12/8/98 (Tuesday)

Hi everybody. This is Julie. I'm Jordan's girlfriend, which you know if you've read this page. A lot of you have been e-mailing him asking where the updates went. Some of you already know. For everybody else:

On the night of November 19th Jordan's car slid on ice on Highway 9 and went off the road. He is alive. He broke his back and his spinal cord was hurt. He had surgery in Denver, and now he's at a rehab hospital in Englewood, where he is working harder than I have ever seen anybody work at anything, and I have watched him hike forty minutes for one run of powder.

He asked me to put this up so people would know. He said to tell you, word for word: "Tell them I'll be back when I can type without a nurse reading over my shoulder." So there's that.

He's reading your e-mails. I print them out and bring them in. Please keep sending them. The funny ones especially.

-- Julie

11/11/98 (Wednesday)

Back on lift crew. Training all week, which is mostly a guy with a clipboard telling us things we know and then all of us standing in a circle in the maintenance barn eating donuts. We're opening this weekend with a handful of runs on man-made. The guns have been going every night and the whole valley sounds like a jet that can't decide whether to take off.

I bought new skis. Actual new skis, not somebody's used ones off the swap rack. I paid for them with river tips, which feels right. They're the new shaped kind, wide in the tip and tail and skinny in the middle, and everybody says they turn themselves. We'll see. My old straight skis are going on the wall in the apartment, crossed, over the futon, like a coat of arms.

Julie's back teaching the little ones. Her boss put her in charge of the three-year-olds this year, which she says is less like teaching and more like herding kittens in snowsuits. She practices her "pizza! pizza!" voice in the car.

Gear is waxed. Pass picture is taken. (I look like a hostage in it. Everybody does.) Life is simple and I like it that way. See you on the hill.

10/18/98 (Sunday)

Mud season. The river's done, the mountain isn't open, the town is empty, half the restaurants have signs on the doors that say SEE YOU IN NOVEMBER, and everybody who's still here is painting condos for cash. That's me. I have been painting the same beige on the same balconies for two weeks. I dream in beige.

But it snowed on the peaks twice now. The first time was back in September, right after I got off the river. I was driving over Fremont Pass and the whole Tenmile Range had a dusting on it like powdered sugar, and I pulled over at the top and got out and just stood there grinning in a T-shirt. A guy in a camper asked if I was OK. I said never better.

Beaker came over last night and we watched ski movies on the VCR and yelled at the TV every time somebody hucked a cliff. Julie went to bed at ten and said, "You two are twelve." Accurate.

9/13/98 (Sunday)

Last trip of the season. The river's low and bony this time of year, it's a rock garden, you spend the whole day reading the water like a map and still bump everything. My boat was a retired couple from Ohio and their grandson, who is eleven and who asked me eighty questions, including "Have you ever seen a dead body in the river?" (No.) And "Do you get paid a lot?" (Also no.)

The aspens on the drive home are starting to go gold. The Rockies, the baseball team, are terrible, and McGwire hit his 62nd on Tuesday, and I don't care about baseball but I watched it in the guide house with nine sunburned people screaming at a TV with a coat hanger for an antenna.

Final tip jar total for the summer I will not print here because my mother reads this page. Let's say it bought skis.

I'm going to miss the river. I'm going to miss being good at something that isn't skiing.

8/16/98 (Sunday)

They made me a trip leader this week. That means I'm in the front boat, I do the safety talk in the parking lot, and if something goes wrong it's my fault. The safety talk is my favorite part. I've got it down. I do a bit about how the river doesn't care about you, and then a bit about how I do, and people laugh at the right places.

Julie came down for my days off and we camped by the river and she asked what the plan is. Like, the plan. Not for tomorrow. I said the plan is winter. She laughed, and then she didn't, and then she said, "OK, and after that?"

I didn't have an answer. I've never needed one. I have been living in seasons for three years: ski, river, mud, ski. It never felt like I was putting anything off. It felt like I was doing exactly the thing. I guess now there's somebody else in the thing. She's not pushing. She just asked. I've been thinking about it for four days.

7/5/98 (Sunday)

Fourth of July weekend is the busiest weekend on the river. Three trips a day. I did the safety talk so many times yesterday I started saying it in my sleep in the truck. Julie came down after the bike shop closed and we watched the fireworks from the tailgate and I fell asleep before the finale. She says I snored through the big one.

Things I have learned as a raft guide:

• Sunscreen on the tops of your feet. Trust me.
• Every family has one kid who wants to ride the front and one who wants to go home.
• Never tell a boat "this next one is easy."
• If a customer says "I can't swim," believe them the first time.
• River water in July is still snowmelt. It still hurts.

6/14/98 (Sunday)

High water. The river's big and brown and fast and it sounds different, it sounds like a freight train that never finishes going by. We had a swimmer today in my boat, a dad from Kansas who went out on the first big wave. I got him by the shoulder straps of his life jacket and pulled him in on his back like we practiced in guide school, and he lay in the bottom of the boat laughing and coughing and saying "Wow. Wow." His kids thought it was the best thing that ever happened.

And tonight the Bulls won their sixth. I watched it at the bar in town with guides from four different companies and I was the only person in there from Chicago, so I was the only one standing on a chair. That shot at the end. I've been named Jordan my whole life and it has never been better than tonight.

5/17/98 (Sunday)

Guide school is two weeks of being cold. The river is snowmelt, and they make you swim it. On purpose. You jump in above a rapid in a wetsuit and a splash jacket and float through it feet first like a log so you know what your customers are going to feel. It feels like being punched by a refrigerator.

We've done flip drills (you flip the raft upside down on purpose and then flip it back while standing on it), throw-bag practice, and about a hundred hours of "reading water": eddies, holes, the V that points you where you want to go. The trainer is a woman named Shay who's been guiding since before I could ride a bike and who has never once looked worried about anything. I want to be her when I grow up.

I live in the guide house in Buena Vista during the week, which is a shack with bunks and a kitchen and a smell. On my days off I drive over the pass to Julie. It feels like having two lives, and they're both good ones.

I passed my checkout run on Friday. I'm a guide.