed to do?”

The next phase of my life required absolute devotion to coffee: innkeeping. Coffee is the lynchpin to the entire operation, the only thing guests really want in the morning. Fail as an innkeeper to provide excellent coffee for guests, and you fail at your essential task. Don’t even bother breaking eggs: the day’s battle is won or lost on that first sip of coffee. Furthermore, I lived ten minutes away from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters--and later, with FedEx, I worked at the GMCR facility in Waterbury, Vermont. I found myself awash in coffee. During the workday, access to coffee was unlimited, and the latest rage were K-cups, which made delivering coffee to my system more convenient than ever.

So when I quit coffee last year, it was a major event that I somehow managed to slip quietly under the notice of most people (except for my perceptive friend Lloyd, a professional coffee drinker, who rightfully chided me for my deception). But I experienced no side-effects, no withdrawal from the bean. A sort of mellowness descended around me, a tolerance, an openness. The feeling was not unpleasant, and through the winter ski season I didn’t miss coffee.

But there was one side-effect that I did experience, one aspect of my life that suffered from my decaffeination: my writing. Coffee has always been part of my writing ritual, the routine that fuels my creativity, the morning muse for my morning pages. As an early riser, I depended on coffee to ignite my writing and elevate my consciousness. It sharpened me early and sustained me late. And I’d noticed a frustration surrounding the completion of a novel I’ve been working on for too long. So quietly, at the last Roundtable Writers’ Confab, I began sipping some coffee. And just as there was no marked difference when I stopped drinking coffee, there was nothing to signal that I’ve resumed drinking it. Oh, maybe I’ve felt a little rush in the morning following my one cup. But I think the most noticeable effect has been on my writing. More of it’s getting done, earlier, and with more clarity.

Every writer has his muse. For middle-aged guys like me it’s usually some gal in her 20s. But my muse is coffee, that robust elixir of stimulation who clears to fog from my mind and tingles my fingertips across the keyboard. It’s good to be back.

Biking Away the Summer

2011-07-15T15:08:00.003-04:00

For the past three and a half weeks, my son has been taking a summer class at Johnson State College. Aside from the fact that I’m impressed with his pluck (the class is General Chemistry, and it meets every morning from 8 AM to noon; next fall he’ll be entering his junior year of high school), I’m also impressed my dedication to helping him achieve this goal. Since my son doesn’t yet have his driver’s license, it’s my job to get him to class each day, then hang around for four hours until he’s ready to head home. With fuel flirting with four bucks a gallon it doesn’t make any sense to drive the twenty minutes back home, then go back and pick him up.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds. For starters, I’ve been able to use the time spent up in Morrisville (where the class is held) doing the things that everyone in Stowe does up in Morrisville: shop. Ironically, though Stowe bills itself as a great place for visitors to “shop,” the kind of shopping small innkeepers need to do (what I call survival shopping: supermarket stuff, farm and garden supplies, etc.) is better done in the blue collar setting ten miles north of here. If I need a new yoga outfit or special creams for my body, Stowe’s the right town; but when I need toilet paper and cheap plastic do-hickies, I head north.

Another benefit of being trapped in a different locale for the morning is that I’m close to the Community College of Vermont, where I teach. While I’m only teaching one class this summer, there’s still plenty of work (like reading essays), and I can go to CCV and use the instructor’s office (which is painfully air-conditioned) and plow through my work while I sip coffee.

And speaking of coffee (which I’ve begun drinking again after a 14-month hiatus; more on that in a future blog), when I’m done with CCV, I’m free to sample the local coffee shops offering free wi-fi. My favorite is the Bee’s Knees. It’s laid back and the coffee’s good. Plus I can look out the huge front windows at the morning bustle as it passes by. Another favorite is the Lovin Cup Cafe in Johnson. Located on the first floor of an old Victorian home, the place has the feel of someone’s living room, which makes it perfect for plunking down on one of the couches and answering emails.

But the best benefit of this arrangement is that I get to ride my road bike every day. As soon as I drop my son off, I change into my bike shorts and take my bike off its rack and hit the road. Biking in Vermont is a pleasure that can’t be overstated. It would be trite for me to waste this space talking about the barns and the cows and the babbling brooks I get to ride past every morning, or to wax philosophic with platitudes about the breathtaking views of the mountains, yadda yadda.

What’s more interesting is the intimate relationship I developed with the road and my bike. After three weeks of hard riding, my bike feels like an extension of my body. The feeling must be similar to what pilots feel with their planes: I just look where I want to go and my bike goes there. I’ve also become a connoisseur of macadam, asphalt, and other road surfaces. Averaging 12 to 15 miles per hour on a thin-tired bicycle requires concentration. While the views around me may be bucolic, most of my time is spent surveying the upcoming road for cracks, detritus, and roadkill. Nothing can ruin your day faster than running over a partially-flattened beaver. (Beaver carcasses are notoriously greasy--some say they’re slicker than owl shit, but I have my doubts--and greasy bike tires are unstable, to say the least.)

While I managed to avoid the remains of various mammals and marsupials that decorated the verge (once I rode by a bloating deer corpse; a hundred yards later I rode past a festering coyote carcass; though I kept a sharp eye out, I never saw the third act of this roadside tragedy: the remains of someone wearing green plaid, holding a rifle), I did have a run-in with a jagged piece of steel that someone had carelessly tossed from a car window. The piece of metal looked like something from a medieval torture chamber, rusting and serrated. I managed to avoid it with my front tire, but it sliced open my back tire, and the resulting high-speed explosion nearly sent me under the treads of a passing oil truck. With no way to repair it--I needed a new tire, as well as an inner tube--I was forced to walk four miles back to my car.

Vermont roads are famous for other unexpected cycling hazards. While patches of sand can destabilize anything on two wheels instantly, my worst fear as a cyclists is the dreaded Wall of Manure. Farmer’s barns may look lovely on postcards and in magazines, but the cows that live there are busy turning grass into milk and manure, and on a hot day the scent of nature can form a physical obstruction as dangerous as any rotting body. To try and suck air precipitating cow dung after climbing a ferocious hill in the July heat is to experience something close to drowning. The body won’t allow it. Eyes water. Skin burns. Lungs seize. But the legs keep pumping, because to stop is to be swallowed up in the miasma.

My son’s class is over, so I’m back to biking from Stowe, and while it’s still a gorgeous place to cycle, I’ll miss my morning cows, my sandy turns, and my Smithsonian-caliber collection of North American fauna piled up on the side of the road. Oh--my son’s class? He got an A. I’ll burn fuel for that any day. Especially if I get to bike away my mornings.

The Book on Spring

2011-06-01T14:42:00.000-04:00

If you’re blinking, thinking your eyes are playing tricks on you, they’re not. It’s me. The last blog was “The Book on Winter,” and this one, not quite two months later, wraps up spring. If it sounds like I’m a little quick to say good-bye to spring, that’s because spring doesn’t stick around long up here. It’s a pretty good bet that April and the first two months of May will be hideous, and that somewhere around the middle of May, it turns to summer.

Et voila. For the past several days (I write this on the first of June) we’ve been stewing in 80-90 degree heat, with Tampa Bay-style thunderstorms popping up to lash us with torrential downpours and dangerous lightning each evening. Pasty Vermonters (the author included) are emerging like larvae into the jungle heat. We’re stupefied, beady-eyed, and feeble. We stagger around, blinking, groping, gaping, like fish on a hot sidewalk. We need a little time in the over to firm up.

The hideous weather of our so-called spring was remarkable. It chiseled itself into the meteorological record books as the wettest spring ever. The Little River behind our house overflowed its banks for the first time in the 11 years we’ve been here. The day care center next door lost its playground. The Luce Hill Road bridge was washed out. We were wet and cold, and I built a fire in the wood stove as late as the 12th because I was loathe to fire up the heat and burn $4/gallon Saudi No. 2 in May.

And then it turned, the weather becoming hot, sunny, dry--except for the afternoon thunder boomers. We hope it stays that way, not just so that we can stop blinking like newly released prisoners, but so that we can actually enjoy our brief summer. It won’t be long until you’re seeing the blog “The Book on Summer.” Between now and then I need to thin my blood from gear oil to sweet light crude, if only for the exercise.

The Book on Winter

2011-04-19T07:03:00.000-04:00

Winter is in the books.

I don’t know all the totals and stats that describe the snow and ice and cold that abused and amused us this year. I didn’t keep a snowfall log and breathlessly announce new precipitation depths to our guests each morning. I didn’t even track my ski days, of which there were dozens, if not scores.

My books are filled not with statistics, but stories. Like the story of the front porch. One Saturday night after dinner in early February, I was out in the dark shoveling. It had been snowing hard all day, and for the first time this winter the snow was heavy and wet. The shoveling was brutal, and I was forced to take smaller bites of the mushrooming piles at my feet, for fear that my back, heart, or lungs would give out.

Saturday night snowfalls are the second best night for snow. Sunday nights are the best, because there’s no one around: everyone clears out of a ski town on Sundays in the winter, so the snowfall is uninterrupted by any traffic. Saturday nights are a close second, and that’s what I was thinking last February as I shoveled. Then I heard the sounds.

Because it was so quiet, and because it was snowing so hard--two or three inches an hour--I was contained inside my own little cone of silence. To say that sounds were muffled wasn’t exactly accurate; they were detached, as if they were traveling in their own cones, small storm systems of sound in the atmosphere. The occasional car would pass by and I would see it, but its sound would only extend out for a few feet around it, like bands of rain from a hurricane.

But the packet of sound that made me stop shoveling was different. It sounded like a sigh, the relaxing of a cork from a bottle of Champagne. I stood up straight, my back screaming, my bad shoulder aching, my good shoulder considering the same, sweat trickling down my neck and chilling my skin, and I saw it. The roof for the front porch--the porch where my sons waited for the bus every morning--was slowly twisting itself away from the house. The sound of the gentle screech of nails stripping themselves from wood reached me, and I thought I heard something splinter. Then the whole roof fell off to the side with a soft whoosh, landing in the snow. Since the snow was heavy and wet, there was no cliched cloud of white displaced. The roof simply fell. Falling snow immediately began to bury it.

The fallen roof stayed there, buried, until the stubbornly melting snows revealed it. It was rotted in many places, and it probably needed to be replaced, so I was happy the winter had brought it to the ground, making my demolition safer and easier. That’s how we rationalize things like winter destruction around here. We look for the upside.

There are lots of other stories that quantify this winter. Like the obnoxious bill for plowing. Or the flooding in the basement. Or the shredded pool cover. Or the shattered back stairs, victims of falling ice. They’re all ways of measuring winter, and they’re all going in my book.

An Unexpected Sign of Spring

2011-04-09T17:19:00.001-04:00

We had a brilliant idea for a fine Saturday morning: there was an estate sale down the road, and the announcement that appeared in the newspaper listed some things that we could use for the inn, a new couch for the guest living room among them. Our breakfast guests were all leaving early, and the promise of the season’s first yard would be just what we needed to make spring official.

But when we arrived--a few minutes before the stated start time of 9 a.m.--cars lined both sides of Route 100, and a line snaked out the door and around the yard. People stood with cups of coffee, waiting, and children chased each other around a gazebo. For a moment I thought I’d stumbled upon a tractor pull. But the sign out front said “estate sale.”

We’d come to the witness the final throes of a neighboring bed and breakfast, a place that opened up not too long after we became innkeepers, just down the road from us. The place had gone to the bank sometime last year, but it had been out of business longer than that, succumbing perhaps to “innkeeper’s disease,” that curious ailment that leads some to believe that this business is a nice, easy way to retire and make money.

Whatever the reason for the demise of the place, we were still shocked to see so many other people there. What could they want? They weren’t innkeepers. Didn’t they already have enough of their own crap? Or was there a bit of lurid curiosity in them, too. Like us, they’d probably driven by a thousand times, and seen the place empty. Now they smelled a deal, and they’d come to feast.

When the front doors open, all pretense of Vermont politeness was dropped, and the house was rushed. People leapt over the ropes that had been strung to herd buyers, and the frenzy was on. Every stripe of Vermonter was there: children, laughing and playing in the yard; couples, who looked like they were on their first date; the old and infirm, limping with walkers, dragging oxygen tanks behind them, trying to stay afloat amid the surging crowd; there were even a couple of bikers, smoking, jostling with old ladies for position near a breadmaker in the kitchen.

In the few minutes it took the line to slacken and admit us to the place, most everything had been claimed by buyers affixing their red buy tickets to stuff. Beds, couches, pots, pans, paintings, candlestick holders, chairs, even the rugs people were trampling--all of it was snapped up in minutes. I stood back to let the feeding continue.

I thought about the Auberge, and how this could have happened to us had we been--what? Less humble? Pound foolish? When we bought the Auberge, we knew what we were, and what we weren’t, and our vision aligned neatly with the physical realities of a roadside inn. We would never be an upscale inn that could charge three hundred dollars a night, and to try would lead to...well, maybe this. It seemed like I’d been around for too many of these fire sales, foreclosures, and broken dreams.

The crowd had a voracious appetite, buying everything that wasn’t nailed down, and even some stuff that looked permanent, like the hot tub that was built in to the back deck. They bought it all: paintings and chainsaws and chairs with peeling paint; lights and towels and soap dishes. There was no pleasing them. They pushed and they staggered around the house, some obnoxiously loud, others stunned, cowering in corners. I smelled their ashtray breath and saw the relentless glaze of survival in their eyes. They carried out their booty, staggering to their cars, without interruption, and the house began to shrink, like a time-lapse film of a carcass being reduced by ants.

We retreated without finding the one thing we’d really wanted--the couch was gone early, and I saw two burly men dragging it out. I couldn’t wait to get away, and I felt like a little kid again, when thunderstorms used to frighten me out of my wits. Back then, I’d hide in my bed and force myself to sleep, as if the thunder and lightning were just manifestations of my dreams.

Back at the Auberge, I felt a new appreciation for what we’d done over the past 11 years. And though we’re burned out from a busy winter season, we’ll spend the next few weeks detoxing and refocusing, because in this business, foreclosure sales are just one arrogant thought away.

Contemplating the Numbers

2011-03-27T08:31:00.002-04:00

My reading has frustrated me over the past few weeks. By the time I’ve finished writing this paragraph, I will have committed some heresies, but that’s nothing new for me. After all, we’re talking about a short story writer who doesn’t like Alice Munro. I’ve been struggling to win back an interest in fiction reading, after a long sabbatical that found me immersed in all forms of creative nonfiction. I started back by cracking Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann, a National Book Award winner. But the structure annoyed me, and though the writing was lyrical, that kind of meta-narrative has never been my favorite. So I moved on to The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, a book my sister-in-law recommended. I know Kingsolver is a great writer, but this book bored me senseless. Its journal-entry style robbed the characters of any depth, and there didn’t seem to be a story anywhere. I put it down in frustration.

So I wandered over to the public library, hoping the chi, or the karma, or whatever force floats around a building full of books, would guide me to a new discovery. I staggered up and down the aisles like a dowser waiting for my rod to sense a ripple in collective consciousness of a thousand volumes. I paused and picked up a book called Pig Island. The promise of pagan rituals set in Scotland looked interesting. But not quite. I moved on. For a minute I had David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in my hand, a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time. But its 1,000+ page count demurred me. Finally I settled on The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane. I flipped open to the first page and read this:

“Due to travel restrictions placed on major league baseball by the War Department, the World Series of 1918 was played in September and split into two home stands. The Chicago Cubs hosted the first three games, with the final four to be held in Boston. On September 7, after the Cubs dropped game three, the two teams boarded a Michigan Central train together to embark on the twenty-seven-hour trip, and Babe Ruth got drunk and started stealing hats.”

That’s one of the most engaging openings I’ve read in a long time, and I was immediately drawn in, downing the first hundred pages of the book in just a couple of hours.

It’s an important and relevant book to read right now for many reasons. The first is me. I’m an Irish Catholic kid from the Boston suburbs, and this book is set in Boston in 1918. It’s Irish-American themes are strong, and as I read it I thought of my grandfather, who would have been 18 at the time. It also deals with unions, and the history of the Boston Police strike of 1919, and how that strike was eventually broken: by firing all the officers who went on strike and replacing them with new hires, thus presaging President Reagan’s handling of the Air Traffic Controller’s strike of 1981. Given our current climate, it’s instructive to look back at the circumstances of these events to better find our way to more humane solutions.

But it was baseball that grabbed me first and foremost, specifically Babe Ruth. In the opening pages, Lehane paints a picture of a young Ruth as an emotionally arrested young man already on his way to self-ruin, even as he is just beginning to understand the talent he has been granted. More importantly, Lehane creates a moral and ethical dilemma for the Babe, allowing our imaginations into the ballplayer’s, in a poignant scene of racial injustice.

Because I’m a baseball junkie, I went directly to Baseball Reference online to refresh my memory of Ruth’s numbers. In 1918 Ruth was still primarily a pitcher, going 13-7 for the Red Sox with a 2.22 ERA in 166 and one-third innings. But the rumblings of baseball’s greatest slugger were already apparent in Ruth’s 11 home runs, which may seem measly to our steroid-inflated ears, but which led the league that year. In 317 at bats the young Ruth batted .300 and knocked in 66 RBIs to go with his 11 home runs.

As impressive (within that historical context) those numbers were, it was Ruth’s next year--his last with Boston--that began a historic run of statistical achievement that might never be matched. From 1919 to 1934, a span of 16 years, Ruth hit 688 home runs. We all know that in 22 seasons he hit 714, but in that span he averaged 43 home runs per year. He also knocked in 2,085 RBIs (averaging 130 per year), and hit at a .347 clip. In 1923--Ruth’s only MVP season--he hit .396, and didn’t win the batting title. In 1919 he hit 29 home runs and batted in 114 RBIs--both league bests--while hitting .322, and he went 9-5 in 133 innings pitched for the Red Sox, with a 2.97 ERA. There ought to be an award named after that kind of a season.

Of course the numbers never tell the story; that’s why we read the books. For now I’m grateful that Dennis Lehane has shaken me from my fictional funk, reignited my passions through the history of my home, and proved once again the power and relevance of writing in an ever more disconnected world.

Marketing, and other wastes of my time

2011-03-26T12:01:00.003-04:00

I was recently tinkering with the Facebook page for the Auberge de Stowe, trying to jazz it up, make it look professional, add the latest apps and photos, link it to everything that looks interesting, when I stopped. Why? I wondered to myself. What's the point? Why am I spinning my wheels doing something I abhor: marketing.

Ostensibly, it's to create business. But I can tell you on less than one hand how many room nights I've gained due to Facebook: zilch. I've visited the competition's Facebook pages, and they all look lovely, full of the evidence of busy-work, including reviews and testimonials from past guests. Great. In my opinion, that means Facebook is functioning like a history book, giving us snapshots of the way things used to be. That's because only your friends and fans of your business's Facebook page can see this wonderful collection of pixels you've spent hours working on.

If I'm looking for a place to attract return business, this is an acceptable method, providing, of course, that your guests all have Facebook pages. But that's not always the case. In fact, most of my customers are Facebook challenged, even if they're tech savvy in other areas. I can tell you that if I hadn't gone to graduate school in my 40s, and if I didn't own an inn, I would eschew Facebook. I've been on Facebook since 2005 when they appeared in my Goddard College email one day. Thinking that it was something connected to the college, I joined. Facebook lay dormant in my mind for a few years, until the phenomenon exploded a couple of years ago, and I found myself ahead of the curve. It was only temporary.

So why do I bother? Are people going to come back and stay with me when I post on the Auberge Facebook status that I ripped the ceiling out of the bathroom in Room 4, and I'm replacing a pipe there? Or that the crocuses are vainly trying to poke up through the snow? Or some other similarly pretentious and saccharinely insincere comment?

In the meantime, hours go by, hours spent distracted by all this, hours that would be better spent writing, which is what I'm supposed to do. So if the Auberge page looks a little stale once in a while, you'll know it's not because we don't want to stay in business; we just want to be us.

A User's Guide to Snow Removal

2011-03-10T15:03:00.000-05:00

There’s no way to teach someone how to shovel snow off a roof. The old farmhouse doesn’t have a manual of operation that contains a chapter on clearing snow so that the whole place doesn’t collapse. And there’s no way of knowing when there’s too much snow above you; supporting timbers in a 175 year-old building don’t have splintering monitors.

For the second time this winter, I clambered up onto the back roof to clear the snow away. This is a shallow pitched roof over the breakfast room of the inn, and when I got up there and stood, the snow came up to my pelvis. I gyrated a few times, as if I were hula-hooping, to push clear a spot to stand. Under my feet I imagined I could feel the smooth metal surface of the roof--metal that was supposed to be slick enough to shed the snow by itself. But all I could feel was the crunch of snow beneath my boots.

