Summer Romance

Yesterday I was on the phone talking to one of my best friends. Both of us decided to kind of break away from our “normal” lifestyles this summer and travel the country for work. He is literally traveling the country working for a musical touring group stationed out of Branson. I ended up in Jackson Hole Wyoming working for a whitewater rafting company. Yours truly, Dave Hansen. To quote Ben, “This has been the most romantic summer of my life.” And it has been for me too. By romantic we mean in the traditional sense, not necessarily tied to love but as Merriam and Webster say “Marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.” Ben kept asking me about my job, what I do, what it’s like. I told him about cleaning wetsuits, getting people sized into them, booking people on rafting excursions, and the occasional training trips I’m able to get out and row on. Ben asked me if I liked my job and I was like, “How can I not? My job is to make people happy and help them have a good time on the river.”

Yesterday was a particularly good day. I was shuttling some people back from the river to the office. Hopping into the driver’s seat, I hear this voice pipe up from the back as I was buckling my seat belt. “Hey, hey, I have a really important question.” After reassuring his grandparents that it was indeed ok to ask me a question, I prepared myself for some sort of safety question before I started the van. Hunter, the kid, starts again, “Ok it’s really important.” (Then a dramatic pause for effect on his end). All of a sudden he blurts out “Do you like Transformers?!”

Well the only reasonable response for a question like that was “Of course!” And we started talking about Bubblebee and Ironhide. Pretty soon the whole van was confessing to their Trekkie/Sci Fi tendencies. (It was a good year for sci-fi… Star Trek anyone?) Hunter told me that when he grows up he wants to be a Transformer. I told him I thought it was a pretty good goal. Especially for such an adventurer like himself. I mean he floated the Snake River, saw a bunch of eagles, and probably drilled his guide about the benefits of being able to speak Cybertronian. A pretty full morning at the age of six. And after all that’s what all of us Dave Hansen employees and customers want… A little bit of adventure. And it’s an additional bonus if it happens to be “heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.”

-Em