Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'....

I was just looking at my Itunes list and apparently, I've played "Stacy's Mom" 3x more than any other song...I may have a problem.

But that's not what's on my mind today. I have to get this story down on some kind of media before it gets away from me...

In the summer of 2003, the company that I work for called an unexpected meeting in Teluride, Colorado. All of us flew in from all over the country to this tiny airport, then we were bused into this beautiful resort at 8000 feet. For those of us who live at sea level (most of our company is on Long Island), we were immediately hit with the lack of oxygen. It was a pretty funny experience-I think on paper it seemed like a good idea, but the logistics and the altitude were a huge topic of conversation for the whole week. The people that planned the meeting thought it was going to be a grandiose experience for everyone, and half of us, including my out-of-shape ass, were paying for oxygen at the oxygen bar! $50 for freakin' air!

A big player at these events is the open bar--While I'm really not much of a drinker, when someone else is buying :), I like to drink Long Island teas--they were $12! (so I had to stop at 10...)(just kidding) Everything at this place was just crazy-priced. One night I ordered room service by myself and read a book instead of going out with everyone--it was like $120! For a pretty average meal.

But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to participate in our "Fire at the Summit" chili cookoff. We were supposed to put together a marketing plan all week, then we would have a big contest where everyone would cook their chili and present it with a whole marketing campaign. Sounds creative, right? Well, the overwhelming majority of people could not care less about that event, and we really didn't have tools to do a good job, so I decided that it was probably better teamwork overall to just go with the flow and somewhat blow off the contest than to be a standout, slave-driving maniac trying to win whatever lame prize was cooked up. So that's what I did.

On the down side, I drew a team with the top-ranking VP of the company, Bob, his secretary (aka the one who can pull favors for you at any time if you are just nice to her), Jennie, my aforementioned buddy Mike D. (whom you have to watch yourself around somewhat because he's all about what's in the best interest of Mike D.), and a guy named Kurt, our new rep from Oklahoma.

When I say "from Oklahoma", I mean this guy, 45, about 5'4", 240 lbs. (yes, built roughly like the Tasmanian devil) with a short, jet-black, military-style clean-cut haircut was from the backwoods of Oklahoma. I can't put the town's name because everyone there is related to him somehow. And, unfortunately, Kurt was taking over for me in covering Oklahoma City--I say unfortunately because I felt a big obligation to help him find his way with the company, and I took a lot of personal responsibility to hang out with him--in retrospect I was fighting the urge to distance from him...

When we first hired Kurt, I had put a good word in for him after working with him for a couple of days on a trial run. It turns out that people (customers) from Oklahoma tend to hate people from Texas and especially people from Dallas (aka me)--they see Dallas as the big brother city trying to influence their more pure, honest culture with materialism, snobbery, pollution, and other high-falutin' ways. Kurt tended to relate immediately to our targeted customer demographic, so I thought it would be a good fit and I gave my blessing. Turns out he had been overachieving during those days, had no personal work habits at all, no organization skills, and it's possible that in those first two days I saw him in his only two shirts with collars. I heard him tell the same story about sewing up a "mama cow"'s uterus with baling wire about four times in one day.

After being with the company about six months, Kurt had been faltering in his performance, and now at the meeting I felt a little defensive about having recommended him. I was determined to make this whole situation a go.

Then Mike D. absconded with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and mayhem ensued--Actually, it was the second bottle that doomed us all...

I remember being very focused on making chili that was subsequently pronounced by the judges to "look like chili, but tastes like mud" (award for the worst-tasting chili). There was a live band playing '70's music, and my fellow employees looked at me with a collectively puzzled expression when I called out "Turn it up!" at precisely the perfect time in Lynard Skynard's "Sweet Home Alabama"--I think it may just be a southern thing...

I turned around, and there was Mike D. with a huge bottle of Jack that he had stolen from the table of potential chili ingredients by walking up when no one was looking and slipping the bottle into the pocket of his apron. He was grinning like the devil himself when he started to pass the bottle among our friends. I didn't see ol' Kurt swigging away until the second bottle was halfway gone. By that time, the contest was over and we were all headed inside, with the Texas-based contingency pretty much blindly staggering like a migration of drunks from last call.

Our company is conservative, and, even at casual events, the New Yorkers seem to always look like they just took off their tie. Some of us manage to pull off wearing BRAND NEW, dark blue jeans with nice sport shirts. A few minutes later, when my protege' was standing on his chair in the 4-star restaurant screaming "wooooo hoooo!" at the top of his lungs, I realized he was wearing sweat pant shorts, a grey University of Oklahoma football workout shirt, and a bandana tied around his head like Charlie Sheen in "Platoon", with a big wad of dip in his mouth.

The third bottle of Jack would end up going down in the annals of company history. I could have made a fortune if I had kept the presence of mind to save it because it ended up being a turning point in company history--of course, it could also be referred to as "exhibit A" in court somewhere...

With this bottle, my esteemed Texas colleages started calling out different members of the company. When it had gone around a little, their collective buzz was so intense that I think none of them could remember anyone's name.