During the winter there is usually a rise and fall of temperatures that promotes not only a reduction in the snow pack through sublimation, but also movement off the roof. This winter, however, has seen consistently cold temperatures here in Vermont, keeping the snow in place. Normally I would ignore it and wait for spring to eventually do the work for me, but foul weather is forecast for the end of the week: sleet, some rain, high winds. That added moisture could be enough to push the weight of the snow into the danger zone. Time to go to work.

Earlier in the winter I’d rigged a way for me to work up there in semi-safe conditions. I attached a stout rope to a heavy eyebolt screwed into a corner post of a dormer. Lashing the rope around my waist gave me a kind of harness that would arrest my fall, should I slip. Of course, the rope might break some ribs, or twist around my neck and strangle me, but it offered an alternative to the fifteen-foot drop off the back roof.

Why, you might ask, am I doing this? Standing on the roof, I can look up and down the road and see enterprising Woodchucks (the name given to local who can trace their families back seven generations in Vermont) rattling around in their pickup trucks, the beds filled with shovels and ladders. For a few bucks--20, 50, 75--they’ll crawl up the side of your building like snow crabs, dangle from your cornices and turrets like bats, and shovel the snow off your roof while you gaze up thoughtfully at them over a nice hot cup of coffee.

It comes down to purpose. Over the years I’ve done almost all the work that’s been needed to this old house. I’ve rebuilt all but one of the bathrooms, painted, plumbed, wired, trenched, and nailed together everything that’s needed nailing, trenching, wiring, plumbing, and painting. The only things I haven’t done are the big-ticket items like heating systems. There’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that when you look at your life, you can claim ownership over the elements that comprise it. I can point to something in every room, every corner and say, “That’s me.” I have not checkbooked my way through this experiment, which is in year eleven. I have sweated and sworn and innovated and persevered through it. What I didn’t know how to do already, I learned. Like shoveling snow off a roof.

Though it may sound simple, there is an art to this task, and the art is to do it without getting killed or injured. It takes concentration and thought, because shoveling the wrong spot, or overextending yourself with a bucket full of snow could be ruinous. So I methodically begin removing large sections of snow off the roof, the hiss of it sliding down the metal, the soft thunk of it hitting the snow piled on the ground below. I’m sweating; my breathing is rhythmic. And after a couple of hours of carefully placing my boots where they are less likely to slip, I am done.

Later, after a shower and a couple of Advil, I look out the window at the piles of snow and think of the stupidity of what I’ve done. It has started to snow again. So much for the art. I have fulfilled Oscar Wilde’s prophecy: "To reveal the art and conceal the artist is art's aim." My art is the straggling hunks of snow that remain on the mostly bare roof; the artist has hidden himself away, waiting for the next snow to pile up.

Innkeeping Notebook, Winter 2011

2011-02-28T17:44:00.003-05:00

Snapshots and Anecdotes from the Auberge This Winter:

One morning not too long ago a guest came downstairs and said this: “I just noticed a drop in the water pressure. You might want to check to see if there’s a problem somewhere.” Some innkeepers might warm to a statement like this from a concerned guest, but not me. In my mind I said to myself, “Oh, really? Are you the water pressure police? Do you travel the countryside monitoring the aqua flow from small inn spigots?” On the outside I smiled and told him I’d go check it out. I grabbed a flashlight, and though there was some nagging doubt somewhere inside me, I went downstairs. The water pressure coming into the house was fine, but I could hear water running through the pipes. Still, I wasn’t convinced. But I decided to make a pass through the unoccupied rooms just to humor myself. I opened the door to Room 1 and looked into the bathroom. Water was shooting from a wall, filling the bathroom floor.

A lot of things went through my head.

I ran downstairs and shut the water off to the house. Then I opened some faucets to drain the pressure out of the pipes. Then I went into the bathroom in Room 1 and mopped up the floor, ripped the vanity from the wall, tore open a hole in the floor, and saw that both the hot water and cold water pipes had failed at an elbow solder. I gleefully noted that it wasn’t my solder.

Six hours later, after repairing the plumbing and re-installing the vanity, I turned the water on. Everything was tight; no leaks.

You have no idea how good that beer tasted.

***

One weekend we had some late check-ins to Room 7. The funky thing about Room 7 is that it has a back door which opens onto the staircase leading to my bedroom. That means that if the people in Room 7 are, ahem, loud, we can hear them. The people who checked into Room 7 were loud (but they weren’t “ahem” loud; they were party loud). Sometime around midnight, I awoke to voices in Room 7. I listened for a while and determined that after their long drive, they were unwinding with some drinks. Time dragged on; they got louder. I heard someone say something about going in the hot tub. That was enough to get me out of bed. I dashed downstairs, locked the door to the back deck, where the hot tub is located, and slapped a “Hot Tub Closed” sign on the door. Then I went back to bed, straining to hear the sounds of running water over their voices.

***

We have been blessed with repeat customers. Sometimes we have so many repeat guests trying to stay with us at the same time we have to shuffle their room assignments around. Sometimes we turn away business because we have so many repeat customers staying with us. Sometimes we introduce our repeat customers (whom we refer to as “frequent fliers”) to each other when they’re here at the same time. It’s kind of weird, because each of them feels like they’re the only frequent flyer we have. They circle around, eyeing each other cautiously. It’s a little like introducing your mistress to your wife.

Not that I’d know what that’s like.

***

The resort at the mountain added something like 400 luxury hotel rooms slopeside as part of its new development. These were supposed to be high-end rooms, going for several hundred dollars a night. But they’ve been dumping rooms at lower rates on the market--not as low as our rates, but low enough to drive the mid-priced resorts to cut their own rates. Now we’re competing with some of those bigger places, who are dumping their own rooms as they compete with the resort at the mountain. It’s a race to the bottom, but we’re not entering. One of the dumbest things a business person can do is panic. Another dumb thing is to abandon your business model.

***

It didn’t seem like it snowed a lot this winter, but it did. The effect was cumulative. By the end of January we’d had a boat load of snow. We got pounded on Candlemas (Groundhog’s Day to the secular among us), and then, a week later, we received a heavy, wet snowfall on Saturday night. While I was out front shoveling, I heard a creaking noise, and I turned just in time to see my front porch roof collapsing under the weight of snow and ice. I’d tried to scrape it clean, but two quick snowfalls did it in. Depending on the insurance settlement we receive, I’m going to recuse myself from this building project. I rebuilt the deck below it, now it’s time to share the wealth with a local carpenter.

***

The nicest surprise this winter has been our Saturday night fondue dinners. Each Saturday night we offer our guests the option of dining with us. We serve a genuine Swiss fondue dinner in ancient, enameled, cast-iron pots rescued from the Restaurant Swisspot, a Stowe institution for over 30 years that closed its doors a few years ago. Dinner begins with a house salad, then fondue is served with crusty bread for dipping, as well as a selection of vegetables. Desert is chocolate fondue with fresh fruit. Dinner for two, including tax and tip, is $50. BYOB. Thanks to all who have enjoyed this relaxing and unique dining experience at the Auberge.

***

Winter isn't over until April around here, and the best skiing in in March. Call for our Sunday through Friday special Ski & Stay for $93 PP DO.

How Room 6 Got a Flatscreen TV

2011-01-31T08:46:00.001-05:00

Some of our rooms have televisions in them; some of them don’t. How this happened is a long, organic tale.

In days of yore (November, 2000) when we became innkeepers, television was a topic that we didn’t want to talk about. The rooms at the Auberge came equipped with small black & white portable televisions that pulled in the analog signal beamed from the top of Mt. Mansfield. When we learned the cost of wiring the inn for cable television, we decided not to upgrade. Instead we decided position ourselves as a non-television oriented inn. Our focus would be on service, hospitality, and simplicity. Our low rates would reflect that. In a town where the race toward luxury was in full swing, we comfortably settled into the spot that would become our logline: “Stowe’s most affordable B&B.”

That didn’t mean that we would turn our backs on television; we just wouldn’t make it a cornerstone of our business model. People could watch all the television they wanted at home, we reasoned. In Stowe, the attractions were outside the door. There was a television in the common room, and when a fellow innkeeper sold some televisions to us, we added them to the downstairs rooms. These were nice color sets, but the big attraction for us was that they had built-in VHS players. Guests could borrow tapes from our modest VHS library and watch a movie if they wished.

This left the two upstairs rooms without televisions at all. Even though those rooms were more expensive than the downstairs rooms, nobody seemed to mind the lack of an idiot box. When digital television arrived, we bought some converters for the downstairs sets, but still we didn’t add television to the two upstairs rooms without them. At this point, ten years into our innkeeping lives, the decision was driven more by apathy than anything else.

This December, a couple stayed with us, and they were disappointed that there wasn’t a television in their room, one of the upstairs queen rooms. It’s happened before; usually we’re able to mollify them with a shrug and an explanation of our innkeeping philosophy. But that week the hot tub--which has been in the infirmary several times already this winter--conked out. Our guests were crushed; the outdoor hot tub was one of the reasons they stayed with us. No TV, no hot tub...what good were we?

That Saturday, after returning from shopping, Chantal plunked down a box on the dining room table. “It’s a TV,” she said. “A digital, flat-screen TV.” She’d bought it at one of the discount stores on sale. That afternoon I installed it in Room 6, in hopes that the couple staying there would at least accept the TV as a gesture on our part to make their stay a positive one. They never mentioned the television that bloomed from the wall in their bedroom that day, and we didn’t ask. And though we’re still not planning to wire the inn with satellite or cable and outfit the rooms with HD flatscreens, we’re one set closer to having every room equipped with a television.

The Continuing Story of Beachcomber Bill

2011-01-08T08:11:00.001-05:00

Avid B&B goers know the value a hot tub brings to their experience. Avid innkeepers know it, too. Over ten years ago, back at the dawn of our tenure as innkeepers, in the early, uncertain days of the Internet--when people actually used to call us and ask questions of the innkeepers before they booked a room--the number one question people used to ask us is, “Do you have a hot tub?” We did, but it was inside, in the back room, usurping valuable common space, and we knew we had to do something about its location because the next question inevitably was, “Is it outside?”

Outside we had just built a series of beautiful decks, one of them specifically reinforced to accept the weight of a hot tub fully loaded with water and happy guests. So after exhausting research we decided on a Beachcomber hot tub, because it was built in Canada and was filled with closed-cell insulation. We drove to St. Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec (the exchange rate was still favorable for us back then) and trailered back our hot tub.

For the past ten years, our Beachcomber has performed admirably. Mostly. There have been hiccups in the form of three pumps that I’ve replaced over the years, including the most recent one this summer (shaft seal leak). The first pump I had to replace (after only one year) was a learning experience. We’d shut the tub down for the summer because guests weren’t using it. That turned out to be a bad idea, because the pump seized from lack of use. Pump replaced, and the second one lasted several years.

Hot tub covers might seem innocuous to the general public, but it turns out that they require a lot of attention. They hold heat in, but they also take a beating from the elements: sun and rain and snow and sleet and falling maple leaves all conspire to degrade both the cover case, and the rigid styrofoam insulation within. There were several operations to replace the cover innards, then the cover case.

But this year we faced some more serious problems with the hot tub, who’s come to be known as Beachcomber Bill. After I replaced Bill’s pump this summer, one of his knife valves froze. There are two knife valves--guillotine shut offs that isolate the pump. That repair was beyond my skills, and we had to call in a pro, Marvin from Quality Pool and Spa. Marvin fixed Bill, but not more than a month later Bill developed a leak. There’s a little tube that runs from the main pipe exiting the pump over to a pressure switch in the heater. It uses water pressure and temperature to turn the heater on and off, and because the tube was so small, plaque built up inside and clogged it, like a artery next to a heart. Marvin was called again, and he performed a by-pass operation, running a new tube from another part of the main pipe over to the pressure switch. Beachcomber Bill was up and running again.

Then, just after New Year’s, Bill simply conked out. While doing my rounds early one morning, I discovered that Bill was silent. His pump wasn’t humming quietly, circulating 104 degree water where it needed to go. I called Marvin again, but he was out on the road, so I left a message. In the meantime, I called Beachcomber themselves, to see what replacing the heating and control unit would cost. Before we did that, the tech at Beachcomber asked me to open up the unit and do some diagnostics. So I bundled up and headed out onto the deck. Inside everything looked fine. I checked all the contacts, wiggling anything that looked loose. Then, for yucks, I flipped the switch, and Bill churned to life.

This is a good news/bad news situation. Good news because Bill’s cranking away again; bad news because I don’t really know what I did to get him back to normal, and if he conks out again I’m not sure I’ll be able to replicate my feat of repair. Essentially, though, this means that Bill’s days are numbered. Like any good asset, he’s been amortized--in Bill’s case that happened years ago. So if we can nurse him through the winter, we’ll shop for a replacement this spring. But we won’t relegate Bill to a landfill. We’ll haul him out onto the sidewalk and see if some enterprising Vermonter wants to take a chance on Bill and keep him running. Until then, Bill is accepting visitors for the rest of the winter.

Book Reports

2011-01-02T14:03:00.002-05:00

Now that we’ve made it through Hell Week here at the Auberge--actually, it’s been more like Hell Two Weeks, and I feel kinda funny about referring to Christmas Week as Hell Week, but, you know, it’s been really, really busy--I thought I’d turn my attention to reading. Over the past couple of months I’ve ramped up my reading schedule, and I thought I’d share some of that with you now. So here are some of the books that have gotten my attention lately.

Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder. In a couple of weeks I’m teaching a creative writing workshop at the Stowe Free Library in Stowe, Vermont, and I thought I’d introduce screenwriting to the students. This is a little tricky for me because although I’ve written a couple of screenplays, I’ve never sold one, and I don’t consider it my strength. But my screenwriting buddy recommended this book, and it hasn’t been a disappointment. Blake Snyder walks the reader through a step-by-step process that teaches the structure of a screenplay. There is a very specific approach to screenwriting, and even if you never write a screenplay, the methods in this book are directly applicable to any kind of writing, because as I teach my students all the time, the most important thing to think of when you’re writing is structure, structure, structure.

The Death of the Liberal Class, by Chris Hedges. For almost a decade, Chris Hedges has bravely been confronting the myths and illusions that bathe America. He has correctly anticipated all the current woes our country is suffering, and his blistering indictment of corporate America’s stranglehold on our government gets a detailed treatment in this book. This is a densely written book that demands reflection and rumination. Along with Empire of Illusion and American Fascists, this book forms a trilogy that exposes the truth about what ails America.

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. I finally got around to reading this book, even though it’s been around for fifteen years. This is another myth-exploding work of nonfiction, in which Diamond challenges the long-held assumption that people of European descent are somehow better than less fortunate cultures. He wants to know why some cultures have been more successful than others. What he finds is that accidents of geography behind the uneven cultural results we see today. In a long, complicated book that at times is stilted and obtuse (but nonetheless worth the effort), Diamond points to the development of technology and certain germs as results of agriculture that could only have blossomed in an east-west band of Eurasia, thus leading to the uneven world of today. Put your thinking cap on to read this one.

Happy reading. Please share your recent reads with me.

The Turkey Day Double Deployment

2010-12-02T14:42:00.000-05:00

It sounded good to say it, to tell our friends and family and fellow innkeepers about our plans for Thanksgiving: “Oh, we’ve rented out the entire inn to a family so that they can have a reunion and Thanksgiving dinner, so we have to hit the road.” It made us sound both altruistic and financially savvy. We could almost hear the thoughts forming in the minds of our fellow innkeepers: “Gosh, they must be getting a ton of money...and they get to go on vacation.”

At least that was the way it was supposed to work out. The first glitch came when we couldn’t decide where we were going to travel. We had some friends in the Baltimore area who’d invited us down, but we soured on the notion of driving up and down the Northeast corridor during the busiest travel week of the year. We thought about decamping to my mother’s, but her house is tiny, and I was sure it would only be a matter of hours before one of my teenage sons sent the other through one of her windows. What we really wanted to do was get on a plane and fly somewhere warm, hang out by a pool, and do nothing. We even kicked around a trip to NYC, but...well, that didn’t sound warm and relaxing.

So we hemmed and hawed. We equivocated and procrastinated. We muttered and stuttered. Plane fares were on the rise, and we’d already taken a big family trip that year to Arizona, plus another one in the summer to Cape Cod. One night, some friends and fellow innkeepers gave us the solution: “Why not stay at our place?” They were going to be away for a month, so we could have the place to ourselves.

So, while everyone bolted Stowe, we were left behind to look at the leafless trees and subdued skies. Maybe the snow would fly early, we thought, and we can get some skiing in. Though Stowe Mountain Resort opened the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, it was mostly man-made, and limited terrain, so we didn’t bother. I managed to get out hunting a couple of more times, but my tag remained unfilled. At least we could look forward to Thanksgiving dinner with both our mothers, plus a friend.

Everything went fine (except for the cat, Jimmy Jazz, who required surgery the day before Thanksgiving to remove a small bell that he’d swallowed, which had become lodged in his intestine; cat’s okay, wallet took a beating), and we found ourselves pleasantly relaxed the day after, contemplating our return home. That’s when Chantal reminded me that we’d have to deploy home, clean the entire inn after the guests had checked out, then come back to our friend’s B&B and clean their place.

It was a lot of schlepping. And an obscene amount of vacuuming. Was it a good break? We had a lovely time, and we’re indebted to our friend’s for their generous hospitality. But I think next time we rent out the entire inn, we’ll hit the road for real, and at least try to get to a different area code, if not a new time zone.

What Time Is Foliage?

2010-10-01T16:44:00.002-04:00

That's a real question. I'm not kidding. We get asked that question all the time in the runup to Vermont's most vivid season. It runs a close second to the people who call us in August to book rooms for the winter and ask if there'll be snow when they get there. Usually we're blanketed from November to April, but there's the odd time when the snow arrives late, or it doesn't snow enough to cover the road grime, and then guests walk in the front door and say, "Hey, you said it would be snowing."

But the timing of foliage is a predictably touchy subject. Most people travel vast distances--this year's theme seems to be "I'm from California"--and they have either heard about, or have experienced once before in their lives, a spectacular array of colors smattered against steep mountainsides, and that's what they want now.

The reality is that foliage is like a rash across the countryside, spreading and flaring up in one spot, subsiding in another, unevenly covering the land. Fortunately, with a little scouting, we can be prepared for this. Knowing which valley or mountain top is ablaze the day some reticent Texans come through the door can A. May us look like geniuses, or wizards, or wizard-geniuses, and B. Make weary travelers ever so happy.

In a pinch we can fall back on the terse New Englander routine, and zing them back. What time's foliage? What time you want it. You know, pithy stuff like that, the kind of sardonic remark we detest, but feel we must use to defend our sanity. We like to think of it as an icebreaker, and it usually works, getting a laugh, defising the moment. It's all part of the job.

By the way, it's right now. Foliage, that is.

The Notion of Innkeeping

2010-09-06T07:40:00.002-04:00

Recently, in the midst of what can only be described as one of the worst stretches of economic road in the history of the United States, more room availability was added to the Stowe lodging market. This is a tribute either to the unflappable optimism of people who think that offering lodging is a good way to make money, or the resilience of the Stowe market. I think it's a little of both.
I've always been uncomfortable applying the business model to something like innkeeping. The best inns I've seen aren't the ones who have bullet-proof marketing plans and more debt than Romania and Belarus combined. The best inns are run by people who just like to meet lots of different folks, and who like to live in a nice place, and who aren't worried sick about squeezing a decent online review from the last Connecticut license plate to pull out of the driveway.
We Americans love to apply the business model to everything. I remember when I bought my first pickup truck, a friend's mother said, "Hey, you can make some money with a pickup truck." Ever the emotional artist, I looked at her with bemused confusion; I'd just always wanted to own a pickup truck. So when my wife and I bought a B&B in Stowe, we weren't interested in racing to the top of the list of inns in Stowe. We just wanted to live in a nice place and raise our kids and meet some interesting folks.
That's not to say that people who approach innkeeping as a business are daft. I have to run my inn like a legitimate business or I'd be out of business. I enjoy watching and learning from the more aggressive and savvy business-focused innkeepers of the world. Am I worried about them putting me out of business? No, because they can't offer the one thing that makes our inn unique: us. That "us" factor is the key to this business, and no amount of gushing online reviews or legions of Facebook "fans" can do for your business what that does.
Or so it's been my experience. And as for more rooms coming into play during a tough economic stretch? Why not? Everybody's got their own notion of innkeeping.

On The Road Again

2010-08-08T06:39:00.002-04:00

I remember when we were new innkeepers people used to ask us, "When do you go on vacation?" We used to smile bravely and point to the beautiful Vermont landscape just outside and reply, "We're on vacation every time we open the door." It wasn't really true; every time we opened the door, the trash had to go out, or a gutter needed to be replaced, or the snow needed to be shoveled. Those early years required sacrifice, and one of the sacrifices we made was vacations.

