A barkeep named Hope

Hope served me a few beers the other day after an interview in which I found myself contemplating my future. Having just flown out to DC from PHX the day before, I was dressed in my favorite dark-blue pinstripe; post-interview tie loosened and askew about my firmly starched collar. As I stared up at the large screen TV filled with images of baseball, I longed for the view from the cockpit of my Pivot 429....banking through a sinuous series of loamy turns in the aspen up high. I was certain I had tanked the interview....it went far too short in my estimation. I told myself that this was just yet another occasion where they knew exactly who they wanted to hire, and it was not me. A perfunctory examination which required my full effort, wasted time and emotional headspace. I felt a pang of regret at burning 3 days of my time off on this folly when instead, I could have gone on a bikepack....pedaling across the canyons and mountains I love so much. Reveling in the sunshine of morning, exploring the country and photographing the sunset above my bivy before I fall asleep beneath the infinite complexities of the cosmos....this is how I should spend my time, not flying from coast to coast in search of a phantom.

Conscious of my morose nature, I sparked up a conversation with a stranger. Feeling the need to get out of the negative conversation I was having with myself, I found a man next to me who shared in the same trials I've experienced. We talked of choosing the rockier path in our careers in the quest for the principled and elusive quest for a job which fueled our passions. He had been in the corporate world and had designed and managed corporate welfare programs. Having found this an obstacle to his love of coaching, he quit and had lost his home. In and out of substitute teaching jobs for the past 2 years, he had been on as many interviews as I had. Both of us, sitting there with half filled beers dripping with the condensation of early summer in Virginia; we swapped tales of worthless interviews and ambiguous job postings. As I sat there half engaged in conversation, the other half of my brain was engaged in a distracted game of imagination; dreaming of hero soil turns on the Arizona Trail between FR418 and Snowbowl Road.

Just as we started on a roll he received a call and as polite people do in Virgina, he excused himself and walked outside of the bar. As much as I despised this place for the sheer mass of humanity and infrastructure that delays all attempts to get away from it all...it is the humanity, decorum and politeness in "The New South" that I hold above all others. As he took his leave, I checked up on my phone for a text I had received on vibrate as we were chatting. I had to read it twice, three times....four times. An offer was on the table and would be forthcoming. Just as my brain froze, the man I had been talking with walked in with an ear to ear smile....he had just received a job offer as well. We bumped fists as the bartender, sensing the occasion, automaticlly poured us beers. As she placed them in front of us, I asked her what her name was.

 "Hope", she replied.