VAIL, Colo. - Even if you want to sleep in one morning, hearing the moan of water pipes in the walls reminds you it's not a very good idea. Not if you want a shower warmer than a December mountain stream.
Up you go. At the bathtub you crank the water faucet all the way to "hot" and wait. And wait. About the time it takes to preheat an oven before putting in the biscuits, it seems, the water begins to turn from icy cold to . . . well, less chilly.
On the tarnished faucet is one of those tabs you pull up to redirect the flow to the showerhead - this act requiring a balancing act before a feeble stream dribbles down. Knowing time is limited, you hop in and survive a minute or two, but at least it's warmer than it would have been had you stayed in bed another 15 minutes. A warm morning shower is definitely a first-come, first-served proposition in these parts.
Welcome to the Roost, a vaguely Bavarian-looking motel perched on a little knoll across I-70 from the village and ski area of Vail, Colo.
As a youngish ski writer some 30 years ago, my first visit to the Roost - a place where itinerant ski bums could afford a night or two - grew out of necessity. It was the only place in Vail I could afford, a kind of youth hostel.
I seem to remember the practice of a couple of college kids renting a room at the Roost, then about a dozen friends piling in for a kegger and a couple hours of sleep before they headed across the way to experience some of the finest skiing in North America. Some things are worth suffering for.
If I was much younger then, so was Vail. It seemed such an easy move in those days to walk in ski boots, skis on shoulder, across the highway to the frontage road, then up to the Gondola at Lionshead.
The streets to the slope were narrow, built on the intelligent principal that people move best on feet, not wheels. Except for the police cars - Saab Turbos, a hot ride in those days - there were no cars allowed in this village that we faintly mocked as pseudo-Tyrolean.
But then, without all the white Christmas lights, the outdoor statuary, and unfathomably artsy business signs of these days, Vail Village was genuinely Tyrolean and plain to see. Just over the covered bridge over Gore Creek was the hotel and restaurant built and operated by Pepi Gramshammer and wife Sheika.
Pepi had been a ski racer in Austria who, in 1964, built the Gasthof Gramshammer in the rambling style of an Austrian mountain hotel, and most of the building that followed in the village kept the theme, or more luxurious variants of it. So from its infancy as a ski resort, Vail became a favorite of European skiers, many, of course, friends of the Gramshammers. In the 1980s, Swedish superstar Ingemar Stenmark, who had raced all over the world, declared Vail his favorite ski town.
For lunch we would come down to the village and carry our skis to one of the racks out front of the restaurants and shops, reminding us of storefront hitching posts in cowboy movies. The special of the day at Pepi's was always a huge sausage sandwich - a brat - and a beer. We drank the beer out of glass mugs, which now and then we'd hold up against the sun to inspect the color - rich, dark, with a creamy head. It was an age before light beer, and perhaps, for that reason alone, life was better.
Dinner was almost always steak. We found it easy to believe the promotion that Colorado range-fed beef was some sort of health food, and now we know we were right about the red wine we washed it down with.
Back at the Roost at night, there may have been a TV, but a much higher level of entertainment surrounded the speculation of when the college kids would begin jumping from the second-story balcony into the heated pool below.
Of course, my time for such shenanigans was long past - if it was ever there - but I do remember at least once finding myself out rolling in the snow in a bathing suit, then jumping in the hot tub.
Rooms were small at the Roost, like those in European hotels. Since you knew nothing about 24-hour cable, entertainment centers, video games, microwave popcorn, or devices you plugged into your ear to make a wall between you and the people with you, you didn't know just how deprived you were.
The Roost only had to be a place where you put your head down on a pillow in anticipation of rising for the morning milk run and, if the world was very good to you, fresh powder in the back bowls. The last thing your eyes fell on before you snapped off the one bedstead light was your Rossignols in the corner. Then sleep descended like a fast-moving blizzard muffling out the brawling of college kids around the balconies.
Last week, when I made plans to cover World Cup skiing at Vail, I became annoyed to find lodging prices centering around $200 to $300 per night - in November? With marginal (at best) snow?
I looked for the least expensive nightly rate and, amazingly, a double digit popped up. The Roost, $89 a night. So came the nostalgic flashback, and I booked it. The only dismaying part of the experience was learning that the Roost will be torn down in a year, replaced by some mega-condo complex. Too valuable property, you see, to be used for affordable lodging for people without serious aversion to a lukewarm shower.
Few will mourn the passing of the Roost. Nor is it some legendary landmark whose loss will tear the heart out of Vail. The old lodging house has run its course, a used ship ready for mothballs. As its bumper sticker proclaims, Vail will still love you, and the more money you have to spend, the more it will love you, though that love won't pour out into the street the way it once did. It will be indoors, behind tasteful, breathtakingly expensive drapes.
And the only thing that will really be lost with the passing of the Roost, along with the $89 room, is the rather unfancy notion that all a skier really needs at the end of the day is a good night's sleep.