When we finally reached the financial point where we could take a vacation, we were limited by our children's school schedule. And a summer vacation was out of the question; we're busy seven days a week from mid-June through the end of October. But finally we decided that we could take a couple of days off and go down to the beach. We reasoned that with Internet access and cell phones we'd be able to keep up with any incoming calls and reservations. And for a couple of years that worked just fine.

This year we took four days off at the end of July. Though the reason justified our decision (a family reunion celebrating my mother-in-law's 75th birthday), it was still a tough financial hit for us to take. This year, July was as busy a month as we've had in some time, and given the economic climate, we were loathe to forgo any revenue. In other words, we turned away a lot of business.

Further complicating things was a virus attack on one of our computers just before we left. Just two days before our departure we rushed the business laptop into the ER for a crapendectomy. When we arrived at our destination, the Internet access conked out, and we had to find a public library. Each morning we made a trip to download and reply to the tide of emails indifferent to our notions of vacation. And then the cell phone broke--it could still receive calls, but the display screen went blooey.

This is pretty standard fare for an innkeeper's vacation. When the fabric of your professional life is woven so tightly with your personal life, you can never really leave it all behind. Nobody's going to run your business for you the way you can. But the cost of burnout exceeds a few days of lost income, because if you don't takke care of yourself, you can't take care of anyone else.

Groups and Conferences

2010-06-26T11:45:00.002-04:00

What do you do? What do you like to do? If you're in innkeeper, you have to do a lot. So much so that I find it ridiculous to list "innkeeper" as my occupation when I'm filing my tax returns. That's because the skill set required to be an innkeeper is limitless. Whether you're a checkbook-innkeeper (that's an innkeeper who writes checks to accomplish innkeeping tasks), or a knuckle-buster (that's an innkeeper who does everything him or herself, from fixing leaky sinks to installing heating systems), you bring many talents to the innkeeping table.

I'm a writer, so each year I host a writers conference. Because the Auberge de Stowe is such a small place, I only have to fill a handful of rooms. But by scheduling the conference for mid-week (Sunday through Thursday) during a slow--but still nice--time of the year (mid-June), I generate revenue where before there was none.

So, what do you do? What's your passion? This is the time to indulge that interest or skill, and make a little money in the process.

Restaurants and Small Businesses

2010-03-22T11:35:00.000-04:00

Last week, a friend asked me to help him clean up and take some things from his restaurant, which closed last year. The details of the restaurant or why it closed aren’t relevant; what is relevant is that this is the second time in two years that a friend, who was also the owner of a long-running, successful restaurant that had closed its doors, asked me to help clean the place out. In both cases the object of the mission was to clean out the wine and booze.
While the temptation is to ask, “What does that say about me?”, I think a better question might be, “Why are my restaurant owner friends going out of business?” A coda to that might be, “And why do they ask Shawn to help them spirit the booze away before the auctioneer arrives?” (I think owning a pickup truck has something to do with it.)
The restaurant business is tough—it’s right up there with being a small innkeeper, or being an independent grocer. Economies of scale work against you. The whimsical nature of societal taste works against you. Zoning laws work against you. When I was a boy and my father was a carpenter, many of his builder friends thought that the notion of burying their profits in restaurants was a good idea. They were soon disabused of that notion—especially if they had no previous experience in food service or hospitality.
Like many small businesses, owning a restaurant is a labor of love. That love balances the headaches, and the hope is that there’s enough left over to make a living. Restaurant owners live much of their days on site, and many have small apartments attached so that they never have to leave. Success depends on that long term relationship with the business.
Both of my friends had run their restaurants for decades, carving out a niche that resisted and transcended trends that blew through the zeitgeist. They did that by being true to themselves, and by believing in hard work. But there came a time in their lives when they felt it was better to move on, and though both of them tried to ensure the continuity of their restaurants, when new management came in the restaurants eventually failed.
What does that mean? Are there only certain types of people capable of successfully managing a restaurant? Or would my friends have been just as successful at another endeavor, had they put their hearts and minds to it? Ultimately, I believe they both loved what they were doing, and it showed. That’s not something that can be taught from a book. That’s only something that can be absorbed through experience.

Innkeeping and Advice

2010-02-22T16:22:00.000-05:00

In the Winter 2010 issue of Innkeeping Quarterly, Professional Association of Innkeepers International President and CEO Jay Karen, in his Key Notes column titled “Your Customer Base is Changing—Are You?”, implores innkeepers to target the Generation X demographic and forget about all the other groups out there. Mr. Karen writes, “I contend that innkeepers need to pay attention to the feedback of your Gen X customers more than all others.” He also states that innkeepers should “alter [their] business to accommodate the needs, wants and tastes of the rising customer base.” Mr. Karen begins the column with broad assumptions about innkeepers that aren’t necessarily false, but don’t reflect the myriad reasons or purposes people choose to become innkeepers: “Most innkeepers like to craft their B&Bs in their own image.” Mr. Karen also believes that the majority of innkeepers he meets are Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964.

Aside from the broad and sweeping language that Mr. Karen founds his arguments on, a closer look reveals the fault in his reasoning. The first is that innkeepers “craft” their inns in their own image. Anyone who has been around the business of innkeeping can honestly say that the opposite is true: innkeepers probably craft their inns in an image they dream for themselves more than anything else. Innkeepers are nothing if not pretentious. Modern innkeeping has become a vain contest to see who can spend the most money on affectation and costly minutia. Add-ons and accoutrements weigh down innkeeping, obscuring the true nature of the innkeepers from the traveling public. If lodgers really knew who their innkeepers were, it’s unlikely they’d stay with them.

Further, there’s no empirical evidence showing that innkeepers either “craft their B&Bs in their own image,” or that they’re mostly Baby Boomers who market to mostly Baby Boomers—if there are such data, Mr. Karen doesn’t mention them.

The column leaves the reader with an unpleasant truth: If innkeepers are contriving to create inns that don’t necessarily represent who they are as business people, then travelers are buying a contrived image created to separate them from their money. And who wants to do business with someone who is selling a contrived image? Perhaps someone who has a contrived image of themselves.

Neither is there any evidence offered to support the column’s thesis, namely that you need to change your business in order to succeed. All businesses change to meet the demands of the marketplace, but not all businesses are B&Bs. Small mom & pop operations need to beware of corporate groupthink. The small innkeeper has only him or herself to offer, not shelves full of antiques, or iPod docking stations. One innkeeper expressed this neatly when he said, “People don’t come here for the stuffed French toast, they come here for me! They like the service I offer, the personality I give them—I’m the show!”

Innkeepers should pay attention to the feedback of all their guests, and they should closely examine the feedback for objectivity. If a guest says the toilet didn’t work, that’s important. If someone says their experience could have been enhanced by an Internet-ready flat screen television in the room, it might be wise to pause and do a quick cost-benefit analysis before charging out and hemorrhaging money.

Advice of the kind found in Mr. Karen’s column suffers from a twofold problem. First, it’s reactive, not proactive. Trying to identify trends means always being behind the trends. What’s hip today is outdated or even impractical tomorrow. The only way out of the trap is to spend more money, until finally there’s no more money to spend. Keeping up with the Joneses has never been a good idea, and as we’ve all seen recently, the Joneses were overspending.

Second, by urging innkeepers to identify themselves as hungry businesses subservient to market interests, Mr. Karen leads innkeepers into folly. That’s because innkeeping, like the rest of the travel industry, isn’t real. It’s ephemeral, existing only in the electric synapses of the minds of unseen and unknown human beings. As soon as people stop thinking about travel, it goes away. And when the notion of traveling goes away, what are we left with? The building. In other words, the real estate, which is the heart of any inn. More than anything else, innkeeping is a real estate game. The business can be inflated and embellished, then sold to the next aspiring innkeeper, but the building holds the real value.

If innkeepers are seeking success, they’d do well to remember that people identify and appreciate honesty, and they’ll reward that in the long run. If innkeepers chase money through fads, it won’t matter how well they market to whatever demographic they’re told holds the key to their success, because they’ll end up looking like people who are trying to be something they’re not. Be yourself; you’re the show.

Mid-Winter Blues & Reds

2010-02-03T14:20:00.003-05:00

Whatever you call it--Candlemas, Groundhog Day, Imbolc, St. Brigid's Day--we find ourselves roughly halfway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. From a glass-is-half-full perspective, that means that the days are getting longer, and, as my father was fond of saying on the rare sunny day in Boston during the month of February, winter's back is broken. That means that no matter how bad the weather gets over the next three months (calendar, schmalendar, winter ain't over around here until the middle of May), it won't seem as bad as it was back in the dark days of December, or the lonely, endlessly frigid nights of January.

Fortunately, the owners and guests of the Auberge have evolved a truly civilized way of dealing with the dark winter blues: reds. That is to say reds in the guise of Zinfandels, Cabernets, Beaujolais, and Bordeaux. Huddling around the woodstove on Friday nights, welcoming check-ins, has become de rigeur, drawing huge crowds of locals hell bent on laughing the winter away. There are other techniques.

I've taken to telemark skiing, a subject I've discussed in this space earlier. A few weeks ago I upgraded some of my gear to a set of lovingly broken in K2 World Piste boards mounted with Rottefella R8 Cobra bindings. So far, so good, but I'm seriously in the market for a pair of slightly used boots, say, some Garmont Syner-Gs? Mondo size 28.5? Will trade one room night for said boots.

Finding decent telemark gear around here is tough, and that should tell you a couple of things. First, the sport is wildly popular and growing more so each year. Second, people tend to hold on to their gear. And third, the stuff is expensive, so anything that pops up on the Craigslist market is snatched up quickly.

From the glass-is-half-empty point of view, winter will soon be on the wane, so I've got to get my days in on the mountain whenever I can. This morning I was up there at 0815, working my new tele gear. After the groomers had laid down a patch of corduroy last night, an inch of snow covered the trails with angelic baby powder. The result was sexy-smooth trails that were uber-stable, while giving you the feeling you were ripping up some deep freshies. It was like getting away with __________ (fill in your favorite naughty thing here).

President's Day Weekend is full, but come up and join us for the aforementioned fireside chats the following weekend. And if you're a loyal Auberge follower, you're already on our dump list, which is better than it sounds: whenever we get a fresh dump of powder, we'll email you a dump alert. Cheers.

Endless, Shameless, Fruitless Marketing

2010-01-08T08:54:00.002-05:00

It's a reality of our post-apocalyptic economy that writers have to hustle more than ever. Not that the good old days were that good; writers spend years typing out query letters to magazines and publishers and agents, then waited by the mailbox while gravity ravaged their bodies and experience addled their minds. Hustling back then was more a function of slo-motion; now it's just plain frenetic.

In another attempt to embellish and expand my presence as a salable commodity, I've taken advantage of Amazon's Author Pages opportunity (click on this link to check out my site on Amazon). For authors with books for sale on Amazon, it offers a single place to view all that writer's work. The hope is that it will lead to cross sales, more sales, any sales. At the very least it makes writers like me look more important. But why do this?

I sat down recently with my friend, author Richard Panek. I was explaining to him the onus small presses were placing on authors to assume more of the responsibility for marketing and promotion. (Richard's last two books were published by larger houses, with departments dedicated to marketing and sales.) I sympathize with small presses; I'm drawn to them for the very independence they offer writers. The trade off is that there's never been much money to promote books, and now there's even less. Small presses can now barely cover costs of small print runs, never mind the associated costs with selling and promoting books.

I understand that I'm not a "big house" kind of writer. My ideas, my topics, my style of writing is not accessible enough for big money to back. Instead I choose to ply the backroads of the human experience through my writing. That freedom means that I take on a larger role in self-promotion.

In the future, there'll be more things like Amazon's Author Pages, requiring me to seize the opportunity for selling books. I know I won't get rich, but I choose to think about it this way: I'm gaining experience that will serve my writing in the future.

170 Breakfasts

2009-12-23T07:51:00.002-05:00

This is what it comes down to; this is the essence of what we do. Three months before it happens, we fret about the pace of bookings. We commiserate with fellow innkeepers, lie to each other about our concerns, and wait. And when the Internet finally lights up, when the phone begins to ring, when the reservation book on the front desk is smeared with pencil scribblings, when the smells and tastes of another gut-busting Thanksgiving have receded, when the Mountain has been finally frosted with enough snow to set us all free, we realize how completely screwed we really are.

How are we going to serve all these people?

Chantal has evolved a mathematical, graphical way to solve this. It involves menu planning and strategic resupplying that make me thankful to have a wife with over 30 years of restaurant and hospitality service in her quiver.

This year, as we sat down and planned the Christmas and New Year's week menu (quick confession: I sipped wine, with a bemused look pasted to my face; Chantal simply thought out loud and worked with frightful speed and precision), it became obvious that we would be wildly busy--busy, in fact, to the tune of 170 breakfasts over ten days.

Numbers tend to pile up in any situation, and numbers can be manipulated, exaggerated, trimmed (in the sense of "trimming the Christmas tree"), and flipped in the service of the innkeeper's ego. For example, up until a few summers ago, when we placed a mandatory mid-summer break into our business plan, we could go from late June through the end of October without having a day off. That was a stretch of over 100 days of having at least one room rented out.

So while 170 breakfasts sounds like a lot, it's what we expect for this stretch. A lot of work? Yup. But we're just the innkeeper's for the job.

Now you'll have to excuse me; I've got a vat of coffee to brew.

Can You Breathe?

2009-12-03T08:10:00.003-05:00

One of my fellow teachers at the Community College of Vermont offers a class called Introduction to Small Business. She and her husband own their own small business, and we've had many chats about the challenges and rewards of owning your own enterprise. I've often thought that I might like to go into her class and really shake the students up with the truth. But then I thought that she's competent enough to build balance into her classes; if she needs my point of view she can assign my blog as reading homework.

The subject of small business operation--especially as it relates to innkeeping--is one that I ponder often, for obvious reasons. What I try to do in this space is not just make our inn appealing to potential visitors, but to make our inn honest to potential visitors. Chantal and I feel that the desire to succeed in business, the desire to make money in order to have more things, or certain things, often leads people astray in their decision making.

In other words, my goal (our goal) is to be me. I'm trying to be me as best I can. But that's not necessarily the conventional business model, at least as I learned it growing up in the United States of America in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The classic business model seemed to be, "Find something that people want, and sell it to them." People would try this, and then, around the time they turned 40 and got divorced and joined a 12-step program, that philosophy shifted to, "Find something you love to do, find out which people want that, and sell it to them."

Very few people know if they love to be innkeepers before they do it. Unless you've actually run another inn, there's no way to understand the nuance of what it takes. The rebuttal to that thought is that nobody ever knows how to do anything until they try it, and that's true. But with business failures exceeding even the divorce rate in this country, and with so much working against small business people, it's a wonder anyone tries. But try they do, and that's one of the great things about our country: we're adventurers.

But a business model that seeks to represent itself to others for the betterment of the owner somehow feels flawed. And yet, isn't that what business is? How could anything get done without that? I think there's a layer missing in the way many people approach being in business for themselves. Like the big corporations that serve themselves, many small business owners find themselves in a situation where they're serving their business, and not themselves. That is a dangerous place. Your business is you, not some tool to achieve fame and riches--especially innkeeping. If you can't serve yourself, you can't serve others.

This reminds me of the pre-flight speech flight attendants give. Passengers are shown how to use the drop down oxygen mask and told that if they're traveling with small children they should put the mask on themselves first, then put it on the child. This might seem counter-intuitive (especially in this age of helicopter parenting), but the point it this: you're no help to your child if you die because you can't breathe. And so it is with a small business: you're no good to your business or your customers if you aren't serving yourself.

I've watched over the years as innkeepers grope for the next bell or whistle that's going help them succeed. It seems like innkeepers are always looking for some new add-on to attract and keep guests: a new pool, a new guest coffee station, new televisions in the rooms, a gazebo out in the yard. To a certain extent, we innkeepers do have to update our product. But when do we reach the point of not updating with ourselves in mind? When that occurs, we've lost sight of what it means to be in business, and we've lost sight of who we are.

We've stopped breathing.

The List

2009-10-31T07:41:00.002-04:00

For some time now I've been engaged in a road construction project: I'm paving the road to hell with my good intentions. Throughout the fall I've all but ignored my duties around the Auberge in favor of moose hunting (which was a bust) and just trying to keep up with the vacuuming and bed-making during one of our busiest times of the year. But now that the dust cleared and I can look around, I'm confronted with the same issues I've been putting off for some time now. It's stick season, and the only thing I have on my agenda is The List.

The List makes its first appearance around the end of August. There's a natural lull in the action as summer draws to a close and fall foliage isn't quite there yet. The List begins as a few scribblings on a piece of paper next to my laptop, ideas that occur to me: Good name for a book--Once Around the Buddha; Kindle and Mobipocket.com; fix light in bathroom in Room 1. Stuff like that. Eventually, The List gets condensed, serving just one master: the inn.

Throughout the fall, while I ignore niggling issues (the bathroom window in 4 needs to be reglazed, the lights around the hot tub fell onto the deck, time to put away the hammock), The List grows and deepens in meaning. Finally, with the last weekend of full occupancy in the rear view mirror, I can turn to The List. And by now, it resembles an experiment gone awry, a petri dish left under the warming light too long. How did "paint the baseboard and trim in 7 & 8" get on there? And since when is the dead bolt on Room 5 busted? It's as if The List Fairy came down and tinkered with my pen overnight, leaving me with boatloads of work.

But then again, what else am I going to do? If I don't take care of The List, it will surely take care of me.

Expedia, You, and Me

2009-09-21T08:39:00.004-04:00

You may have heard about a recent class action settlement between Expedia and you, the traveler. Expedia, it seems, was overcharging customers and labeling those charges "tax recovery charges" and "service fees." That means that if you were booking a room at the Auberge de Stowe through Expedia, you may have overpaid and not known about it. Here are a couple of links to the story: ABC News and NPR.

In light of the reckless behavior of large private institutions over the past several years (Enron, AIG, investment banks), some may chalk this up to the evils of capitalism, or at least another good reason for much needed oversight. But legislating ethical--or at least responsible--behavior rarely works. What we're seeing is a fundamental breakdown, something that begins way back in childhood and manifests itself later in life when the issue of character becomes relevant. In the case of Expedia, there appeared to be some attempt at misrepresenting what the consumer was being charged.

In fact, travel consumers rarely understand the mechanics of what they're paying. Everyone's heard of the two travelers on a plane sitting next to each other: One paid $500 for a ticket, the other paid half of that. Something similar happens when you book a room at the Auberge. Let's look at an example.

In regular season, a room with two double beds and a private bathroom at the Auberge goes for $89. You can go to our website and book directly from there, or you can call us and do it over the phone, or you can go through a travel site such as Expedia.com. Your choice will determine not only how much you pay, but how much we, the innkeepers, will collect.

If you call us directly and book the room, you'll pay $89, plus 10% tax, for a total of $97.90. We will keep the $89 and give $8.90 to various governments. We'll also pay taxes on that $89 at the end of the year as taxable income (we and you both pay a tax on that $89).

If you book the room online through our website you'll still pay $97.90, but we'll collect slightly less than $89 because we use an online service to manage that feature. But if you book through a big travel site, you'll pay significantly more, and we'll collect significantly less. That's because you have to pay a fee--perhaps one of the misrepresented fees that Expedia just settled for--which brings your total up as much as another 10-15%. And we have to pay a fee for being listed on that site--as much as 30%. That leaves a difference of almost $40 up for grabs.

I'm not complaining about the service I get from Expedia and other sites; it's the cost--which feels like gouging--that troubles me. More than that, it's the notion that these business models are predicated on the ignorance and deception of the consumer. Simply invoking the old caveat emptor line isn't a valid excuse. What ever happened to dealing honestly with your customers? What if I charged people extra for a third cup of coffee in the morning, shrugging my shoulders while I explained that the $89 only covers the first two cups, and they should have read the fine print? Caveat emptor wouldn't fly then, would it?

As I teacher I feel it's my duty to try and educate whenever I can. Travelers shouldn't have to be research geniuses in order to feel like they're not getting swindled. But how can they be sure? I'm not sure what the solution is in the Internet age. If something feels easy, you're probably paying for that comfort. That doesn't mean that calling the Auberge directly is hard work--we're nice folks who'd like to talk to you, even if that means answering questions before you book your room somewhere else.

So travelers, be aware of secondary sources when you pull out your credit card. If you want to be sure that your money is going where you want it to go, go ahead and use the Internet for some research, but go to the source when you're ready to buy.

