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During halftime of the Giants/Cowboys game on Sunday, my father-in-law mentioned that he had just bought a chainsaw.

Less than 10 minutes later, we were out of the house and in my front yard cutting ugly branches from my big trees. For years I’ve only used hand saws and branch clippers that looked like big scissors. You feel vintage and slightly classy when you use tools like this, but they are terribly inefficient. I got a rush seeing how fast that chainsaw melted through the branch. At that point, I knew we wouldn’t watch the last half of the game. We had more work to do.

The next 4 hours might have been the best thing that happened to me all week. There are about fifteen Oleander bushes in my backyard that have grown over 40 feet, up into the canopy created by the taller, older pine trees. This dense green made for a lot of privacy, but it made my backyard difficult to keep tidy.

Plus, I’ve always suspected that there was a desert Sasquatch out there waiting to club me with a cactus stump. And he needs to get the hell out of there because I have enough problems.

One by one, we cut down the Oleander trees back to Oleander bushes. We dragged the fallen branches to the curb until we had a stack large enough to hide a military issue Hummer. We finished the evening by slicing up a bougainvillea that’s been dumping dead leaves into my pool. I felt a little guilty tearing down the bougainvillea with it’s pretty pink leaves, but they have no place near a pool.

John came over a couple times this week to pick something up random things from our house. Each time he’s pulled the chainsaw out of the trunk of his rental car and manhandled another overgrown bush. It’s fun because each day I’ve come home from work this week, the first thing I do is hop out of the car and explore my front and back yard to discover what’s changed.

As a kid, I despised the sound of Dad’s roaring chainsaw because it was so loud and violent. (Every one of my siblings can describe my epic hate of the chainsaw.) But over the course of an hour, my hatred changed to gratitude. You can’t despise something that is making your life more manageable. It was great.

This has been a very good week.

The Strater Hotel, my new favorite place to be when my flight is canceled. I was happy my phone took such a nice picture.

Some airports are more fun than others. Yesterday afternoon I waited in the airport in Durango for over four hours. In a bigger airport, you can kill a few hours by looking at magazines, chillin’ at Starbucks, or watching people. None of these were possible at the Durango airport because there was only a snack bar and a gift store. There were about 10 employees at the airport, and only 3 passengers. They were goofing off like junior high kids whose substitute teacher didn’t show up for class.

To keep myself entertained, I put on all my layers of clothes from my suitcase and stood outside in the snow to see how long I could make it before having to rush back inside to the warmth. I made it 40 minutes.

The minutes turned into hours, and finally it was time to pass through security and get on my airplane. Before I could remove my shoes and empty my pockets, the airline announced that the flight from Durango to Phoenix had been canceled. My heart sunk in my chest. This is the first weekend I’ve been away from Candyce since I found out she is expecting a baby, so it’s harder to be away than it used to be. But there’s not much you can do when there’s no plane at the airport to take me home.

Minivan Madness

After another boring hour, I hopped in a minivan taxicab with the other two other frustrated passengers to our hotel rooms bought for us by US Airways.

The whole experience in the minivan was weird and isolating. First, the Dodge Caravan smelled like it’d been smoked in for the last 10 years. This instantly brought me back to my childhood in the rural South where many of my friends’ parents chain smoked on our way to Wal Mart. Next, it’s just weird loading into a small van with strangers. Because lets be honest, when you bend over to slide into a van and try to find a seat, you are sticking your butt in the face of the next person in line. There I was in 15 degree weather in the dark, staring at the butt of a stranger by faint glow of the minivan’s interior light.

Most of the time a driver will try to find some music that is universally acceptable like jazz or classical to sooth the frustrated passengers. Not this guy. It was Saturday night, and he wanted to listen to Meatloaf so dammit he was going to listen to Meatloaf.

He was in chatty mood, so he prodded each of us to find the talker. Out of compassion for strangers that were sitting next to me in the dark, I decided I’d be the talker. While I was answering his question about where I what I do for a living, the driver turned up Meatloaf twice. Apparently he likes Meatloaf singing “I Would Do Anything for Love”, and he didn’t want me drowning it out. I stopped answering his question and the 4 of us reverently absorbed the melodramatic bridge to the song song (I would do anything for love…anything you’ve been dreaming of…) This moment of Zen was interrupted by the driver’s cell phone going off with Elton John’s “Like a Candle in the Wind.”

Bad Night Turned Good?

I was so happy when the van pulled up to the curb of the historic Strater Hotel right on Main Street in downtown Durango. It might’ve been the prettiest hotel I’ve ever stayed in.

After dropping my bags off in my room, I hiked down Main Street to Carver’s Brewing Company to get some dinner. I love ski towns because they’re unlike anything else. I sat at the bar wearing my hipster wool beanie with small brim that I got in New York. Next to me was a dude in his 20’s with a burly beard and a trapper’s hat, the furry hats with the floppy things that come down over your years. On the far end of the bar was a guy with a 1970’s looking beanie with a fluffy ball on the top. Yeah, we all looked goofy, but somehow we looked cool because we all looked goofy together.

We watched Green Bay beat while the senior bartender explained to the rookie waiter that there is a difference between Irish Coffee and coffee with Bailey’s Irish Cream.

