Letters
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What began as three days in Colorado with the VersaLayer has turned into a two-week journey. Thanks for all the help. I can’t tell you how great it has been to share my passion with all of you. I feel as if the past four years is budding before my eyes right back here in Colorado.
When I lost my job at Keystone after September 11, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. Moving back to my family in Birmingham, Alabama, felt like the right thing. I lived at home, laid hardwood floors and experimented with concrete countertops. In October, I got a job at Alabama Outdoors working on the floor. I found myself thinking one day and the VersaLayer system was born on a piece of receipt paper. I built a prototype called the “Buddy Degree” out of an old down vest, fishing line, duct tape and a laundry bag. After exactly one year, I quit my job and lived off a Sears Gold MasterCard in my family’s basement. I bought sewing machines, fabric and food.
In November, an amazing connection was made when my grandfather introduced me to a man who took one look and understood my invention. Tom Jernigan and his son, Tom Jr., avid outdoorsmen and entrepreneurs from Birmingham, decided to make VersaLayer a part of their future. With the support of the Jernigan’s company, Marathon Apparel, I have had the resources and the freedom to explore the full potential of our dream.
Launching an idea from nothing takes support from believers. The Mountain Gazette has been the sole advertising outlet for VersaLayer and the response has been amazing. Based on this, I have decided to bring the first few hundred jackets here to Colorado in March 2006. I will be moving here in January to continue field-testing, designing and developing new applications for the VersaLayer.
Since being here in December I have met incredible people on the mountains, in shops and in restaurants all around Colorado towns who have encouraged me and believed in my idea. They all know the Gazette.
Thanks for your support and honest feedback about advertising. Four years ago, I had no idea what a .tif file was. You’re all so genuinely patient and kind — or should I say “Gazettee.”
I’ll be driving from Boulder to Grand Junction with a sizeable run of samples for folks to demo, then it’s off to Salt Lake for OR. I’ll see you somewhere in the middle and of course at the end.
Andy Gathings
Inventor and Field Tester
VersaLayer
Dear MG:
Thanks so much for capturing a glimpse of mountain life! I grew up in the Elk Mountains of CO and somehow made the decision to go to school in the rolling wheatfields of Eastern Washington. Needless to say, I get sooo mountainsick — not only for the peaks and the snow, but also for the people and the culture that the mountians nurture. I religiously check your website to satisfy some of my cravings and keep my sanity while I’m at school. In addition, I’ve switched to Geology for a major, which secures a sweet future in combining work and play in the mountains.
Thanks again for everything you’ve done. You’ve pretty much saved my life!
Gwen Leslie
Basalt, CO
Editors:
I’ve always enjoyed the MG, thanks for all you do. It’s Sunday at 4:23, I just returned from an easy morning with coffee and TV football, a hike up Highlands Bowl to 4-6" of fresh, a Jonny McGuire Trucker, and now my time. I sat on the head, kodiak in place and high as a tightrope walker. I decided to read Bryan Spencer’s “Finding light.” (Mountain Notebook, MG #120.) Whoa, Bryan, do you speak like this too? I’m not sure what your story was about. Are beginnings and endings “like, so last year?” I really liked “Every day at this time comes a chance for enlightenment.” Some of what you wrote is, no actually, nothing else you wrote is comprehendible or inspiring, or even deep. Did I mention it was 4:20ish? I was in bro, like, I wanted to feel it. I really tried. But I’ve never seen so much romantic, over-stated dribble. It appears the 14th round of edits and visits to the thesaurus were 10 too many. Tell me something, Bryan, anything. Enlighten us, but have it make sense, we can handle it. Wow, I want what you’re having, but just one.
Joel Lee
Aspen, CO
Editor:
MG #120 provided me with a pleasant surprise — I was at the pub and had read most of “John Denver anonymous” (Mountain Notebook, MG #120) before I saw the byline and realized it was written by a very good friend of mine. I sat up and said a little too loudly, “Hey, I’ve been IN that Bronco!” and drew a few stares. Mike’s a talented writer and hopefully he’ll send you some more of his work.