Seriously September

2009-09-02T16:18:00.002-04:00

The weather this week to a turn for the perfect. With the contemptuousness of July and August retired, we're left with September, which seems to go out of its way to the best month of the year. A long string of excellent days--highs in the 70s under bright sunshine during the day, lows in the 40s under passionately clear starry skies at night--stretches out before us. Even the light is different, with the sun changing its slant. Just the other day I came around the bend by the new fire and police station and was momentarily blinded by the light--the sun lower in the sky than it had been since last spring.

I just checked in some guests from Houston and remarked how consistently good the weather is during September. And yet the first half of September usually represents a lull in the business, and for logical reasons: summer vacations are over, it's back to school, and the peak of fall foliage, one of the busiest times of the year for us, is still a few weeks away.

All those things make early September a great time to travel. There are fewer people in town, and the prices are still at the summer level. There's the aforementioned weather, and there's a livelier energy flowing. All good reasons to experience Stowe.

Inertia at Work

2009-08-24T13:47:00.002-04:00

"Gregariousness is the enemy of art."

Or so said Truman Capote. One of the most interesting--and creepy--things about being a writer is that I always find what I need when I need it. While researching Capote's In Cold Blood for an upcoming writing project, I came upon the above quote while reading the biography Capote, by Gerald Clarke. Capote often retreated from the demanding social scene in New York--ironically, a social scene he had created into one of the most lavish and visible on earth. All writers need their sanctuary, their place to write, and I'm no different.

This week, a close friend and writer called me up to ask if he could come up for a few days to work on a writing project. His regular retreat--a cabin in the woods--was unavailable, and during the past two writers' conferences I'd hosted he'd had good luck working in the Auberge. He had to get away from the distractions of domestic life. This got me thinking about my own distractions.

Part of my job as an innkeeper is to be "front of the house"; that is, I'm supposed to be a gracious host. But being a good host--spending time with guests at breakfast in the morning, telling funny stories, giving advice on what to do and where to go in the area--means that I lose the momentum I need to write. Another part of my job is to Fix or Repair Daily the things that go wrong around here: pipes burst, systems fail, a door lock won't work. I have to jump on that stuff, even to the exclusion of planned projects. The result is that my writing has become fragmented.

In short, I need my own retreat, and I'm working on that. In the meantime, if you're up for a visit and you're having breakfast and I'm not around, please don't take offense; I'm just hidden away somewhere, trying to regain my lost momentum.

The Jams That Launch a Thousand Conversations

2009-07-30T06:42:00.003-04:00

It's always interesting to see the looks on guests' faces when they're confronted with the jellies and jams Chantal serves at breakfast. They come in unusual jars, and they're usually unmarked. When Chantal explains that they're homemade from the fruit that grows just outside the window, another dimension is added to the traveler's stay.

Chantal learned jelly and jam making from her German godmother, Tante Henny. A robust hausfrau dedicated to the kitchen, Tante Henny churned out buckets of confiture every spring and summer from her tiny apartment kitchen in Nancy, France. As good as her dinners were--lapin a la moutarde was a favorite--it was breakfast I craved, because breakfast at Tante Henny's was coffee and yesterday's baguette, toasted and slathered with one of her amazing jams: framboise, fraises, and muirs--blackberries.

At the Auberge, Chantal has continued that tradition while adapting to the fruits we have available. This year the slope in our backyard is producing a bumper crop of raspberries from three different patches. There's even a small black raspberry bush clinging to the banks of the river. There's also a robust patch of blackberries that should be ready for picking in a couple of weeks. Though we don't have any in our yard, blueberries will be ready very soon, and we'll go down the road to pick them at the Zuber's extensive patch. We do have gooseberries (which have already been baked into a pie, as well as made into jam) and red currants, which don't have much flavor on their own, but are loaded with pectin, the jelling agent needed to set up the jams.

But the real star of the show around here is the black currants. When Chantal is boiling the fruit, the smell alone is intoxicating. And the color emitted from the pot can only be described as somewhere between fresh deer liver and Bordeaux wine. It's the kind of color you want for your formal library. The rusulting jam is almost too good to share, and whenever someone bites into a croissant dolloped with black currant jam, their faces widen, and a fifty-minute conversation is launched.

This year Chantal did something different with the black currants: she made her own creme de cassis, or black currant liqueur. One of our favorite drinks in the summer is a kir, which is a glass of white wine added to a tablespoon of creme de cassis. In France, the cassis is extraordinary, but in America it's turned into a weak, flavorless brandy. We're always searching for stores that carry the French brands, the best brands coming from Dijon. When Chantal stumbled across a recipe to make your own cassis, she decided to try it. While we haven't tasted it fully yet--we've sneaked a few spoonfuls--we're hopeful that it mimics the real thing. The black currant crop was exceptional this year, so we're optimistic.

Until then Chantal will continue making jams and jellies, unitl the last jar of blueberry jam is stocked away, waiting to be trotted out sometime this winter, when it will launch another conversations about the homemade jams of the Auberge.

How To Make Really Good Coffee

2009-07-27T08:11:00.002-04:00

It happened again last weekend: One of our guests took a sip of our coffee and said, "Wow, this coffee is soooooo good!" In the nearly ten years we've been innkeepers, we've heard this about once a week from guests. In the interest of fair play, I think it's time I divulged our secret, mostly because there's really no secret.

First of all, it's not the equipment. Each morning I brew coffee in either an automatic drip 12-cup countertop machine (and over the years I've burned through dozens of these things: Brauns, Gevalias, Krupps--I get them at the swap shack for nothing when Stowe's elite are done with them) or a big 30-cup percolator. Either way, the joe that comes out gets the same rave reviews. The only piece of equipment advice I'd give you is this: avoid basket brewers in automatic drip machines. If you have a basket brewer, throw it out and buy a conical brewer. The cone shape intensifies the brewing process, and in an automatic drip maker that never reaches the high temperatures needed to properly brew coffee, this gives the coffee a richer flavor.

Second of all, it's not the coffee. With few exceptions we've always used Kirkland Colombian Supremo Bean Roast from Costco. It comes in a handy 3 pound tin, and it features a peel off inner lid, which means I don't have to crank the can opener and deal with the jagged remains of the can's top anymore. This coffee is just plain good and consistent. I'm sure it's not certified organic or anything, but at eight bucks a can it's the right price. For a while during my FedEx tenure I worked at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Waterbury. GMCR was very generous with coffee giveaways, and we had the chance to sample and serve all their coffees, but we found that Kirkland still rated higher in the minds of our guests.

Thirdly, it's not the guy making the coffee. Most mornings I stagger down with one eye open and whip up a batch of java. As a good friend of mine once said, it's not rocket surgery.

To make the best coffee, you need a French press and boiling water. Add six to eight ounces of boiling water to one level teaspoon of coffee and let it steep for sixty seconds, then push the press down. That's the best coffee you'll ever have.

The real secret is that it's Vermont. Our water is excellent, and the view is great, and people are generally in a happy mood when they're here. All that contributes to an excellent coffee drinking experience. So if you want to have the best coffee you'll ever have, you need to come up and let me make it for you. Cheers.

The Innkeeper's Bookshelf

2009-07-18T07:37:00.002-04:00

Since the innkeeper is a writer and a reader, you're probably wondering what books I'm plowing through--and thanks to my recent surgeries, I've had time to plow: There's nothing like general anesthesia and a team of doctor's up your urethra to slow a boy down. Given all this down time--and the exceptional book sale at the Stowe Free Library--I've been plowing through a collection of books as eclectic as me:

The Caine Mutiny: Herman Wouk would never be able to spin a tale like this in the instant gratification world of today. It's the story of Willie Keith and all his doubts as he joins the nave in WWII, only to bump into the wing nut Captain Queeg. Wouk leaves doubt lying about in this book the way my kids leave iPods and laptops lying around the house. Everything's messy, nothing's clear. In a move that inspired Jerry Seinfeld, the resolution of the book is that there's no resolution.

In Cold Blood: Here's a chipper story guaranteed to lift your spirits. From the first sentence this book is bleak, with short punctuations of happy humanity that begin to resemble roadkill on a west Texas highway. The sheer hideous magnitude of the depravity of the killers should make us all understand the consequences of mental illness. For all the hype around this book, and it's legendary status, I found that Harper Lee--er, I mean Truman Capote--used large parts of depositions and pages-long interviews to fill the text. So I'm not sure that this is the nonfiction novel it claims to be.

In Harm's Way: This is the story of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, the ship that delivered the A-bomb, and was later sunk by a Japanese sub. This is the classic navy screw-up story that gets hung on the captain. A heart wrenching read, especially the descriptions (from first hand accounts by the survivors) about what happens to humans when they get blown up, tossed into the sea, and eaten by sharks.

Name-the-Boy:-A-Collection-of-Stories

2009-07-17T11:41:00.001-04:00

The-Innkeeper\'s-Husband:-Undercover-with-an-Unconventional-Innkeeper

2009-07-17T11:13:00.001-04:00

The Stones Visit My B&B!

2009-07-06T07:44:00.003-04:00

No, not the Rolling Stones. The kidney stones.

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up and went through my regular routine: make the coffee, let the dog out, and start writing. But within fifteen minutes I was writhing on the floor in pain. The pain came from my lower left back, in the area of my kidney. My mother-in-law whisked me to the ER where kidney stones were diagnosed. The pain was indescribable. When the nurse came to see me, she showed me the little scale of faces used to diagnose pain. You know the one: happy face on one end at number one (no pain), crinkled face on the other end at number ten (take me out back and shoot me pain). I pointed to number ten and cried, "Aarrrghrrrlllmmnsttrrrfff!"

In a few minutes I was shot up with several pain killers, and for the next four hours I lay on a gurney, receiving medication updates. Finally, around noon, blasted into bliss by drugs, I was allowed to go home. But the pain persisted for several days, finally abating six days after the onset. The culprits--three kidney stones--were lined up, waiting to be ejected. That was my job now: drink lots of water, pee through a screen, and save the kidney stones for analysis when they showed themselves.

This presents a tricky problem for an innkeeper. While I'm fortunate that my wife, Chantal, is the front of the house, I still have plenty of duties behind the scenes. Air conditioners needed to be installed, the fence around the pool needed to be repaired, and I had to prepare for a conference of writers. All of those tasks are difficult to accomplish when you're doped up on oxycodone.

Innkeepers don't get to call in sick. Guests can be understanding, but there's a limit to how much they want to hear about your plumbing woes. I've dealt with this illness the way I deal with most unpleasant things: humor. My low profile allows me to make guest appearances out in the breakfast room, tell a few jokes about my pain, and retreat. But the work remains. The writing needs to be done. My two classes at Community College of Vermont didn't go away.

So I medicate and wait. I'm mostly pain free, but last Friday I had another attack of moving stones that sent me to the ER when the pain outran the abilities of my medication. The hope is that these things will pass naturally and painfully, but the prospect of a procedure looms. In any case, it will be an interesting summer as I try to balance health with work.

For the Benefit of Conferences

2009-06-27T11:14:00.002-04:00

For the second year in a row, I've hosted a writers' conference here at the Auberge de Stowe. While it's true that the attendees were fellow Goddard College alum, plus one newcomer, the conference--which lasted three,four, five, or six days, depending on who you were--put heads in beds, which is what every innkeeper wants to do. And in this unstable economy, every reservation is greatly appreciated.

The idea for the Roundtable Writers' Conference hatched itself several years ago while I was a student at Goddard College's low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program. A diverse group of friends glommed onto each other every breakfast and dinner, at one of the round tables in the cafeteria. We cemented a shared vision that included an intense love of laughter, a devotion to story, and an openness to creativity which fueled our friendship.

A couple of years after we left school, we sought to recreate some of the magic that shaped us during our time at Goddard. Why not gather for a few days to reconnect and rediscover the energy that brought us together? And where would be a more logical place to gather than at one of the Roundtable Writers' inn in Stowe, Vermont?

Innkeepers should look around and ask themselves, "What do I like to do? Where are the areas that I have expertise?" By answering these questions, innkeepers will discover opportunities to capture new, unique markets that will not only put a few more heads in beds, but bring a little love into the sometimes draining job of hosting guests.

The Torments of the Spring

2009-06-14T14:14:00.002-04:00

If it seems like my posts are getting more spaced out, you're right. May is always a tough month to devote to anything, mostly because I coach Little League baseball, and that takes lots of time. In theory, I'm not teaching in May, so my time should be available. But I was tapped to teach an extra course this summer, and it's proved to be time-consuming.

I also acquired a writing opportunity this month when a friend who is working with a publisher to develop content for the Amazon Kindle called and asked if I had anything (a manuscript, for example) they could use. Of course I did: my book The Innkeeper's Husband. (For more on this, see my blog The Innkeeper's Husband.)

In any event, the summer is finally upon us. That means erratic business and lots of time spent waiting for people to check in. Besides the teaching (one section of English Comp, and the aforementioned Career Readiness class), I've got a to-do list that's growing by the day.

If you haven't checked out some recent photos from around the inn, visit the Auberge de Stowe blog. Enjoy!

Vacuuming Season

2009-05-18T11:17:00.002-04:00

It's that time of year again: vacuuming season.

Many readers will delight with the news that in lieu of making breakfast and changing sheets we now fill our days with vacuuming and cleaning. The spring brings a lot of changes up here in Vermont, perhaps none greater than the extra bright sunlight and longer days that reveal to us all the dust and dirt that has been hiding throughout the winter. So I take up my vacuum and chase the dog around and try to get every crack and crevice cleaned, and just when I think I've succeeded, it rains outside and someone tracks in mud. Or the dog starts shedding.

Besides general cleaning, the spring also brings with it a to-do list on steroids. Here are a few things that need to get done:

*Wash building
*Paint building
*Repair riding mower
*Wash windows
*Reconsider painting building, stick with just washing for now
*Fix bridge to nowhere in back yard
*New faucet for Room 3 bathroom
*Clean out basement
*Get new junk for newly cleaned basement
*Finally finish mantle around gas fireplace in guest living room
*Touch up paint in rooms
*Vacuum dog
*Open pool
*Close pool

I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Please email me with suggestions.

Got snow? Yup.

2009-03-22T07:26:00.003-04:00

It was bound to happen; this, after all, is March. It just took 22 days, a new record. I'm talking about snow. In March, the snow usually falls with a fury unmatched by other months of the winter. It's bigger, with more light reflecting through it, thanks to longer days and a sun higher in the sky. And it's usually measured in feet. March competes with December for the title of snowiest month. But not this year.

This year, all the snow came in December and January. Several rain events tempered the snowfall totals in February, but there were still plowable amounts falling. Then came March, and it just stopped snowing. That didn't affect the skiing on Mt. Mansfield, but it did affect the attitude of skiers and riders in the suburban areas to the south. In Boston and Connecticut and New Jersey thoughts turned to gardening. It's been hard to get folks in the mood to ski in March, partly because of the economy, partly because of the early mild spring weather.

Nevertheless, the snow's here (check out the picture from this morning), where it belongs, and we're still enjoying it, and we will until the middle of April. There are deals aplenty to be had, and with over five feet of base, plenty of terrain to explore on the mountain. Looks like I still have some shoveling to do.

Ski Stowe for $59!!!

2009-03-21T08:56:00.002-04:00

Yes, the skiing is still great in Stowe. Even though everyone in Connecticut and Massachusetts and New York has broken out their bicycles, Mt. Mansfield is covered in snow from top to bottom, and it's cold and sunny out, which will guarantee excellent conditions through the middle of April. Chantal and I skied three times this week, and I had an impossible task to find any bare spots. Conditions were firm and fast in the morning, early spring-like in the afternoon. So take advantage of some of the best skiing of the season. Oh, and it's true: we can help you pay as little as $59 for a lift ticket--just give us a call.

Shawn's Sense of Snow

2009-02-26T06:31:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I forget that not everyone else in the world is concerned with snow the way I am. Like folks everywhere, I get into my own little zone, thinking all my dreams are the most important, all my problems are the most serious, all my thoughts are in tune with everyone else's. That's why I look out my window. From where I write, I can look out across the river and up over a ridge. It helps remind me that there are other things out there in the world. The problem is, every time I look out the window, I see snow.
It's not really a problem; actually, it's a boon for us as innkeepers and snow fiends. But people who don't live in the North Country don't get the same sense of snow that we get up here. It's not in their consciousness the way it's in ours. And if they're not thinking about it--if it's not piling up in their back yards and wrecking their drive into work--they're not thinking about skiing, which is what we want them to think about. At least the skiers among them.
We've had a lot of snow this winter, and we're happy about that. Stowe Mountain Resort reports that over 300 inches have fallen on Mt. Mansfield so far, and the snowiest month of the year--March--is still two days away. And even though we've had a couple of rain events, it hasn't dampened the quality of the winter. The National trail and the Goat trail on Mt. Mansfield all had boot-deep snow on them yesterday, and I was continually and happily tossed out of my fall line all afternoon.
But there's a melancholy aspect to all this snow, this winter season. Snow, like winter--like life--is impermanent. It's anticipated, it arrives in fits and starts, it swells to great importance, then it wanes. Even though we'll probably ski again this year until the middle of April, the snow will soon be gone. We'll do our best to ski through March and get the most of it.

Pahk the Cahr (or the bus) in my Yahd

2009-02-04T17:18:00.003-05:00

When we first started out as innkeepers, one of the things we wanted to develop was business with groups coming to stay in Stowe. Actually, we just wanted to develop business, any business, preferably the kind of business that paid us money. But we thought, "Hey, let's get a bus load of people in here!" We soon realized that buses seated sixty people, and we could only fit twenty or so in the Auberge. So the group idea went away--for a while.

Then, four years ago, we got a call from a fellow innkeeper. His place was a little bigger than ours--he could accommodate a bus load, but only one bus load. And one of his regular groups had grown into a bus and a half. He couldn't fit them all in his place, and he was loathe to forgo the income. So he asked if we'd like to take part of the group. We jumped at the chance.

The group turned out to be the Harvard Ski Club, a group of undergrads up for five days of skiing at the end of January. We really weren't prepared for them because when they arrived, they simply took over. There were too many of them. And there were horror stories from our innkeeper friend about parties and damage and all kinds of other unmentionable behaviors. The good news is that they were mostly good kids, and they responded when we laid down the rules--rules like the kitchen is off limits. Chantal would prepare and serve all the food for them, and that was a big hit. They felt like they were at home, like they were being cared for--and they were.

Over the years that the Harvard Ski Club has been coming here, we've had all kinds of interesting situations emerge, and most of them revolve around the hot tub. (Again, this is a family show. If you want the details, I'll give them to you beside the fire the next time you stay with us.) Most of the problems have to do with tripping breakers and leaving doors open--apparently door closing is a custom observed only by Vermonters. But once in a while some precocious person wanders into the kitchen, usually to be rebuffed by the dog's bark. The last time they were with us, a few weeks ago, I discovered two couples in the kitchen one night, heads stuck in my fridge. I scurried them out with threats of tetanus shots if the dog caught hold of their thongs.

This year was the last time we'll have the Harvard Ski Club. Their semester schedule is changing next year, and it's likely they'll only have about half the number of skiers coming up to Stowe during their break. We'll miss taking care of them, we'll miss the way they make us remember the haze of our own undergraduate days, and we'll miss the money, too. But I think most of all we'll miss the association with the prestigious institution, and the possibility of connecting with young people who will be back to Stowe again and again.

Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces

2009-01-11T18:34:00.003-05:00

When I was kid, there was this doll called Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces. The deal was that you could change this doll called Hugo's face as if he were a secret agent. Snap on a mustache, add some sideburns, slide on some glasses, and Hugo was a new man. Lately I've discovered that I'm the new Hugo in Stowe. Let me back up a bit.

For ten years I worked for FedEx. The rules at FedEx were simple: short hair, no beards. Toward the end, things began to change, and they loosened up on the beard rule, but they had to be neat and trimmed, which wasn't anything that interested me. Now fast forward to 2008, January: I leave FedEx, and my razor, behind. By April I had shoulder-length hair and a full, mostly red, beard. But this wasn't out of character for me.

After Chantal and I moved to France, in the early nineties, I grew a beard. I had a beard or mustache--I grow a great Viking mustache--off and on until I went to work for FedEx in 1998. I was even married in a mustache, something that didn't seem to bother my wife. But in Stowe, my varying facial hair seems to throw people off. Maybe it's the speed with which I grown hair. I'm of Irish extraction--100%--so most of my corpus delecti is hairless. Except my head. My noggin is like a Chia pet. It sprouts hair so fast a time-lapse camera isn't needed to see it grow. So I can literally change my look in less than two weeks.