So they just cut to the chase and called out the president of the company, who was visiting from Japan.

If you've ever seen the movie Black Rain, the mood was very similar to the scene when Sato, in a required gesture of solidarity, bitterly cuts off his finger to show that he is united with the other bosses. The pres, probably contemplating the thousands of dollars in headhunting fees he would have to spend, walked very methodically to the front of the room. He mechanically took the bottle with both hands--one supporting the half-full bottle from the bottom, and the other hand around the neck. In one motion, he hoisted the bottle and downed about half of what was left like Michael Jordan downing gatorade. When he was finished, he bowed very formally and briskly handed the bottle to a very drunk cajun guy who proceeded to parade the bottle around the room.

There was stunned silence, then a roar of applause from the 150 or so people present.

Trust me when I say there was a huge HR fallout from that dinner in later weeks from some of the stuffy suits from New York who were there at the meeting, but the president (amazingly) complimented our manager at the comradery and uniformly and cohesively drunken group. Our boss was later promoted to National Sales Manager and the stuffy suits were all fired! But first, we all had to survive that night...

Thirty minutes later the dinner was over and I was waiting outside near the top of the mountain, trying to catch a breath of ridiculously thin air. I had appointed myself the token sober person who would sort out where all my sloshed cohorts would end up sleeping eventually. Someone had to get them back to the hotel.

I looked up and saw them singing "Louie, Louie" (which strangely sounded great coming from them) and holding hands in a chain, running around the top of the mountain like possessed chimpanzees. But it was hilarious. Then I saw Kurt...rolling down the side of the mountain.

I was determined that he wouldn't die on my watch, so I ran over to stop him before he body-slid down the rocky ski slope. I remember thinking of a joke an old Greek man once told me, which, translated into this situation, would be equivalent to me showing up with a decapitated Kurt in Oklahoma and asking his wife "Was his head attached when he left?"

I put my arm around him, partly to hang on to him, but also, I'm ashamed to say, for some leverage to dive away from his projectile dinner...and lunch...and morning coffee break...then, oddly, a license plate and some baling wire....

There were sounds coming out of that man that were clearly not human--it sounded like a microphone connected to a massive concrete drainpipe, complete with low rumblings, brash, echoing, mutated churning guts and the acoustics of Carnegie Hall projecting off the side of that Colorado mountain. And then he collapsed like a sack of laundry. A 240 lb. dead weight sack of laundry. That smelled like an indescribable blending of....well, some things are best left as not described.

The van drivers who were supposed to take us down were on to us. I tried for 45 minutes before I could get one to come over--maybe they had seen this before due to the altitude. After awkwardly dumping him in the front seat, we pointed his head out the open window and told the driver to get us the hell out of there. His utterly unconscious condition had started to attract the attention of the whole company, and it was not only a downer for the evening, but was also an embarrassment to our regional group. Once we made it down the mountain, the driver opened the passenger door and Kurt poured out and landed in a heap, face-up in the parking lot by the entrance to our swanky hotel. Grey chili and Jack Daniels streaked along his side of the van....

I asked the hotel for a wheelchair, and they agreed, and went to get one. There were about 5 of us that were pretty close friends, and we were gathered around kind of giggling about what was going on. Then someone spotted the next van coming, with all the executives of the company. Which inspired the funniest damn thing I've ever been a party to.

We grabbed Kurt up off the parking lot and propped him, completely out cold, on the bench in front of the hotel. One guy sat holding him up from each side, one guy behind him holding him up by his shoulders, and the rest of us crowded around talking. Some quick-thinking girl grabbed Kurt's sunglasses which amazingly remained in one of his pockets and put them on him.

Yep, we reenacted "Weekend at Bernie's" with our ol' buddy Kurt. As the big bosses went by, we were laughing so freakin' hard I can't see how they didn't know what we were up to. But the report that we got later was that they walked by and Kurt looked okay.

We figured out that the hotel called the cops because they were concerned that Kurt might die in their hotel room and they would need a crane or something to haul his huge ass out. But since we had made it this far, we each grabbed an available piece of clothing attached to Kurt and hauled him into the elevator and into his room. Someone had the bright idea to undress him, which resulted in me, just a thoroughly grossed-out observer at this point, seeing that he had let loose and soiled himself (hey, if I don't write it down, nobody will ever know). I think only two of us witnessed that unfortunate detail. We gave up on processing the body and just propped him in his bed with his head aimed at a trash can.

We five friends sat vigil for about 4 hours in his darkened room, drinking water and juice and, perhaps inspired by the humanity of the night's events, spoke earnestly and honestly about what we wanted to do with our lives. Soon, it became evident that Kurt could possibly live through the experience, and we all left before the drainpipe abruptly awakened again...

Kurt lived, but not much longer as an employee of the company. He missed all the meetings the next day, but incredibly showed up, ready to go, for the golf outing. He quit to work in another line of business, and at the time he left he wasn't even among the bottom 3 performers, but around the company, the experience is reverently and superstitiously related as a morality tale of not running amok during company outings.

To me, it was just one of those things you never forget...