Cheers —
John Korfmacher
via email
John:
Thanks for your article about the over regulation of mountain towns (Obituaries, #118); it was right on the money. Frisco Town Council and their ilk seem to want to make vanilla pudding out of a fine “small mountain town.” I did my little bit over the years to try and forestall the yuppification or gentry-ization of Frisco and Summit County. Well I’m retired now and left Frisco as soon as I could sell my house for an inflated price. I was on the Town P&Z and the Rec Committee and helped rewrite the master plan in 1995 or so. Well, we lost, the place continues to get more over-regulated and mega-built up each year. I also couldn’t agree more about your comments about “Ullr Fest lite.” I’m just glad that I was able to be a part of it when it had that “small mountain town feeling.” What about Seamus O’Toole’s Roadhouse Saloon (see Obit, MG #89) being turned into an arts center, for fucks’ sake? Well, anyhow, you keep beating your head against that brick wall and railing against the machine, we need someone to do it although I am no longer certain why.
Being a little older than you and having been to Vietnam before it was a tourist destination, lobbied and rallied for the first Earth Day, etc, etc. I’m tired as well. For 20 years, I tried to subvert the youth of Summit County as a classroom teacher and hope that I had some influence. I am heartened by the fact that the voters of Frisco (any of my former students?) turned out in true patriotic fervor and defeated the Home Depot ballot question. When politicians like the mayor of Frisco and the pro-HD cadre can write an article for the local paper saying that it ought to be approved if only as a welcome addition to the skyline of Frisco, somebody needs to start blowing shit up.
Well, I sold out and moved to the Southwest where you can not only drink a beer in public without being forced to listen to Jerry Falwell tapes but can actually buy a beer without an ID. I only have to show my shaggy silverish head of hair to get quickly served. I was in one of the Denver ex-urbs recently and wanted a beer with a meal. I was asked (nay told) to show an ID and ended up walking out of the place. How stupid and over fearful have we become? Well they, the fearful, voted that jackass into the White House, but I digress. The manager of the restaurant told me (I’m a dignified looking 50-something) that if a cop walked in, saw me drinking a beer and asked for my ID and I couldn’t produce it that HE would go to jail. I didn’t have the heart to tell the poor little wimp that a cop would have to arrest me first before I’d show him an ID for simply drinking a beer. A few years ago, I visited a friend living in Hong Kong. We crossed into mainland China where we got thirsty. Not knowing the rules of this repressive regime, I asked if it would be OK to buy a beer at one of the many shops and to walk around with it. Bob’s reply was, “Of course, you are now in a free country, Communist China.”
Well anyhow our “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” keeps getting suckier. The best thing that I did after trying to work within the system (I actually was naive enough to think that we had done it in the ’70s) was to abandon it. My best friends are now fellow outcasts fleeing the likes of open container laws and DARE programs. I can pretty much do what I want both in the streets of town and in my yard. I also now have no television. Yes, boys and girls you DO get brainwashed watching that TV tube. Just think about how many brain-washing and conformity-forming messages are sucked up by your melon even though all that you ever watch is _____ (fill in the blank: Sports, Music, National Geographic or uggh, News). To quote the reggae band Inka Inka, “Your mind is not dirty so don’t let no one wash your brain.” Kill your TV!
I now hope to save my latest adopted little town from the fate of fucked Frisco and the little college town of Boulder where I lived in the ’70s. Talk about banging your head against a wall! Anyhow I have been traveling, loving and celebrating life too much lately to read the Gazette on time. Don’t fret, though, because I have the next two issues as well on the kitchen table. Keep writing, it does fire up some of us out here in the hinterland and may just recharge our batteries enough to fight the next fight.
Best wishes for the future of us all,
Jim Skvorc
via email
So much is a sham. So much is artificial, synthetic, watered-down and standardized.
— Tom Robbins,
“Jitterbug Perfume”
M. John:
I loved the November "Obituary" for open beers.
Thank you for the excellent mountain magazine — I discovered it at the counter of Mountain Gear in Spokane, Wa. Keep sending it this way.
James Yasord
Spokane, WA
Snail mail letters to
M. John Fayhee, Editor, Box 585,
Frisco CO 80443
or email them to
mjfayhee@mountaingazette.com
We accept letters of any length, but shorter ones have a better chance of getting published.