It seems to confuse people around here. Folks I've known for a decade will walk right past me after I've grown a beard. Ditto after I've shaved it at Easter. This intrigues me because I'm always thinking about the face I present to folks checking into the inn. I try to imagine myself in their shoes as they walk through the front door. Do they want to see a shaved-head lunatic, or a soft-focus bearded Vermonter? Or am I crazy looking with a beard? I don't know, you tell me. I've posted a couple of pictures here for you to look at. I kind of like the bearded me, but I admit that once Easter comes, I shave it off. Send me an email and let me know.

Being Green Takes Some Green

2008-12-13T09:35:00.002-05:00

Well, we did it. Sort of. I mean, we've been doing it all along. It's part of our essential philosophy. But now we sort of mainstreamed it. What am I talking about? Hot water. More specifically, the way we get the water hot.

When we first moved into this old building more than eight years ago, we knew that every element of the major systems--heating, hot water, electric, plumbing--would need to be replaced at some point, probably sooner rather than later. When we had the oil-fired forced hot air system serviced for the first time, one of the technicians glanced over at the hot water heater and said, "That thing's on its way out. You better think about getting it replaced before it fails." Since we were dirt poor, we laughed off his suggestion, went to bed, and prayed that the hot water heater wasn't on its way out for a few more years.

A hot water heater is nothing more than a big tank--30, 50, or 60 gallons--that simmers your water at a temperature between 120 and 140 degrees. Hot water heaters accomplish this by burning oil or gas, or with electrical heating elements. The premise of this system is so wasteful that it calls into question our right to be have the word sapiens in our taxonomic name--there's not a lot of thinking required for this system, just waste.

I'm not going to get into the math--someone else can post the numbers in a reply to this blog--but think about it: how much energy does it take to sustain 30 gallons of water at 120 degrees, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, forever? And why do we keep these tanks simmering? In hopes that somewhere, sometime, in the course of the day, someone will need some hot water. Maybe someone will fire up the dishwasher. Or maybe someone will wash some clothes. But the main purpose for all this energy being pumped into water tanks is so that we can take a nice, hot shower. Mmmmm.

The way to overcome this is with point-of-use hot water systems (also called on-demand hot water, or tankless hot water). With these systems, when someone opens a hot water tap, the heater fires up, heating the water instantly and feeding it to the point of use. When the hot water tap is closed, the heater stops burning fuel. And if you don't burn it, you don't use it. And if you don't use it, you don't have to pay for it. In the meta-sense of that thinking, if we're all burning less fuel, we all have to rely less on unpleasant things like oil from the Middle East or drilling in sensitive areas. Go ahead, try that line of thinking. Earn your title as a thinking being.

Oh, and that hot water heater that the technician told us was on its way out? More than eight years later and it was still simmering away. It was also doing a nice job of heating the basement, but that's another story. Last week we finally parted ways with that old hot water heater, and we installed a new Rinnai tankless system. I'm not sure how much money we're going to save on our propane bill--we have a lot of other appliances running off propane, like the stove, a fireplace in the guest living room area, and the heating system for the other side of the inn--but we'll save enough to pay for the system (which cost about $2,000 to purchase and install) in a couple of years. If there's one downside to the system, it's that it takes about thrity seconds for the hot water to reach the tap.

So though it may be a small step by a small user, it's a positive step nonetheless, and it's something we can talk to our guests about here at the Auberge de Stowe Bed & Breakfast. And maybe some of them will be inspired to go home and do that same.

Service You Can't Put a Price On

2008-12-07T14:16:00.002-05:00

I'll admit that sometimes I like to sneak into the breakfast room and fill my coffee mug and retreat to my office. That's because I'm in the middle of some early morning writing project, and I don't want to interrupt the mojo. But once in a while I hear something that stops me cold, and this morning was one of those times. As I was tiptoeing through the lobby, I hear a woman, one of our guests, talking to Chantal, my wife. She said to her, "Thanks again for helping my husband with his pants."

I know what you're thinking; I had the same thought. But there's a bigger story here, one worth hearing. Last night, in the middle of dinner, we had a check-in. We always have check-ins in the middle of dinner, so this wasn't news. The folks checking in were a woman and her brother-in-law. They were supposed to meet the woman's husband here, but the husband was delayed.

Finally, a couple of hours later (now it was well after 9 p.m.), the husband showed up. He was covered in mud and he smelled like a swamp. It seems he was on his way here when he saw a car accident. Because he's a member of a National Guard unit and trained in emergency services, he stopped to help, eventually performing CPR on one of the victims. Now he stood before us, dripping and stinking. He quickly changed a pair of light sweatpants, and asked if we could do something about his pants. They were the only pair he'd brought with him, and they would be unusable tomorrow when they left.

So Chantal washed them for him at 10 p.m. It wasn't something she wanted to do, but it seemed like the right thing to do. The next morning the pants were clean and dry, hence the remark by the wife that she was happy Chantal helped her husband with his pants. The line reminds me of the things heard in bad sitcoms, and I guess this is where they get there start. But I think from now on I'm not going to sneak around to get my coffee.

Video Killed the Broadcasting Star

2008-10-25T08:06:00.002-04:00

Now that the leaves are gone and stick season is upon us, it's time to turn our attention to those things that must be done around the inn. And those things include tiling the bathroom in Room 6, tiling the short hallway between the breakfast room and the back living room (I've got a tiling saw, so I've suddenly got a lot of tiling projects), replacing the gutters out front, and about a dozen other things I haven't mentioned because I can't remember them right now, and I probably won't get to them before the snow flies (and the snow has already flown up here, a couple of inches on the mountain last Wednesday).

But what's really been on my mind is television. This is a subject that periodically rears its head around here, and it revolves mostly around the debate of whether we need to have cable or satellite service in the guest rooms. I'll be honest and say that I've always thought we should have cable or satellite in the rooms. But Chantal has always made the argument that the profile of our guests doesn't justify it. We are not the kind of place that encourages lying around the room all day watching television. Nor is Stowe that kind of place. It's an active destination, with much to do, including shopping and dining and driving, for the less physical visitor, along with the usual hiking/biking/skiing.

While we have televisions in the rooms, they only receive the three over the air channels we get here in Stowe: CBS, ABC, and PBS. That's it. And of those three channels, two have spotty reception. What I've always wanted to do was have cable or satellite in the rooms just to improve the picture. But the cost for such a small place like ours is prohibitive. And now, with the switch over to digital ready to happen in February, we're forced into a decision. So we explored the satellite option again, and it looks like we'll just be getting converter boxes for the televisions in the rooms.

Soon the internet will be able to provide all the free programming anyone could want. And we've made wireless internet service a priority here. So folks will just have to enjoy the three local channels, or log on to whatever they want to watch with their computers. Otherwise, I'd have to jack up the rates to cover my costs, and I don't think anyone on the planet wants to pay more just for television.

Those Leaves, Those Colors

2008-09-28T07:55:00.002-04:00

There's always a lot of discussion about foliage up here in Vermont. Perhaps because it's the icon we hang our hats on, or perhaps because of the "duh" factor--by that I mean it's just so incredibly beautiful around her this time of year--or perhaps because so many people depend on leaf peepers to support their bottom lines, fall foliage defines us. And that causes us to talk. For example, everybody wants to know, "When will the leaves be at their peak color?" The answer, of course, is "When they're at their peak color."

Color and timing vary from tree to tree. Around here, that means roughly from about right now, until the middle of next week sometime. And by "around here" I mean the little valley we're in, between Stowe Hollow and Cady Hill. It's that specific. To some people, it's crushing to arrive and not see eye-popping colors everywhere, especially in my back yard. But go around the corner to Moscow, and you'll be blinded. Or take a drive over to Worcester down Route 12 and discover a whole new world.

Fortunately, we understand this, and we spend a lot of time patiently directing guests so that they can maximize their experience. Most of the time, they figure it out for themselves. But just for yucks, the folks in Stowe get together each year and decide on a time when peak foliage will occur. It's very democratic: we get together, propose specific times, then vote. I forget what the time is for this year; I'd rather just tell you where to go see the best color.

The *&^%$#@ Pool

2008-07-28T08:47:00.002-04:00

It just wouldn't be summer around here without me cussing the pool. Never has so much been done for so little. And for way too much money. The pool is an ongoing pain in the innkeeper's backside, wallet, and neck. I wonder if it will ever end--though I've drawn up plans to help force the issue.

Just as we were opening the pool, the old pump burned out. Actually, the motor was okay, but the impeller snapped off, and the water was unable to circulate. This happened during one of the few hot spells we have up here in Vermont, and within days the pool slid from shimmering blue to a shade of color Sherwin-Williams markets as "ogre green."

I've had a lot of experience replacing pumps. Between the hot tub and the pool, we've gone through three already. So I jumped online and found a place called www.poolpumpwarehouse.com, and called the guy and ordered a new pump. He promised me he'd ship it two day, so the pool would only be out of commission for a week. Meanwhile, the heat continued. Friday came and went, then the weekend, then Monday, then Tuesday. I called the guy back repeatedly, but he wouldn't answer his phone. We were in trouble.

In the meantime, my wife had located a pump for sale on Craig's List. It was in South Burlington, so we drove up there, bought it, and brought it home. And when I'd installed it, I discovered it didn't work. The shaft had been sheared off at some point. So I had to bring it back and get my money back. And I still didn't have a pool pump.

Finally we called our local pool lady, Maggie. She ordered a pump for us from a pool supply place in Burlington, and five-hundred dollars later, I had a new pump. I installed it, and it ran great, of course, and we were able to revive the pool with several hundred pounds of chemicals.

But I'm still not happy with the pool. My long-term vision is to bulldoze the thing into a hole and fill it with water, creating a natural pond. That would release me from the angst of dealing with a pool for a two-month season. If that happens, I'll let you know, in case you're looking for a nice, new pump.

A Conferring of Creativity

2008-06-27T14:15:00.004-04:00

For the past week, I've hosted a writer's conference here at the Auberge. It turned out to be the perfect space for a gathering of writer friends, a place where we could reconnect after a two-year hiatus from the creative magnetism that drew us together at Goddard College. It was as intense a time now as it was then, and we left simultaneously exhausted and refreshed.
As innkeepers, Chantal and I were happy to get some extra business, so we welcomed the chance to get my writing cronies in here for several days. It also meant that we would have the inn to ourselves, and that was important, because we take up a lot of intellectual space. A lot of great stuff came out of the inaugural conference. I've explored attracting groups to the inn before, but this was one of the most natural ideas I've had. The timing was excellent, too. The middle of June is an uneven time in the innkeeping calendar. Things that came from the Roundtable Writer's Conference included Chris Millis's work on his upcoming screenplay, Lloyd Noonan's Ten-Minute Play workshop, and Nancy McCurry's brilliant new treatment for novel writing, called A Novel Idea.
If the energy that came from this gathering is any indicator, we'll be replete with enough creativity to last to the next one, which I look forward to eagerly.

A Makeover for Room 1

2008-06-07T06:18:00.002-04:00

Now that it's over, I can talk about it. Now that it's finished, I can step back and admire it, I can appreciate the hard work. Now that it's in the past, I can move on with my life. I'm talking about the bathroom in Room 1, the home of the controversial pink toilet. It's gone, because I ripped the room down to it's studs and built it back up again. Like a drill instructor with a new recruit, I've molded that small space to suit my needs.
This is what it takes: total immersion in the project. And that's what I did. For the past month, I've been up to my neck in plumbing, electric, tiling, and painting. Oh, and there was all that foul language. And profanity became the grease for my machine, lubing the difficult parts. Don't worry, it was the off-season, and I was sealed in tightly.
We're at the level of innkeeping that prevents us from picking up the phone and writing a check to a plumber for the work that needed to be done. I'm also of a certain skill set, which invites me to tackle these projects. Room 1 was begging for it. Everything came out without incident; it was the building up that took real work. Like the plumbing, which took me a week of work. All the water pipes for the shower had to be moved, due to the configuration of the new shower stall. It was more work with the torch than I bargained for. The sink was a challenge, too, helped along by some issues with Lowe's. The first sink/vanity we bought there was damaged. The second one was missing the mirror that was advertised on the front of the box.
We finally managed to get it all together, and there's even a new, turbo-toilet in the bathroom. Some new carpeting and a new air conditioner completes the look. In our room-by-room update, this one is set to become the Green Harbor room, after it's suitably decorated with bric-a-brac that pays tribute to my hometown. But that's another project. For now I'm content to simply gaze at the new tile floor and snappy, clean shower stall. Let the checkins begin.

Getting Out of Dodge

2008-05-02T09:01:00.002-04:00

I remember once talking to the local game warden not long after I moved up to Vermont. I told him that being a game warden must be a great job for someone who likes to hunt and fish. He looked at me suddenly with a mixture of disgust and bewilderment. Then he told me it was about the worst job in the world to have if you loved doing those things, because the busiest times of the year are the various hunting and fishing seasons. He never got to do those things, he said.
So it is with innkeeping. Innkeepers are in the service industry, and we service those on vacation. That means we rarely get to take a vacation during prime times. Add kids to that mix (with the requisite navigation of the school calendar), and the odds of getting away diminish faster than the snowpack in May. Over the years we've managed a few getaways, many of them involving the partitioning of the family. But things have been changing. In January I shed my job with FedEx, and that loosened my schedule considerably. So in April we took a little trip to Florida.
I'll go on the record publicly and say that Florida was not my first choice. It repulsed me as a cliched destination, a place so typically American that I was sure to be annoyed the whole time. Not that there's anything wrong with things American, but I had other places in mind, like a spring skiing trip, or a European jaunt. It was simply a matter of expectations, not judgments. What lured me down there was the promise of Florida's west coast, notably the Clearwater area.
I'll also go record as saying that we had a great time, and that getting sunburned on the beach might be the best medicine for weary innkeepers at the end of the winter. The mayhem of Orlando notwithstanding, I grooved on the simple pleasure of standing in the heat, lolling by the pool with a beer in my hand, or just watching pasty tourists stagger around. It's a real battery-recharger. So now we hope to make this a biannual ritual, and while we probably won't always go to Florida, the retreats will most certainly include warm-weather destinations.

A Delicious Spring

2008-04-11T11:09:00.005-04:00

It's a little difficult to really wrap your head around the notion that the skiing is still excellent around here. But that's what we have to live with. This week was one of the best week's skiing we've had in a long time. It started out on Sunday with temps in the high 40s, bright sunshine, and soft conditions that made every trail at Stowe accessible. It continued on Monday, when it was just as warm, but a little breezy. Your innkeepers decided to hike the Nose of Mt. Mansfield (see picture below) and enjoy the spectacular view from the top before we skied down. We skied again on Tuesday, and by now our legs were rubber from dealing with the luscious and soft snow. Huge Super-G turns cut down on the pain but not the fun. I'm not sure how much longer we'll ski; the conditions are astounding, and this may sound hard to believe, but there aren't any bare spots on the mountain. The party line says that Stowe Mountain Resort will close on April 20th, but you can bet on them being open through the weekend of the 27th, and we'll be skiing into May. Spring skiing is so rare in New England that when conditions like this come around, you just have to take advantage of them.

Happy Trails!

Mt. Mansfield, the Nose, April 7, 2008

Telemark Dreams

2008-03-05T06:39:00.004-05:00

On Sunday afternoon, as I picked a wide line through the woods between the Goat trail and the Nosedive trail on Mt. Mansfield, I marveled at the amount of woods available for skiing in Stowe. I also marveled at the amount of snow under my boards. It was the second day of March, and we'd just had the snowiest February ever. Well, maybe we didn't have the snowiest February ever, but Burlington did. Don't get me wrong; we had a bunch of snow last month, and the snow at the stake at the top of Mt. Mansfield was in record territory. All that snow pushed me deeper and deeper into the woods.
Woods skiing in Stowe is unlike other places. Along the edge of the trails the puckerbush is tight and thick, discouraging off-piste experimentation. But push through that initial tangle, and you'll discover another world of skiing, enough skiing to effectively double Stowe's skiable terrain. Here's another secret of woods skiing: No matter how long it's been since the last snowfall, you can almost always find freshies--untracked pockets of powder just waiting for you to plunge your boards into. It's highly addictive.
All this was on my mind this weekend because one of our regular winter customers was back in town. Greg and Paula are freeheelers--dedicated telemark skiers of the backcountry. They love Stowe for all the obvious reasons, but they keep coming back for the amount of skiing available off-piste. (I think they come back because they like to stay at the Auberge, too.) Every time Greg comes up he asks me if I've made the leap to telemark skiing, and every year I'm seized with desire to do so, but don't. In my heart I know I have too many hobbies and not enough income to support them. But telemarking could expand my skiing opportunities, so it keeps hanging on. To now, my biggest excuse has been the cost of the boots. I've got a pair of skis and the bindings ready to go, but the boots are so darn expensive. And used boots are scarce, too. Because the sport is nascent, there isn't a lot of used gear out there. I look from time to time, but I rarely find boots in my own size. So if anyone has some used telemark boots for sale, (I wear a size 10 shoe, which I think translates to a mondo size 28.5), shoot me an email and we'll make a deal. Until then I'll keep looking for some boots, dreaming of freeheeling, and dabbling in the endless woods of Stowe.
P.S. April is looking like a solid month for spring skiing. More on that next time.

The Halfway point

2008-02-02T09:58:00.001-05:00

It's been snowing since November; it will snow until April. That puts us roughly in the middle of all things great and snowy. After a magnificent December, things slowed a bit in January. We even had a couple of bouts of rain, but the base was solid, and the skiing was excellent, which it always seems to be at Stowe. If you're thinking about coming up in February, think again. Weekends are almost solidly booked. There are a few holes here and there, but things are tight. Weekdays will be a better bet, and as a side benefit, the slopes won't be crowded. But if you really want a good deal, come skiing in March.
In March, the days are longer and warmer. In March, it snows constantly. In March (at least this March) Easter comes. On Easter Sunday, there's a sunrise service at the top of the gondola. Then there's two hours of free skiing, until 8 a.m. Last year the skiing was legendary. A snowstorm hit right in the middle of Easter weekend, and we skied in snow up to our thighs. I didn't see my skis all day.
This year the skiing's been excellent to outstanding. It's been cold and consistently snowy, and the outlook is for more of the same. March is starting to fill up, and with it will come temperate, sunny days. By the end of the month, we'll be skiing in the morning, playing Frisbee in the parking lot in the afternoon. Come up and see for yourself.

An Early Winter in Stowe

2007-12-15T09:03:00.000-05:00

Winter has begun right where it left off last spring.
Stowe Mountain Resort opened earlier than anticipated, in the middle of November, when some early season storms blanketed the mountain. By Thanksgiving, most of the trails were open, and with the help of Stowe's incredible snowmaking talents, great bases could be found. No floating boulders up there. Another two-foot snowfall came in early December, followed by several refresher dumps, leading to the opening of most of the cross country ski centers. And now, a massive storm is forecast for the 16th of December, with snow totals conservatively predicted in feet, not inches.
All this early snow is a continuation of last spring, when in April we saw several late season storms that kept the mountain open until the last weekend of that month. The picture at the top of this blog is a picture of me and our friend Trevor (one of the Auberge's frequent fliers, and occasional dinner guest) standing on top of Mt. Mansfield--on the Nose, to be precise. The date was April 22, 2007, and we'd hiked up, had a little lunch, then skied down into the spring warmth. So where's global warming?
It's important here to take the long view. Last December, everyone was in a panic that lasted through Christmas, when we had the first green Christmas ever (for us, in Stowe). The snow didn't fly till the day after Christmas, and the season didn't get wintry till the Valentine's Day storm dumped four feet on us. Thanks to snowmaking, the mountain was skiable, and with cold weather it was even good. But travelers are fickle by nature, and they need to hear the news from the north country that it's snowy.
So let the word go forth, from this time and place, to cross country skier and downhiller alike, that the snow is here, and it is plentiful. Oh, and global warming? Well, one of the side effects of global warming is that more moisture is trapped in the atmosphere, and right now it's getting wrung out over northern Vermont. The extremes I've just described are symptomatic of the situation, and though we're happy for the snow now, if spring comes early this year it will be interesting to note the reactions. Until then, let it snow.