Good Morning Colorado

I got up this morning at dawn because I wanted to explore downtown Durango. One thing I’ve learned from traveling over the last decade is that a city is most magical in the morning. Maybe it’s because nobody else is out yet and I feel like the town is all mine, or maybe it’s the way the low sun throws sharp light over the whole place. So if I can get to bed early the night before, I always do.

I started off the morning with a double espresso at the Durango Coffee Company, and then I hiked up the hill to explore the neighborhoods. After 20 minutes of trudging through the snow, I was beginning to feel the bite of the cold. I looked up to see the lit sign of the local bank that told me it was 7:12 in the morning, and it was 4 degrees.

King of the Ski Town

The new king of the ski town is the Toyota FJ. This shouldn’t be a surprise, because Toyota SUVs are staples of the ski town lifestyle, but it felt good to see FJ’s scattered around town with 6 inches of snow layered on its boxy rooftop. I loved seeing these toys parked on up and down Main Street, and on the snowy hillsides next to cool little houses.

The coziest place in Colorado, complete with real icicles.

Out of nowhere I bummed into Sacred Heart Catholic Church tucked in a cute tree-lined neighborhood. I left my coffee cup at the door and slipped inside. It was a good Mass with a funny priest.

Flying Home

The flight from Durango to Phoenix was beautiful. It’s rained quite a bit in Phoenix this January, so the higher altitudes in the state were covered with snow. As we got closer to the valley, the sun would ignite a trail of silver down the sides of the mountains. The water rushing down to the valley created the perfect mirror to reflect the bright rays of the sun back up to our airplane at 15,000 feet. The light show made me feel like I was in a fantasy movie.

Now I’m here in Phoenix trying to unpack my mind and my suitcase from a weekend that was full of surprises. It was a lot of fun speaking at the retreat in New Mexico. It was such a lively group. I think it’s time to go downstairs and watch some football.

I’m in the middle of remodeling my house. I feel like I owe it to the world to report on the untold subplots in the story of upgrading homes and lives. These are the deleted scenes from home remodeling shows. This is the truth:

• I don’t look cool. It’s hard to look at myself in the mirror. For most of my life I’ve prided myself in being a fashionable, well-dressed man. Man at his best. Not anymore! Since I’ll be sloshing around paint and wood stain, I wear my most unfashionable shorts or pants, the ones that I haven’t worn outside of the home in 5 years. I rip the sleeves off of my most faded or awkward shaped T-shirts. These are the staples of my remodeling wardrobe. If I saw some dude dressed like me in public, I’d pity him as a man painfully unaware of his appearance. I now understand why the professional painters who come into the coffee shop each morning wear respectable white pants and shorts. It gives dignity to the untidy trade. It keeps your spirits up.
• People ask me a lot of irritating questions. When your life is uneventful, you start to meddle in lives of people who have more drama. I know this because I’ll have ordinary months in life, I corner someone with more action get the scoop. Since all of my friends, neighbors, and co-workers know my house is under construction, I get pegged with about 10 questions a day. Every day. I might be done with my remodeling by now if I didn’t have to stop and answer questions about why I’m not done yet.
• I spend all my money at Lowes. If you were to make a highlight reel of the last six months of my life, you would see lots of boring footage of me looking for things on the isles of Lowes. Just me standing there silent for three minutes, scanning the wall for the right electrical outlet. Then you’d see more footage, except this time I’m swiping my credit card again and again and again. Here’s your warning: over the course of a house remodel, you’ll make 100s of trips to Lowes and spend a mind-blowing amount of money. It might make you feel better if you invest in stock of the closest hardware store before you begin remodeling.
• I won’t be around to enjoy it. Dad encouraged me early in the construction by saying, “When this is all done, you can enjoy it for years.” I wish! Although I enjoy working on my home, I’ve postponed the true pleasure of living in my home for at least another decade. I’m not settling in this house. So any work I do here is for someone else to enjoy. I’m a contractor hired by the future home owner. So if you don’t enjoy the trades of home remodeling, your only motivation will be financial gain. And life always manages to suck when you are chasing money.
• I feel like my life is spinning out of control. I cannot overstate this. The home is where you are sheltered from the dramas of the world throws at you. When your house is in disarray, it only adds the drama. If you live in the house you’re remodeling, you must have an endless source of mental and emotional fortitude. You have to get up in the morning and be okay with the fact that there is sawdust underneath your cereal bowl as your pour milk over your Cheerios.

I am lucky because I’m married to an awesome woman. We’re on the same team when it comes to overcoming the obstacles in life. If you and your spouse are in a rocky point in your relationship, fixing your home will break your relationship. Get your priorities straight and given your marriage an extreme makeover first.

My grandfather passed away on Christmas Eve, and a few days later Candyce and I found out that we are going to have a baby. I didn’t think I could fit anything else in 2007, but we finished off the year with intensity.

Candyce and I have spent the past couple weeks spending time with family on both coasts, celebrating Christmas, the New Year, and baby news in California. Then we traveled to Georgia for Grampa’s funeral.

It’s good to be wrapped with the support of family in times like these. I feel like I’m supposed to write something sincere about the funeral and time with the family, death, and life. But I’m still overwhelmed by all the newness in my life. Not everything can be described in words.