What I used to say at breakfast

I do not live in the townsite anymore. I live in Exshaw, where the cement plant keeps its own weather and the wind arrives without ceremony. On Mondays I still drive in with a pad that used to sit beside the marmalade. Guests wanted three things before coffee: whether the upper mountain was in cloud, whether the walk from the avenue was nasty, and whether they should take children in running shoes. I was never paid to answer those. I answered them anyway.

Last Tuesday the Roam bus was wet along the windows and a family boarded with a folded stroller that would not stay folded. Nobody was late except the weather. By the time we climbed Mountain Avenue the spruce had taken on that black-green that means the cloud is sitting on the ridge, not in the valley. I told them what I always told them: if the upper building is in the soup, you still get a ride through it, and you may not get a photograph of the Bow. Decide before you are already in the cabin, because turning around after eight minutes feels like a sulk.

My honest complaint, because a gazette that only flatters is an advertisement: too many people stand in the doorway of the upper building making a video of the doors. The doors are not the visit. The visit is the first thirty metres of plank, where the wind introduces itself, and whether you brought a layer you would wear in April in Calgary. I have watched more than one cotton hoodie lose that argument.

This paper is the stack of those breakfast answers, dated and unsigned by any company. I do not take money for cabins. I do not hold them. If you need admission, you deal with the operator on their own channels. If you need weather, you look at the sky from the bridge and then you look again from the car park.