A Room With A Review

2007-11-01T16:46:00.000-04:00

There's a website called Tripadvisor.com that allows travelers to offer "objective" reviews of the places they've stayed in. Ostensibly, this service helps others decide where to book a room when visiting a place such as Stowe. While on the surface this seems a good idea, there's really nothing objective about the idea. In fact, the site relies on the subjective experiences of its users to offer advice--advice they may not be qualified to give.
Once we fielded a complaint through AAA from someone who had stayed with us. Actually, it turned out not to be a complaint, just a matter of opinion. The person who wrote to AAA, listed among her complaints a pink toilet in her bathroom. Not a dirty toilet, or a broken toilet, but a pink toilet. She also mentioned the layout of the rooms, and the fact that many things looked old. Of course, we had the same thought you're having right now: "Soooo, is this going somewhere?" It didn't. While it's obvious that this person didn't care for pink toilets or old fashioned furniture, it said nothing about the quality or service we offered.
Though most of our reviews on Tripadvisor are positive, you can see there's room for abuse, or at least subjectivity. Where's the harm in letting people tell other people about the experience they've had? Well, there's none, except that an opinion is just that: a view or judgment about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. It's the "fact or knowledge" part that gets sticky. What one person craves, another abhors, and if someone books a room at a roadside inn for eighty dollars, then doesn't like the fact that there's no turndown service, and writes about it online, there's not much you can do about it. And the opposite is true, too. Inflated reviews may paint a picture of an inn that isn't really there. I haven't even mentioned the ethical pitfalls inherent in this model, like trading free room nights for favorable reviews. Yikes.
All this innkeeping stuff leads me to a review of my own. The first real review of my book, Name the Boy, came out in the Stowe Reporter today, and it was a lot like the lady who was shocked to find a pink toilet in her bathroom. The reviewer seemed focused on the surface elements, and never made it to the rich subtext. And though the reviewer never said anything bad, the impression left was that this might not be a book you want to buy, it's too scary.
In Hollywood they say there's no such thing as bad publicity. But this is Stowe. I guess I'd hoped for a deeper reading of the book, but the review came off as rushed. I thanked the reviewer for the effort (after all, the paper donated nearly a square foot of type to me, which is no small feat), and told her that if she ever needed someone to review a book, I'd be happy to do it. (Hint.) What I learned today is that book reviews are like family members: you don't get to pick 'em, and once they're here, they're yours to keep.

Agitating

2007-09-03T14:17:00.000-04:00

I've been agitating again. Unwilling to sit still and let the world come to me, I've found a new place to market my writing. It's called Amazon Shorts, and it's tailor made for short story writers like me. Amazon Shorts publishes individual short pieces of writing of authors with books for sale on Amazon.com. Each story costs forty-nine cents, and once you buy it, it's yours to keep forever. I know I won't get rich doing this, but I look at it as one more place to promote myself and my writing, and I think that's neat. The story I have there is called Cooper & Co., and you can get there by clicking on the title of the story. Enjoy.

Gillnetting the Hammock

2007-08-07T16:02:00.000-04:00

In the summer of 1984, I was a roofer. I was between my sophomore and junior years of college, and I was working for Jack Madden, my friend Pete's father. Okay, so maybe I wasn't a roofer. Maybe my skill set was somewhere between laborer and comedian. But as the summer progressed, I learned more and more from Pete and Mr. Madden, until I could be trusted to lay out a course of asphalt shingles on my own.

Our big job that summer was re-roofing St. Theresa's church in Humarock, Massachusetts. St. Theresa's was a single roof structure, but large, and steeply angled. It took the right blend of courage, experience, and the suspension of disbelief to scale that roof, first ripping the two layers of shingles off that were already on there, then nailing down the new shingles. I had everything but experience going for me. More importantly, for Pete and me, was the fact that next door to the church was the McKinnon house. The McKinnons were fisherman, and Mr. McKinnon owned a nice gillnetting rig that he fished out of Scituate Harbor. That summer Mike McKinnon and his brother, Scott, were fishing with their father. And one of the many duties they had was net repair.

Net repair usually happened on rainy days, or when it was blowing too hard to fish. Sometimes Mike and Scott didn't go out for unexplained reasons, left behind to mend nets. On those days, Pete and I would call over to them from the top of St. Theresa's roof, making drinking plans for later in the day. Sometime we'd throw shingles at them, and they'd throw rocks back at us. And sometimes Pete and I would wander over there during lunch, and watch them mend nets.

Their hands would blur between the strands of monofilament, quickly closing up any holes. The McKinnons were good-natured guys, and they laughed and traded barbs with us as they furiously worked to repair the nets that put food on their table. I could never figure out how they mended the nets--they never let me try, and I wasn't concerned with that skill. But this week, I found myself thinking about the McKinnons as I tried to mend a net of my own.

Actually, it was a hammock. One afternoon a guest came up from the pool and reported a "large hole in the hammock. Large enough to fall through." When I saw the hole, I knew I was in trouble: how do you mend a hammock? There wasn't enough rope for a proper splice, and since a hammock is essentially one long rope woven into a pattern, there was no chance of replacing a single section. That's when I remembered the McKinnons.

I went straight to my fishing tackle box and found some 36-pound nylon line that I use as backing for my fly fishing reel. I pulled off a long length of it and went down to the hammock. After cutting the ends of the broken rope evenly, I spliced as much as I could, then set upon it with the nylon line. I tried to remember how the McKinnons had done it, so fast, so easy. Soon I found a rhythm, and I discovered that if I didn't think too much about what I was doing, it went together quickly. When I finished, I looked at the newly mended hammock. It looked nothing like the lines the McKinnons had mended, but it didn't look bad. There even appeared to some sort of pattern there.

I flipped the hammock back over and tested it. It held. I got out and yanked on the mended section: tight and fast. It just might work. Sometimes innkeeping affords me the opportunity to sample the experiences I've acquired throughout my life. And as I dozed off in the hammock that afternoon, I wondered if the McKinnons were still out there, mending lines.

That Little Souvenir, of a Terrible Year

2007-07-13T19:11:00.000-04:00

As you may know from my other blog, The Innkeeper's Husband, I'm writing a book--another book, that is. I'm following up my literary collection of short stories with a sardonic, self-effacing account of my life as an innkeeper--of course. I mean, how else do you follow up your literary debut? And as I was writing and structuring the book, I realized I'd have to revistit an unpleasant time: September 11, 2001.

When I say unpleasant, I mean it in only the most objective way. Perhaps being an innkeeper connected me a little more closely to the events of that day than the ordinary American, yet I never suffered the horrors of so many, or that so many suffer still due to the consequences which unfold even as I write. But we did absorb some cancellations, and this on the eve of our first foliage season as innkeepers, a season we desperately needed for the business to succeed. I've written about this several times, and revisiting those articles lances old boils best left untouched.

As I revisited those events, what struck me was the difficulty I had in defining myself according to the terms of that day. I found that the old internal struggle had resurrected itself within me. Was I a patriot, or was I a cynical bystander? Or, was there room for something in between? Events like that tend to polarize societies, and for good reason. But action and inaction need balance, like everything else in the universe. And it was my struggle to find balance that caught my attention. It was that search for balance that caused me so much discomfort as I wrote about that date for my book, The Innkeeper's Husband.

I never came to any conclusions, no tidy endings, no neat summations. I'm still left with an uneasy feeling as I continue to write. Maybe that kind of internal conflict makes for the best fuel for a writer. Maybe not. But I'm more convinced than ever that remembering that date, revisiting it, reliving it, is critical to our survival as a species. The object isn't to dwell on a subject; rather it's to use the benefits of time to allow a different kind of access, one that might eventually give us the kind of insight we need to put things in their proper places--if, that is, we let them.

A Sort of Homecoming

2007-07-07T17:36:00.000-04:00

As an innkeeper, there's almost nothing I won't do to get heads in beds, as long as it's ethical, that is. Last weekend I recruited several friends that I went to Goddard College with to come up for commencement weekend. Commencement weekend for the MFA program at Goddard College is magical, filled with students reading from their completed thesis projects and the legendary Goddard commencement, which faculty member Elena Georgiou always introduces with this warning: "Be afraid. Be very afraid." Not that anything bad happens; to the contrary, the warning is to beware your emotions, which will leave you weepy and happy and spent.

So when a couple of the folks I graduated with decided to come up, they were welcome. Before you think I made any money on them, think again. My standing order to friends is this: If there's room (i.e. no bookings by the time you show up), and if you bring food and drink for your hosts, you are always welcome to stay, no charge. This system has worked well through the years, and last weekend Max and Nancy took advantage of this.

But the weekend wasn't about business. It was about a homecoming, sort of. To return to Goddard, a magical place in the eyes of the writer, is to reconnect with what makes me vital. It's nearly holy. And more, it's about community, a sustaining and nurturing village of writers passionate about their craft and dedicated to their art.

Here, in Stowe, our community of innkeepers mimics the cohesion I've found at Goddard. While I can't say that there's a magical feel to innkeeping the way there is with a Goddard residency, I can say that my fellow innkeepers care deeply about what happens to me, and all of us. And I'm sure many of them open their doors to old friends who can offer nothing more than kinship and beer.

A Book Signing

2007-06-16T21:24:00.000-04:00

Readings, signings, ads in newspapers. These are surely the signs of authorial success, are they not? Sure, but in theory only. And I should know better, because I'm not a theorist, I'm a practitioner. Such was my mindset, however, when I headed off to my first ever book signing/meet the author event.
It happened at the Moscow General Store, in Moscow, Vermont, a little hamlet of Stowe. And it happened because my friend, Peggy Guerra, made it happen. Peggy has been a supporter of mine since the start, always looking for a way to promote my book, and promote her general store. And this time was no different. She put an ad in the local paper: "Come meet Shawn Kerivan, author of Name the Boy. Shawn will be autographing copies of his book. Makes the perfect Father's Day gift!"
I arrived at the Moscow General Store ten minutes before the advertised start time for the event, at 1:50. I brought two cases of books with me: one case of hard covers, another case of soft covers. Inside the store, Peggy and her husband Chris waited for me. Peggy had created a sign, and she brought out some chairs and cleared off a table, around which we sat. Peggy had some pastries, some coffee. My son, Seamus, perched on a stool, and we all got comfortable and waited.
The weather was incredible. Hot and sunny, summery. Bodies lined the local swimming holes on the road leading to the general store. I worried that good weather would keep people away. And yet; but still. A few people trickled in. Peggy pounced on them: "Have you got a Father's Day gift yet? Shawn Kerivan is here autographing copies of his new book, Name the Boy." One crustacean squinted at me, then squinted in the general direction of the book display, then said, "What's the boy's name?"
One of my writing students, from a workshop I led last year, came in. I thought, "Bingo!" We greeted each other, and when Peggy chimed in, "Shawn's signing copies of his book, have you bought a copy yet?", my former student became suddenly busy. "I've got to go, I'm late," she said. For what, I thought, this is Vermont. Nobody's late for anything in this state.
It was the same for the other four people who came in to the store. Peggy did a great job introducing me, but none of the people who came in were there because of the ad in the paper. They were there buying beer, or potato chips, or blueberry muffins. Not books. Not short story collections by crazy introverts like me.
I smiled a lot, introduced myself to three people, shook one guy's hand, and finally sold a book to Peggy, which she was going to give to her husband Chris. The two cases of books stayed in my truck, and my son Seamus even left after an hour to bike home and get some face time with the computer. So what did I learn? The usual stuff: it's easier to publish a book than it is to sell it; don't take the lack of interest in your writing personally; Moscow isn't a literary hotbed.
But you know what? I don't care, because I just had a book signing, and I just had my name in the paper as "author," and I'll get better at this as I go along.

A big, blue hole, into which money is poured

2007-06-10T14:07:00.000-04:00

Or, in my case, time.
I'm talking about the pool, and last week it was the big culprit in time theft. And the time it stole was time away from my writing and, more importantly, my class preparation for the fall. Okay, I freely admit that I have a strong bias against the pool. Here, from my innkeeper's point of view, is what I hate about it: 1. It's a pool. Come on, this is Vermont. Pools are for inland suburbia and Florida, California. Not Vermont. It's so un-Vermonty. 2. (See #1) That's to say, it's Vermont, and the pool season lasts 15 minutes up here, from 1:00 to 1:15 pm, July 19. The rest of the time it's too cold to swim. 3. Time. It takes three days to open the pool. Water has to be pumped off the cover, then pumped into the pool, then all the systems have to check out, be sworn at, prayed over, and finally cajoled into operation. 4. Money. Chemicals cost money, PLUS they take time to manage and administer. And how Vermonty is adding chemicals to a vinyl-lined hole in your back yard? 5. Nobody uses it. Ask any pool owner what they spend most of their time doing, and they'll answer in this order: 1. Working on my pool. 2. Begging people to come use it. Pools are way underused, especially our pool, which is down three flights of stairs and in the middle of a field.
But until it implodes, we're stuck with it. My dream is to bulldoze the pool and have a pond installed in its place. Now that's Vermonty. Then, if people wanted to go for a swim, they could go with the frogs and the ducks. And we could skate on it in the winter. Wouldn't that be cool? A pond would solve most of my pool problems. So as long as you see the pool featured on our website, you'll know that there's no peace for me. And if you stop by and can't find anyone upstairs to help you, that's because we're out back, working on the pooll

Announcing "The Innkeeper's Husband"

2007-06-07T16:09:00.000-04:00

That's me!
And I'd like to invite you to check out the new blog that will chronicle the writing of my next book, The Innkeeper's Husband. You can find it by going to: www.innkeepershusband.blogspot.com
And don't forget to check out my other websites, ShawnKerivan.com and the website for the Auberge de Stowe B&B.

Thanks, and I'll see you there!

Leave me alone, I'm a family man

2007-06-04T14:22:00.000-04:00

I did a quick head count of the innkeepers in Stowe recently, and out of nearly 60 inns, motels, lodges, and B&B's, I came up with about a half dozen places staffed by innkeepers with kids. That number is probably shrinking, too, and with good reason. Few people are willing to run an inn at the level needed to devote adequate time to your family and your business. I know that in the seven years we've done this, we've struggled at times, and only within the past couple of years have we been able to choose family over business when we needed to. The big obstacle is timing: when you're kids are available for travel and activities, you're inn is usually at its busiest.
This weekend we closed and went camping. We go every year, to the same park, and it's one of the highlights of our year as a family. We also closed for several days in April to go to Washington, D.C. It's never an easy decision to close. My wife told me we turned away enough business last weekend to half fill the inn, and it's likely we would have been completely full, because we'd pulled our inventory off the Internet a long time ago. Who knows how many potential lodgers found us, only to discover that we weren't open on the weekend they wanted to visit?
One thing is certain: You don't get time back. Once you're kids have grown, they're childhood is over. Many is the man or woman who wakes up in their late forties and discovered that they haven't really lived at all, they've just worked for some imaginary piece of pie in the sky. People become innkeepers for all kinds of reasons, but many of them never realize the amount of work and time it takes to become successful. And then they ask themselves, "What is success?" And if you end up hiring employees to run your inn so that you can have the family time you're craving, is that innkeeping? Or has something been lost in the pursuit of success?
These questions aren't unique to innkeeping, and that might be the biggest surprise at all. For me, having the ability to keep my business at a manageable size allows the kind of flexibility I need to have a family and a job. Is it perfect? Nope, and I don't recommend it for everyone. But when I'm sitting by the campfire getting chomped by black flies while my kids embed memories for a lifetime, I think I'm on the right track.

Promoting the Book

2007-05-27T14:08:00.000-04:00

It's never too early to get a jump on promoting your next book, even if that book isn't written yet. So with that, I'm announcing the impending publication of The Innkeeper's Husband. As much as I'd like to start begging you all to buy a copy, I don't know when it will be published, so you'll have to take a rain check. As you might deduce from the title, the book is about me. Actually, it's about our experience as innkeepers here in Stowe, Vermont. But it's my point of view, which is that of the great man behind the great woman. Over the years so many crazy things have happened to us, so many unclassifiable events have occurred, that a book like this was inevitable. It actually started with the Stowe Reporter, and the series of columns I wrote for them back in 2001 and 2002, called InnSights. Those articles--about thirty of them--form the backbone of the book's narrative arc. They were a look at the unexpected side of innkeeping, taken from the point of view of struggling new innkeepers. I learned two things from that experience. First, there was a huge market for anything written about innkeeping. And second, it was a kind of writing I enjoyed doing. It was creative non-fiction (heavy emphasis on the creative, light on the non), and I could write from the hip, as it were. My wife Chantal was the one who began encouraging me to write a book from our experiences. Whether that stemmed from her desire to own a Porsche, or a need to diversify my writing portfolio is open to debate. Whatever the case, the book is happening. My goal is to finish it before the end of August. I return to Community College of Vermont for the fall semester, and I'll be teaching two courses then, so time will begin to vanish again.
In the meantime, I'll keep you up to date about its progress, and if you know anyone who wants to publish it, give me a call or drop me an email.

Mondays and Baseball

2007-05-21T16:16:00.000-04:00

As a writer, there are sometimes when you just can't write. For some people, that means writer's block. For me, that means Mondays. Mondays are horrific around the inn, and around the schedule. Everything seems to happen on Mondays. The entire day is over-scheduled. The most recent addition to the list is baseball.
Both my sons play baseball, and on Mondays one has a practice, the other a game--this week it's out of town. They both have fencing on Mondays, too. This compresses time into diamond status. I'm a coach on one of the teams, so my time is vaporized, too. Today was a great example.
After getting home from work about 11:30, I ate lunch, then, noticing the rare patch of blue up in the sky, I decided to mow the lawn. Two acres and an hour and a half later, I transitioned from mowing to electrical repair. I wired the new pool pump to a timer, tested it, then I serviced a gas pump we'll be needing soon to pump out the pool and add new water. By that time it was nearly three, and the boys were on their way home from school. Fed them, dropped one off at fencing, the other at baseball practice, then dropped my book off at the local paper where it will be read and reviewed.
So what? you ask. Everybody's busy. True, but something happened with my writing over the weekend. A few days ago I started a journal, and it quickly led to some revelations that ignited a book, long dormant within me. So I'm suddenly taken with the need to write. But then I remembered it was Monday, and my life is not my own. Oh, well. It could be worse. I could have writer's block.

Anything of a Personal Nature

2007-04-21T07:16:00.000-04:00

Things like this have been happening:
I opened a letter and a check fell out. It was a book order, someone who wanted to buy my new book, Name the Boy. I signed a copy, slipped it into a mailer, and headed out to the post office. Before I handed the envelope over to the postal clerk, I made sure I scribbled "Media Mail" across the front, ensuring the most economical form of postage. The clerk looked at the envelope and said, "Media Mail, huh? Is there anything of a personal nature inside, like a letter?" I immediately said no; there was nothing inside except my book.
But as she weighed the envelope and applied the postage, counting out my change, I blushed with guilt, because I knew I'd just lied. Name the Boy was a book, a collection of short stories, and decidedly fiction, but the work itself was intensely personal. Despite my protestations to the contrary, despite the disclaimer in the front of the book saying "This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any character in this book to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental," I knew otherwise.
When I was at Goddard College pursuing my MFA, I had to write a long critical paper. For the subject, I chose to look at the literary relationship between Charles Dickens and John Irving, and then to compare that relationship with Irving's influence on my own writing. While researching the paper, I discovered a wealth of information about Irving's struggles with the loss of his own father (he was adopted by his mother's second husband, and he took that name--Irving). When my paper began to focus on Irving's seeming avoidance of the subject of his father, my advisor cautioned me against letting the paper become a "gotcha!" quest.
But what I discovered was the intensely personal relationship between an author and his work. With Irving, I could see the longing for the relationship with his father appear in his writing. I didn't have any proof; as a son who also longed for the same thing, I recognized the elements in the writing. I knew that anything I wrote, anything I fictionalized, would still be of a personal nature.
I couldn't explain this to the postal clerk--I didn't want to make her "go postal." So I kept my little lie to myself, and watched my bubble wrap-covered tome of intensely personal material get tossed into the mail bag, and sent off into the world.

A Book is Born

2007-04-08T10:10:00.000-04:00

It was like an old girlfriend calling you up and telling you've got a nineteen year old child who wants to meet daddy. Or buying a new car after a painful negotiation. I'm talking about Name the Boy, my book, which has just been published by Dan River Press in Thomaston, Maine. The short story collection that didn't seem like it would ever be, finally is. And what a ride it's been.
If you're really interested in the whole topsy-turvy experience I've been through over the past three months, read my upcoming article in the Stowe Reporter. But for now, I just want to reflect a little on what's to come, and it seems like that's going to involve some selling. The good news is that I've made my first over the counter sale already, to one of the guests who stayed at the inn this week. For those of you that can't make it up to Stowe, you can still buy a copy of Name the Boy online at my website, www.shawnkerivan.com.
But for those of you who can come up to Stowe within the next week or two, I've got a treat for you. Actually, the Mountain has a treat for you: several feet of fresh snow. I don't know how it happened, or why, but we're suddenly blessed with endless dumps of snow. For the last couple of weeks, we've been finishing our Sunday afternoon skiing in 50-degree spring conditions, saying to ourselves, "That was the best day skiing ever." Well, we did it again this morning.
Every Easter there's a sunrise service on the Mountain, at the top of the gondola. This morning there was also a blizzard at the top of the gondola. The skiing that followed the service was indescribable. Not only did I not see my skis, I never saw my boots as I drifted down through the powder. So grab your boards and get up here this week. I'll send you home with some great memories and my new short story collection, Name the Boy.

The Social Scene

2007-03-26T16:12:00.000-04:00

It's northern Vermont, it's the end of March, and the snow is melting. For an innkeeper at one of the country's premier ski areas, these are bittersweet times. Winter teased us this year, stuttering in December before spanking us with a green Christmas (the first one in the seven years that this innkeeper's been around these hills), then dragging its feet into the middle of January. We were gut-punched on Valentine's Day with nearly four feet of snow, and March produced a couple of storms that had to be measured with a yardstick. And while the Mountain holds out against the drizzle and showers, the rest of us watch the destruction expose itself along the roads.
This is where our repeat customers come in. There were a couple of regulars up this weekend, grabbing a late seasons treat of corn snow and lovely end of March temperatures. Saturday saw us revive a ritual we've forgotted over the last couple of years: a trip to the Trapp Family Lodge sugarhouse. It's sugaring season up here, and that means the sap is running up and down the sugar maples, dripping out into galvanized buckets, and boiled into pure maple syrup. Trapp's has an open house with sugar on snow tasting, horse-drawn sleigh rides, and open tours of the sugar house. Back at the inn, things really got going.
We invited one of our guests and his son to dinner with us. Another guest joined us after dinner while the kids played board games and watched videos out in the back room. Still another guest showed up with a bottle of wine he wanted to share with us. It was fun, but exhausting. Sunday followed that with some of the best skiing of the season.
That's the way the social scene goes for innkeepers. We sometimes forget that our guests--who often become our friends--are on vacation, and they want to share that with us. It helps to be a little Irish. And napping is a good idea, too.

The Speed of Snow

2007-03-10T19:27:00.000-05:00

I knew it had been a while since I contributed something to the blog, but I was still surprised to see two months had elapsed since my last entry. I was trying to figure out why I'd ignored this space for so long when I glanced at the date of the last post again: January 6. About a week after that, it started snowing, and it's been busy ever since.
Though the relationship between the weather and innkeeping goes a bit beyond symbolic, it's still not causal. That's to say that we had a lot of business on the books for February even before winter decided that Al Gore got it all wrong. But it started staying cold about the second week in January, and any gaps in the reservation book were quickly filled, resulting in an extraordinarily busy February. And then Valentine's Day came.
The reports started several days before that, as they always do, and as I always do, I ignored them, mostly. Over the weekend before Valentine's Day, people began talking about a "storm" for the middle of next week. But by Monday morning, we knew better how bad--or good, depending on your disposition--things were going to get. I cancelled my Wednesday afternoon class at Community College of Vermont on Tuesday morning. At that point, predictions were calling for over a foot of snow to fall. Ahh, I thought. Wouldn't that be nice.
But then things got out of hand, in a good, snowy way. Suddenly forecasters were talking about feet, as in a couple of them. And by the time things started on Wednesday morning, we knew exactly what we were going to get. And we got it. The mountains of Northern Vermont got three to four feet of snow by Thursday morning. On Mt. Mansfield, there was over four feet of snow. The great Valentine's Day Blizzard was in the record books.
And just last weekend we received a couple more feet of snow--March is often the snowiest month around here. What all that snow did to me was to make me remember. Suddenly there were mountains of snow to deal with, and that was an unexpected job to add to my lengthy resume. And there was the cold. It stayed below freezing for two months, and much of that time was spent below zero. Two days ago it was minus 15 when I got up.
Change is in the air today. It reached forty degrees, and a light rain is falling. I know we're not done with the snow yet, and I'm looking forward to more of it in March. And I'm also looking forward to this summer, when I can look back and chronicle just how fast the speed of snow really is.

The Long, Warm Winter

2007-01-06T07:16:00.000-05:00

In my heart, I know this is all going to take some time. In my mind, I can rationalize the events into an acceptable order. But in between my heart and my mind is reality. I'm talking about everything: the publication of my book, my busy schedule teaching, and the weather, because innkeeping in Vermont demands some discussion about the weather. Let's start with the book.
We sold enough copies of Name the Boy to satisfy the pre-order goals. There should have been something celebratory surrounding that event, but instead I felt dirty. I'm still afflicted with that classic authorial dichotomy: I write books, I don't sell them. It's a silly mindset, of course. I've had to sell all my other writing over the years, from magazine articles to short stories. I just wrapped up a series of articles for the Stowe Reporter about the journey I've been on with the book. So why should I feel bad about having to roll up my sleeves and sell my own book?
I'm blaming my MFA. Coming off two years of high-minded study, rubbing elbows with successful authors, elevating my craft through countless hours of reading and writing and rewriting...It pulled me away from reality, from the part of the writing world where the rubber meets the road. The past six months have been a process of fitting my degree into my life, my reality. I think I'm almost there. Though I just received a terrifying email from my publisher saying he lost the artwork for the cover of the book, everything else is ready to go. Writing in the real world takes optimism and persistence. Writing for the theoretical world takes disembodiment and spirituality. And here the twain shall meet.
Into that I've added a busy teaching schedule. I'm teaching three days a week at the Mt. Mansfield Winter Academy. MMWA is where ski racers come to train and study during the winter. I have a variety of classes, including Science Fiction, American Lit, Creative Writing, and Shakespeare. Most of the students come with a class in progress, and it's my job to keep them up to speed while they race their mornings away. It partly frustrating, partly exhilirating, and good experience for my teaching muscles. I'll also be teaching at the Community College of Vermont this spring. It's a lot of work, but I'm looking forward to the experience for the same reasons just listed. By the spring I hope to have a better idea about the role teaching will play in my future. Part of my hopes it will be a big role, but I'm writer from start to finish.
Finally, there's the weather. It's fitting that I throw the weather over everything else, because that's what the weather's doing to us right now. For innkeepers in northern Vermont ski areas, it's been horrible. Business has been okay, but as I look out the window the rain's pounding the white into mud. Like my experience with the book publisher or some of the frustrations I've encountered teaching, I have to take the long view. I'm lucky we don't live hand to mouth, that we have a plan. We'll make it through the worst of what nature throws our way by taking the long view. And when the book's finally published (sometime this month, I'm told), you'll be the first--or second, I should say--to know.

After You Write the Book

2006-09-29T12:43:00.000-04:00

I glanced at the last post to the blog--way back in August--and discovered the final line: Now I've got to sell some books.
How prescient.
My approach to this task was the same as my approach to all tasks (WARNING: CLICHES AND MIXED METAPHORS TO FOLLOW): hitch up my pants, grab my lunch pail, and grind it out. (OH! That felt so good! That's been building up inside me for ages!) But as hideous as that sounds, it represents my attack. I knew it wouldn't be easy, that accolades and money wouldn't just roll into me. I was ready to reinvent myself as a book marketer. I was ready to suspend disbelief.
What I've learned--so far--is that it takes more than just willingness and vision to get the ass-end of book publishing moving. I takes friends, it takes family, it takes a few serendipitous moments. But most of all, it takes single-mindedness, a focus and a belief in yourself, and an ability to step outside your existence and objectively listen to comments and criticism, no matter what corner they come from. That might mean taking some advice from someone who has not the least interest literature, but who knows something about selling things. Or talking to someone who has success in a medium different from yours.
In this way, I've been ultra-liberal in my outlook. I've solicited information from every corner, devoted time every day to this question: "What have I done to sell my book today?" The one difference I've found is my situation with my publisher. There's a clause in my contract that requires me (and the publisher) to mount an advanced selling campaign that must gross $3,200 by the end of November or the deal can be called off by the publisher. (Lawyers reading this will notice the lopsided feel to that clause, because there's no clause in there that says I can call the deal off if I feel the publisher isn't doing enough.)
Has it been enough? The publisher's part in the initial campaign has amounted to mailing out an announcement and order form from a list I provided for him. The problem with that was the presentation: it looked like junk mail, and many of the recipients threw it away without opening it. And once opened, the media wasn't succint and smartly presented. I've created a website to promote myself and my book; I've added an option for purchasing my book directly through my website, or downloading the order form; I've purchased promotional postcards that I designed myself and mailed at my own expense; I've gotten media coverage by landing a regular column in the local paper about the ups and downs of publishing a book; I've gotten independent media coverage about me and my book; I've purchased business cards to hand out to people while I'm telling them about my book; I've linked my website to places that might drive business to me, and I've undertaken email marketing blitzes to target potential buyers.
I haven't exactly been loafing around.
Yet I have so much more to do. Anyone who wants to jump in with me, here's my website address again: www.shawnkerivan.com.
Now let's see, where was I? Oh, yeah. Selling books...

Books and Websites and Graduate Degrees

2006-08-04T19:41:00.003-04:00

I took July off. Figured I'd earned it. Not that I'm smug--I'm the least smug person you'll ever meet. At least I feel humble. Especially in light of the activities of the past month. On the 2nd of July I received my MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. As with most commencements, it was pro forma, the work for the degree having been completed ages ago. What was different was that it was a Goddard commencement, and what makes Goddard commencements different are the students. We're all allowed a few minutes to address the crowd, and inevitably our thank-yous deteriorate into emotional cliffhangers, as we finally understand fully what we've just accomplished.
Coming right after that, while I floundered in consideration of my future, was the news that my book would be published. Name the Boy was my creative thesis, the collection of short stories I created for my master's degree. The collection will be published by the Dan River Press, and it should be available at such places as Amazon.com. As that process develops, I'll keep readers informed.
Did I just say that my short story collection is going to be published? Holy smokes! This is huge for me. In he past I'd published a story here, a story there, with the hopes that someday a publisher would pick up the collection. Even after I'd accumulated a significant pile of published stories, however, nobody wanted it. In the publishing business, it's always the same thing: they never seem to want what you've got. So what was different? What brought me success this time? My first and last answer is the writing. It's always about the writing. For the past two years I've hammered myself into a different writer: different in that I knew why I was doing what I was doing. I wrote well before; now I could master the arts that went into it, I could understand them. They became a part of me. I also became a smarter searcher of markets, increasing my research until I found a publisher that looked very close to what I wrote. And bingo.
Finally, there's a new website. It's www.shawnkerivan.com, which only makes sense. I've always been blessed by the fact that there's only one of me, and when it comes to domain names, this one was available. I'm not sure of the true purpose of a website, except to dress up the meat and two veg that is the writing. But I'm looking at it as a promotional tool. A way to show off the writer and the writing.
Oh, yeah, there's the inn. July was one of our busiest months, so while all this was going down, we were full more often than not. Fortunately, I've got Chantal to keep things moving around here, allowing me the time to write, and when I'm burned out on that, the time to bust my knuckles on the lawn tractor.
Now I've got to go sell some books.

Books and Websites and Graduate Degrees

2006-08-04T19:41:00.002-04:00

Books and Websites and Graduate Degrees

2006-08-04T19:06:00.000-04:00

I took July off. Figured I'd earned it. Not that I'm smug--I'm the least smug person you'll ever meet. At least I feel humble. Especially in light of the activities of the past month. On the 2nd of July I received my MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. As with most commencements, it was pro forma, the work for the degree having been completed ages ago. What was different was that it was a Goddard commencement, and what makes Goddard commencements different are the students. We're all allowed a few minutes to address the crowd, and inevitably our thank-yous deteriorate into emotional cliffhangers, as we finally understand fully what we've just accomplished.
Coming right after that, while I floundered in consideration of my future, was the news that my book would be published. Name the Boy was my creative thesis, the collection of short stories I created for my master's degree. The collection will be published by the Dan River Press, and it should be available at such places as Amazon.com. As that process develops, I'll keep readers informed.
Did I just say that my short story collection is going to be published? Holy smokes! This is huge for me. In he past I'd published a story here, a story there, with the hopes that someday a publisher would pick up the collection. Even after I'd accumulated a significant pile of published stories, however, nobody wanted it. In the publishing business, it's always the same thing: they never seem to want what you've got. So what was different? What brought me success this time? My first and last answer is the writing. It's always about the writing. For the past two years I've hammered myself into a different writer: different in that I knew why I was doing what I was doing. I wrote well before; now I could master the arts that went into it, I could understand them. They became a part of me. I also became a smarter searcher of markets, increasing my research until I found a publisher that looked very close to what I wrote. And bingo.
Finally, there's a new website. It's www.shawnkerivan.com, which only makes sense. I've always been blessed by the fact that there's only one of me, and when it comes to domain names, this is a big plus. I'm not sure of the total necessity of a website, except that it becomes an adjunct promotional tool, sort of the eye candy to the meat and two veg of the literature. It's there now, and I invite you to check it out. Learn a bit more about me, if you haven't had enough already.
Oh, yeah, the innkeeping thing. July was busy--one of our busiest months ever, so while all this high fallutin stuff was exploding around me, there was an inn to run. Fortunately I've got Chantal to do that. I'm content to go out and bust my knuckles on the lawn tractor for a change of pace.
But first I've got to sell some books.

Teacher, Teacher

2006-06-25T17:39:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to figure out the difference between leading a workshop in an independent setting and leading a class under auspices of a traditional education institution. This is as close as I've come: In a workshop setting, I, the teacher, have vertical and horizontal control over everything; in the traditional institutional setting, I'm a plug-in, part of a greater whole. I'm prejudiced against neither. I'm just trying to figure out which path to follow, or if I should follow both.
Last week I wrapped up a five-week course sponsored by the Stowe Free Library. The course was called The Art of the Short Story, and for a short story writer like me, it was like giving a kid the keys to the candy story, the kid being me, and the candy store being the opportunity to share my knowledge with hungry students. The class went well, the students were great, enthusiastic, and that brings me to the first important difference between workshops and classrooms: people who sign up for a workshop do so because they want to be there; the same can't always be said for students being herded through the maze behind ivy covered walls. But there's more than that.
To offer a workshop is to engage the community at the grass roots level, the broadest, most accessible place. The workshop casts a local net over a diverse section of your friends and neighbors. Essentially it's initiated by you, the teacher. The class at the college level is initiated far and away, by unseen administrators and department heads. While they certainly have the needs of the community in mind to some extent, they're casting a net over a broader area, in search of a more specific fish. Workshop leaders cast smaller nets, for varied fish.
Why all the thought about this? I should be overwhelmed with my upcoming graduation from Goddard College (Sunday, July 2, 2006), as well as busy summer ahead of me at the Auberge de Stowe B&B. It's because I love both formats. There's something alluring about stepping into a classroom of young faces and feeling their needs grab you by the ankles and shake you out of your game plan. And there's something terrifying about stepping into a workshop full of savvy adults who don't need to be there, but are giving up their American Idol night, or their bridge night, to see how you can enrich them. As a teacher, you need to be prepared for both.
One of the great discoveries for me in the MFA program I've just completed is an interest--no, a love--for teaching. Coming into the program, the teaching practicum was the thing that scared me the most. But it turns out to be the thing I've had the most fun with, the most enjoyment with. Don't misunderstand me, the writer still rules my heart. But the teaching seems such a natural expression of what I seek as an artist that I'm compelled to it, a lover racing through the night to his beloved.
I hope the future offers me lots of choices, and I hope I can satisfy them all, because I'd hate to give up one of the other. If I do land in a university setting, I'll make it my business to offer workshops to the community. And if I don't, I'll find a way to infect the higher education system with my particular brand of teaching.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

2006-06-11T08:28:00.000-04:00

So much for free time on my hands.
For a long time I'd looked forward to this spring with luscious anticipation. Finally I'd be able to tear my head away from my studies and reacquaint myself with my surroundings. I'd go fishing with my sons, ride the lawn mower in the sun, drink a beer in the hammock. Be an innkeeper.
That didn't happen--at least not yet. What did happen was a scheduling explosion. When May rolled around, I suddenly realized that I was going to be as busy as I'd been the previous two years. It was that damn second law of thermodynamics again: systems becoming more complicated. The first thing that overtook me was the work remaining to wrap up my graduate degree. At Goddard, unlike other schools, you're responsible for managing your own paper work. That means instead of a small slip of paper with a bunch of letter grades, we get a full narrative transcript, describing in detail the work of the past two years. It also meant I had to deal with drafts and revisions. Then I had to create my Final Product Binder, the tome which housed all this spit and polish writing. The work piled up on the edge of my desk like grains of salt filling the bottom of an hourglass.
And then there was my short story writing workshop at the Stowe Free Library. I'd conveniently ignored it, and with only a few weeks till its scheduled start, I needed to dive into detailed preparations. I'd prepared a detailed outline of the course when I made the proposal, now I had to fill in all the theoretical blanks with bricks and mortar. Leading a workshop may only occupy two hours a night on Thursdays, but the preparation goes on throughout the week.
Oh, I almost forgot. Baseball. I'm involved in baseball at all levels the way plumbers are involved with water flow. Besides being a fan and dedicating myself to watching as much on television as I can, I'm on the board of Stowe Youth Baseball, and I'm in charge of coordinating the Rookie Ball and T-Ball programs. While this mostly means organizing the parents who actually coach the kids, it's still a lot of running around, answering phone calls and emails. And then there are my sons. Both boys are in Little League, but on different teams. That means a different game every night of the week. Since the beginning of May I've stood on every Little League field in Lamoille County, in driving rain laced with snowflakes, smothering humidity saturated with the smell of manure, and twilight pregnant with clouds of black flies from Hell.
Did I mention the inn? Air conditioners need to be installed, paint needs to be scraped, pools need to be opened, reservations need to be taken, woodchucks need to be banished, lawns need to be mowed, guests need to be entertained, and, at some point, it needs to stop raining around here. Twice the river in the back has been up to its banks, something unheard of at this time of year. I even found a couple of trout up on my lawn who told me they got out of the river because they were just plain exhausted from swimming against the raging current. I didn't have the heart to encrust them in almonds and fry them up.
But there's hope. On July 2nd I officially graduate from Goddard College with and MFA in Writing. Baseball season wraps up this week. There's sunshine in the forecast. My schedule's certainly going to open up after that, right?
Right?

What Happened to April?

2006-05-02T13:25:00.000-04:00

As shoulder seasons go, April and May are probably my favorites (though I'm likely to extol November next fall). It's hard to resist the lazy lure of spring after a bizarre winter. And if you're a writer, it's darn near impossible. That's because spring brings so much excitement with it, and as an innkeeper, that means that I actually have time to participate in some of the excitement.
Of course, spring means work around the inn. Snow, ice, cold, and wind have worked diligently all winter long to twist, crush, and strangle the old structure. Now she needs some TLC: tape (duct), locksmithing, and caulking compound. The locksmithing happened when I lost the key to one of my interior door locks. Since we had to get into the room, I had no choice but to drill the lock out. Savvy readers of this blog probably can guess that the chuck hadn't stopped spinning on my drill before the key to the now destroyed lock was suddenly discovered.
But this year things don't seem as desperate. Maybe that's because I've just completed my master's studies, and I'll be awarded my Master of Fine Arts in Writing this July. That means that I've suddenly freed up three hours a day. With all my free time, I expect to do a lot of strolling around the grounds with my hands in my pockets, appreciating all the things I've ignored for the past two years. From my early sorties, I can see there'll be a lot of cement mixing, nailing, and small engine repair in my immediate future. That's okay, because it's great motivation to keep writing and teaching.
That's what happened to April. It became the model for transition months: still too cold for most springtime activities, not cold enough to ignore them all. All in all, April is a very civilized month, preparing us for a mellow transition from winter--which lasts until Mother's Day--to summer, which begins with Memorial Day. April lets us gear down gradually, taking one layer off at a time. Guest arrivals at the inn are sporadic, but we still had to turn away business in order to go visit family for Easter.
For now, I'm happy to stand in the front yard with a rake, making half-hearted swipes at the detritus strewn about the grass, while I gaze lustily at the parade of Harleys gently rumbling by, waiting for the summer story storms to strike.

When Everything Happens All At Once

2006-03-04T11:48:00.000-05:00

The short answer is, yes, we knew this would happen. But you know I'm not going to stop there. The long answer is far more interesting. So here it is.
This winter stinks. It's been horrible. Yucky. And by that I mean it hasn't felt like winter at all. The entire month of January was given over to wind and rain. Things iced over intermittently in February, but winter didn't officially arrive until Friday, March 3rd. That's when it started snowing. And what a lovely snow it is: it's light and airy, supple, gentle, almost apologetic: "Oh, miserable innkeeper, I'm so sorry it took me all winter to get here. But aren't you glad I'm here now?" Yeah, yeah, just get out of the sky and onto the ground. Sheesh.
People in Vermont like winter. Winter is important to us. Without a serious winter, how can we complain about the non-
existence of spring? Without serious winter, what badge will we wear on our uniform? Winter defines us. It allows us to try new beers, to drink smokier single malts, to go to bed early and get up late. It also sustains us. When we bought this inn, the realtor told us, "The white stuff brings the green stuff." No kidding. A good winter can help the state's tourism industry, as well as swell the tax coffers. Never mind what it can do for a little inn walking he highwire of financial stability.
So you can imagine how edgy we've been as we rode out this wimpy Virginia winter. But there's been a nice contrast to the ugliness of this winter: the Mountain. Thanks to the dedicated talents of the snowmaking cadre at Stowe Mountain Resort, the skiing has been good to very good. Considering the weather, that's amazing. And it's been the one thing that's dragged all of us through. While the casual winter traveler might have stayed home, the skiers have been here.
One of the things that happens when winter waits till Mach to arrive is that all the problems usually faced arrive with it. Like frozen pipes. Despite my best efforts, the pipes in room one froze this week, aided by cold temps and strong winds. I got the call this morning...but I was ready. I hooked my hose up to the hot water faucet and jammed it down the shower drain till I removed the ice dam that had formed there. It was almost too easy--I didn't cuss once.
But we're not complaining. We'll always take a shot of winter in March. The days are longer, the sun is stronger, and the skiing is better than almost any other time of the year. If we have to put up with a little of winter's downsides to benefit from its upsides, we'll take it. See you on the slopes.

How To Get Things Fixed

2006-01-28T06:29:00.000-05:00

Running a small inn on a budget forces creativity. And when I say creativity, I mean desperation. Desperation as in, "I don't have money to fix that." In the old place that houses the Auberge de Stowe, there's lots that can, and does, go wrong. Pipes freeze. Circuit breakers pop. The hot tub foams over. And for the most part, I, the innkeeper's husband, can handle it. But for some things, I'm just plain ignorant.
That's where youth comes in.
And when I say youth, I mean the Internet, or computers, or whatever requires drinking a can of Red Bull to understand. Don't get me wrong; I'm not afraid to tackle my own computer woes. I'm just clueless, and I usually end up doing something really bad. Compare that to my forays into plumbing, which I always conquer, but which end up instructing my sons in the fine art cussin' as much as anything else.
This week we've got a large group staying with us, a ski club from an Ivy League school. We took this booking with trepidation: gaggles of twenty year olds aren't our target audience. But it was too good to pass up. Of course, when they arrived, they all whipped out their laptop computers and demanded to know if we had wireless. They needed to sit down right away and begin emailing each other: "Dude, we're here!" "I know, dude, I'm sitting beside you!"
But as they walked in, our Internet connection crashed. This was good news. I smiled and told Chantal that among one of these brilliant youth must be a computer geek--er, I mean, talented computer scientist. Now it was the guests who were desperate, and sure enough, one emerged. I think he was a sophomore, and he already had his own consulting business. Anyway, I brought him into the office, and he asked if he could start fiddling with wires. I cracked open a beer and said, "Knock yourself out."
A few hours later, before I went to bed, I went looking for him. He wasn't in the office. I found him out by the fireplace, with seven or eight of his friends. They were all sitting or sprawled out on the floor with their computers in their laps. The glow from the screens bathed their faces in foolish fire. But they were smarter than me. They got my Internet back up and working, and the wireless service, too.
They grunted absently when I wished them goodnight. But I didn't mind. I was thankful for their services. I was also trying to think of how I could get a plumber's club up here for a ski vacation, that way when the pipes in room one bust, they'd be as motivated to fix them as my Ivy Leaguers were motivated to fix the Internet service.
When you own an inn, these are the kinds of things you think about.

End of the Year Lisps

2005-12-23T19:41:00.000-05:00

The potential enegery at the little inn is nearing the breaking point. With the place booked solid through the New Year, we're entering one of our busiest stretches of the year. And for the first time, we've done some major improvements that should make a huge difference. Foremost among those improvements was the replacement of the 40 year old boiler that serviced the guest rooms heating system. Normally not a fan of thrwoing 40 year old things away, we made an exception this year, and we added a heating zone out in the back room, along with brand new windows, making the place downright balmy. More importantly, it saves energy, and as long as we continue to suffer astronomical fuel prices, every little bit helps.
All this has to do with things an innkeeper doesn't want to hear. When you add guests to the inn, you add stress, stress on systems, like heating and hot water, stress on the hot tub, stress on the innkeepers. And when you add stress, things break down. With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of the things that guests have said to me. They're in no order of severity or shock, just what comes to mind at the outset of another calendar year. As you read these, remember the spirit in which they were spoken: out of the blue, usually with me in my jammies and a cup of coffee in my hand, or late at night, with a glass of bourbon in my hand.

* There's no (hot water/heat/electricity/high-speed internet access/boot warmers/masseuse on staff/heated towel dispenser...you pick'em).
* I tried to fix the toilet, but...(use your imagination here).
* We need new sheets.
* Could you throw this away? (Imagine being handed a variety of bad smelling things: diapers, ashtrays, plastic bags filled with offal.)
* Um, I don't know how to say this, but...
* Do you have any rolling papers?
* Is the hot tub supposed to foam like that?
* What's that swimming in the pool?
* Have you seen my kids?
* Have you seen my car?
* Have you seen my husband?
* Did you you say we could or couldn't wear street clothes in the hot tub?
* Do you have a plunger?
* Could I borrow some paint remover?
* Can an iron be un-melted from a carpet?
* Are you the innkeeper that writes?

Yeah, that's me. So be careful. You might end up in my blog. Or, better yet, you might end up in my upcoming book: The Innkeeper's Husband.

What It's All About

2005-11-05T09:21:00.000-05:00

Sometimes we're jolted from our routines. We ask ourselves "Why?" and bemoan the inconvenience. We lose sight of the things that define us, that live inside us and guide us, unseeing, unknowing.
And then it snows. In October.
There's nothing especially remarkable about snow in October in northern Vermont. Rather, it's the presentation of it, the context in which it arrives, that distinguishes it, that sets it in our memories. This year's snow was especially poignant, coming on the heels of so dreary a foliage season, so warm a September. And when life gives you snow...you ski.
The storm dumped about 2 feet on Mt. Mansfield, home to Stowe Mountain Ski Resort (or, as I and several thousand others refer to them, "my trails"). Down in the Village, we ended up with 5 or 6 inches, enough for the boys to build snow forts and launch the season's first internecine encounter. Enough to make it feel like winter.
Winter is what we live for. The cold air pressing on every square inch of your body, scalding your lungs, drying your lips and changing your words before they're heard. We live for snow deep to our knees, for blue-bird skies and stars so bright they hurt your watering eyes. There's nothing that brings you so alive as winter. The skiing is just our specific addiction to this season. It could be snowshoeing, it could be just sitting by the woodstove. You do what you do when the time comes.
So we skied. On October 30, on a perfect, sunny Sunday, we slapped our skis on our shoulders and hiked up a trail called Chin Clip, not too far, and slid down the Mountain. Why? Because it's what we do. It's who we are.
Bonjour l'hiver.

Down Time

2005-10-15T19:57:00.000-04:00

I always look forward to this time of year. I'm not talking about the bold colors exploding off the trees, or the warm days following crisp nights...Jeez, I sound like a commercial. No, what I'm looking forward to is stick season, that time of year when wet snowflakes lacerate your face, and the traffic isn't backed up all the way to the church on Mountain Road. I used to think it had to do with being a writer. I know better now.
Writers are queer in this way: we look forward to large blocks of uninterrupted time, during which we can create out chefs d'oeuvre. We fantasize about retreating to our workspace with nothing but hot coffee and clean underwear, we're we'll cloister ourselves, pampering our muses, lavishing the world with our heady issuences. It doesn't work out that way. Especially if your the innkeeper's husband.
I kind of shot myself in the foot this year. I finished my writing for school ahead of schedule, so as soon as the leaves fell off the trees, I was at loose ends. Don't get me wrong; being a graduate student guarantees an endless supply of work...sort of like owning a 170 year old inn. But the high pressure stuff is in the can, requiring only revision and rewriting. I've got my final creative thesis to put together, but aside from that...
It can mean only one thing: work around the inn. There'll be no excuses now, and I've got a lot to do between now and Thanksgiving, when the snows will deepen, preventing me from doing anything except shooshing down the side of Mt. Mansfield until April. First on the list is windows. We're replacing most of the windows on the back of the inn. This is good news. Now I won't have to run around in the morning, sweeping up little piles of snow that leaked inside overnight. It also means that I won't have to hand out Aran Island sweaters to guests entering the breakfast room. Sure it was quaint, but progress beckons.
And I haven't even mentioned all the "buttoning up" that has to be done. Branches have to be pruned, hoses stowed, bikes exchanged for skis, and the snow blower needs some attention. Only half of it works: the entire right side is paralyzed. I suspect a sheer pin somewhere, but in order to confirm that, some serious cussin' will have to take place, and I'm sure I'll get reacquainted with the first aid kit.
And where will this leave the writer? Richer, no doubt, for with cussin' comes inspiration. All the thumb bashing and back wrenching lead to more fertile places. But I'd rather have an assignment. Like imagining a bunch of hard work around the inn, then writing about it. I'm good at that. Ah, well, there's one consolation: it always ends up 5 o'clock. Meaning cocktail hour.

Desk Jobs

2005-09-18T13:36:00.000-04:00

There's nothing worse than answering a potential guest's inquiries with bumbling bits of incoherent noise. It happened to me while at the front desk the other day. I couldn't locate the rates for Christmas week, and I had a mental breakdown. Instead of calmly flipping through the reservation book, I panicked, and began throwing papers randomly into the air, hyperventilating, and gnashing my teeth. I was also trying to fend off two kids, a dog, and a seedy looking character who had drifted in off the street and was asking me if I'd charge him less for a room if he didn't use any toilet paper. The point I'm getting to is that a clean, well-lighted space defines success in both innkeeping and writing.
I understand that desk space is as much about personal expression as it is about practical accessibility, but I've found certain truths immutable. I'd like to share both of my desk spaces with you, the one a use for writing, and the one used for innkeeping.
A big, honking, plastic computer colossus dominates the writer's desk. This is a real tragedy. There's nothing electronic about writing, and for the way I use the computer, I'd be as well served by a typewriter. The good news: this computer's not hooked up to the Internet. I stripped everything, save MS Word, from it, so it's a turbo file manager that lets me write. Around the plastic temple lies a variety of items meant to enhance the writing experience: a clear, plastic ruler (for back scratching), maps (for dreaming: topo maps of the area, maps of Montreal and France, and Boston, all places I've lived), several layers of books (Shakespeare, Cooper, Melville, Joyce, Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy), a nice pen the approximate shape of a Mont Blanc fountain pen, a good six inches of legal pads (duh), some kind of sports stick, like a golf club, baseball bat, hockey stick, or hurley (I have a Ping 2 iron; it's useless to me on the golf course, but it works wonderfully at my desk), a harmonica (for the really painful times), a huge cross section of grammar, usage, and style manuals, as well as the American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition, red pencils (nobody's that good), and something from my kids. I have a drawing of a Medieval castle under siege, complete with Old French expletives captured in dialogue balloons. That keeps it real, a reminder that it's not all about me.
The innkeeper's desk differs vastly. Telephone and reservation book occupy center stage. Next to them is the credit card machine, or, as we call it, Giver of Life. Scattered around the telephone and reservation book lies a vast array of loose papers: some are reservation slips, past and present; some are small notes, reminders to call someone back or leave extra towels in a room. There's also a doorbell mounted on a plaque of wood that says: "We're Here! Please Ring The Bell!" Next to that is a clear plastic squirt bottle with the word "Dog" written on it.
Our goal is to present our guests not with some contrived image when they enter the lobby; it's to give them the feeling that real people live here, real, eccentric people, just like them. Like the writer's desk, which reflects the idiosyncrasies of the writer, the innkeeper's desk reflects the kind of inn this is. You can check out the front desk when you come, but don't expect to see the writer's desk unless you bring some really good single malt with you.

2005-08-15T21:51:00.000-04:00

Writers are suckers. It's in our nature. We crave our craft to the exclusion of everything else. We think of writing more than we think of sex or of drinking. And we're willing to do anything to improve, to make that leap to the next level. This makes us vulnerable to scams, and when it comes to writers, scam artists have rich grounds to mine. As an innkeeper, I naturally want to get in on the scamming of writers. But how?
If you ever read any literary magazine, you'll find an endless supply of offers for writers to improve, among them retreats. You can cruise the Caribbean with Robert Olen Butler, hike the Rockies with Richard Ford, and go whitewater rafting with Maya Angelou. Well, maybe not whitewater rafting...maybe book hunting in Paris. But the point is that there are more ways for writers to be parted from their money than there are writers.
My little innkeeper mind has been hard at work. Here's what I'm thinking:
November and April are tough months in the innkeeping business. Old timers call those months "shoulder seasons." Most innkeepers are wealthy--that's how they stay in business. So they simply close their doors and head south. Alas, the aubergistes of the Auberge are not even remotely close to wealthy. "Hand to mouth" is the box we check when filling out our tax returns. So what can we do to put some heads in beds during the off season, and make a few bucks?
The answer is: writers. So willing to part with their money for a little advice from other writers, and they get to do it in a quaint little Vermont inn. But there's a lot of planning involved. First I'll need qualified instructors. No problem: Goddard friends to the rescue. I'll solicit Scattershot to lead the poetry sessions. Noonani the Great will handle playwrites. And the Blade Sisters will work the short fiction and giggle requirements. I'll pay them in room nights. But there has to be some recreation. Hmmm.
November should be a cinch: deer hunting. They won't need guns. I'll just position them strategically in the woods, and have them drive the deer to me. That should give them something to write about. April's a little trickier. The weather is hideous, most of the restaurants are closed. I've got it: painting. They can help repaint all the rooms I've got scheduled for rehab. Brilliant.
I'll have to think of a clever name, something like, Write For Your Life. But I think you get the idea. So look for my ad in an upcoming literary mag. I'll be between self-publishers and the contests with hundred dollar entry fees.

Confessions of a Java Junkie

2005-07-16T14:27:00.000-04:00

I'm on the bean. The way a junkie is on the horse, the way a rummy is one the bottle, I'm on the bean--the coffee bean. This is an exciting and wonderful development in my life, and I have my employer to thank for it.
My position with FedEx changed this week. Previously, I'd haul myself out of bed at zero-dark-thirty in the morning to drive to the airport, where I'd work the arrival of FedEx's daily 727 full of important stuff that people absolutely, positively needed overnight. You know, camouflaged thongs and electronic thingies. That all changed this week. This week I began working for FedEx at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in Waterbury, Vermont.
FedEx ships all the coffee from Green Mountain's facility, and they maintain a couple of employees there to oversee the shipping. At first blush this seems anathema to a graduate student of writing, but it's been a blessing. You see, I'm now surrounded by coffee, coffee, coffee...buzzzzz. It's no secret that coffee fuels an inn. It's also no secret that coffee fuels a writer. Blending the two creates a potent mixture of inspiration and uncontrollable shaking.
One of the main reasons people become innkeepers is coffee. Innkeepers pride themselves on their coffee. They also pride themselves on drinking buckets of the stuff. So when the chance to work at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters came along...well, you can guess how I felt. My days are no longer governed by the clock. Their segmented by the coffee I drink, for at my new position (official job title: "Box Monkey"), I have unlimited access to fresh coffee.
I arrive for work at 6 a.m. Or, as I now refer to that position of the hands on the clock, Kenyan AA. It's a dark and acidic brew, and you have to be over 21 to drink it. I'll follow that up with a cup of Indonesian Dark. Mid morning belongs to Fair Trade Organic Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Okay, I'll admit I have no idea what Yirgacheffe is, but I know what it does. Hey, Bob Geldoff can help out Africa his way, I'll help out by rinsing their coffee through my liver. By late morning I'm ready for a treat, maybe a Belgian Chocolate Nut. And just before I leave, I finish with a vat of Jamaican Blue. It's not my favorite, but it sounds vaguely like one of the controlled substances we used to smoke in high school, so I'm all for it.
Besides giving you the ability to see the truth, coffee does lots of good things for you. It speeds metabolism, and it keeps your molars nice and smooth. And some claim it's an aphrodisiac. I'm not touching that. (Or that. Yet.) But what's really great is my arrival home after work. I'm ready to create thousands of pages of new creative work for my advisor. She thinks I'm writing a collection of short stories, but I think I'm documenting the story of life itself. That's what the coffee keeps telling me.
I'm not sharing this to make all the coffee junkies jealous. I just want to show that at the intersection of writing and innkeeping there's a big sign, and it says COFFEE. So grab your notebook and your pen, snuggle up to your desk, and pour yourself a big old cup of java. I'll meet you at Caffeine Junction and we'll explore the Costa Rican Peaberry together.

Writing Is NOT Like Carpentry

2005-06-23T17:07:00.000-04:00

It's a well-worn old saw. Writing class teachers always reach for things with which they may equate writing to the lay person: Writing is like a long walk through the woods; Writing is like breathing; Writing is like carpentry. As both a writer and the proprietor of a well-worn old inn, I have unique insight into that last simile. And I can tell you unequivocally that writing is not like carpentry.
I just finished rebuilding the front porch. I didn't want to rebuild the front porch, but it was falling down. I kept hoping that I'd wake up some morning and discover that it was completely gone, the victim of an extremely localized conflagration, or at least a drive by porch-napping. But the porch hung on bravely, shedding little bits of itself daily, dying of porch leprosy.
As I demolished it, then dug new footings, and reframed it, I began thinking about carpentry and writing. Carpentry is rational and methodical. You have an idea, you formulate a plan, you draw up the plan, you make a materials list and estimate the cost, you destroy, you rebuild, from the bottom up.
If pressed, I guess the "building from the bottom up" portion of the process could be equated with writing. But even that is a bit of a reach. That's the whole "vision and intent" thing. Sometimes writing works one way, sometimes the other. For example, you might be seized by a feeling, or moved by a character: that's your vision. You work out the intent afterward--the other characters, what happens, the story. Sometimes, you'll have some non-specific things in mind, a couple of characters that keep hanging around, and you just don't know what to do with them; they resist scripting, like all good writing. Then you see it: what the characters represent, what they're trying to say. You had the intent all along; the vision comes at the end.
That happened with my porch. I had the plan, rebuilt the whole porch, and was generally unmoved by the whole task. But when the porch was completed, and I stepped back and looked at it, my breath caught in my throat. The new little porch was beautiful. It was elegant and simple, the perfect fit for this old Vermont farmhouse. I immediately pictured a couple of old rocking chairs out there, some geraniums. I suddenly got the vision.
But banging nails, dragging lumber around, cutting wood? There's no art in that. That's just back breaking work. You have to be patient for the payoff...that's where the comparison to writing comes in.
I think I'm going to go out and sit on my new porch with a beer.

Your Internet Dating Destination

2005-05-14T14:26:00.000-04:00

I don't know why I didn't think of it before.
This weekend we had a guest who came to meet her Internet, um, potential boyfriend. I'm sorry that I don't have the jargon down, but I'm new to all this. Since I don't date over the Internet, I'm not really sure where this might lead. But as an innkeeper I can see the potential in this. As an innkeeper I can see the potential is just about everything. As a writer I see the tragedy of it all.
When this guest arrived, her "friend" from Morrisville dropped her off. Chantal and I wondered what her situation was--why wasn't her "friend" staying? And why wasn't she staying with her "friend"? But, after you've kept the inn for a while, you shrug these things off, filing it in the "I've seen just about everything" folder. As usually happens, breakfast enabled conversation.
It turns out that our guest met her "friend" (Is it okay if I lose the quotations? They remind me of Dr. Evil.) in a church sponsored chat room, and she traveled to Vermont to meet him. I thought, "This has potential."
We're the perfect place for this. Our rooms are clean and comfortable, and Internet friends can get rooms across the hall from each other. Or they can rent two adjoining rooms that share a bathroom. What better way to get to know someone than to share a bathroom with them? Think of it: Do they leave the cap off the toothpaste? Do they leave the seat up? Are they a two flusher? Towels bunched up on the floor? Do they greedily take the last sheet of two-ply without refilling? Are they at least gracious enough to attempt deodorization, or do they leave it to you to call in the Haz-Mat team?
The evaluation extends beyond the john. How are their table manners? Do they hold their utensils like a character from Cooper's Last of the Mohicans? Do they shower the table with bits of food ejected from their mouths? How's their hot tub etiquette? Do they at least wait for the jets to turn on before adding their own bubbles? These questions all become marketing points in my sales material. The question is, How do I sell this? I can't possibly surf through all the chat rooms where friends meet. And when Internet people want to find a place to meet, how do they initiate a search.
This sounds like a lot of work to me, and I didn't become an innkeeper to work. I became an innkeeper to observe my guests and write a book about it.
In the meantime, if you know of any Internet friends that would like a nice, safe place to check out each other's bathroom manners, direct them to us.