John Flanagan

This post is hard for me to type.  It's titled after one of Jack's best buddies ever who has been in the hospital for 9 days now.  He went in originally for what they thought were gall stones and when they got in there they realized that it wasn't gall stones at all.  He has cancer and they ended up removing his gall bladder and his appendix.  Both were diseased with cancer and now they are trying to determine how far it has spread.  It's looking pretty grim. 
We decided John needed some support and Jack would be just the guy to cheer him up.  We got the kids set up at some friends for the night and the dog and cat taken care of and drove to Colorado Springs.  We got to the hospital at around 4 or so.   He hasn't eaten in 10 days.  The can't give him anything but water.    He's lost 30 or so pounds but he looked good.  It was another night of story telling and laughter. 
Jack and John met in about 1982.  That was the year I graduated from high school.  Jack moved to Colorado and started living in Summit County after attending college for a year and a half in Durango.  Of course, Jack was a skier and so was John and they were eyeing each other up on the mountain and started skiing together, both earning the respect of one another.  Jack needed a place to live and moved into the small 100 year old cabin John shared with his girlfriend at the time, Marilee. 
Jack and John are nothing alike.  Jack is from the West Coast, San Diego, and John is from the East Coast, Connecticut.  Pure opposite, geographically speaking.  John is Irish and parties like no other.  Jack is usually responsible and quits drinking before he gets severely drunk.  John has a huge, huge temper.  Jack has no temper.  John is wild, Jack isn't.  But they do share that incredible bond of skiing.  And skiing big.  They became ski partners quickly and 30 years later nothing has changed with those two on the mountain except they ski wiser, they don't take the chances they used to.  Well, John still does, I'm sure.  When Jack and John get together they laugh and tonight they were telling stories that I have never ever heard before.  It was so much fun listening to the two of them.  Here are some of the stories. 
John used to drive an old white truck.  Jack used to drive an old blue truck.  John's truck was a good truck.  I still remember it.  Jack's truck was a piece of crap.  It had no power and the tires were bald and Jack, being so frugal, didn't care.  He'd drive that thing up Montezuma Road at a crawl in the snow and John was driving up the mountain and came up behind Jack, driving slowly.  The first time he saw Jack driving that truck up the 6 mile road, with an elevation climb of around 1000 ft, he decided it would be funny to ram Jack's truck.  He is gaining on Jack and Jack sees him in his rear view mirror and is wondering why John is getting so close.  John is driving at full speed ahead and rams right into the back of Jack's truck. and Jack, of course, spun out and did a 360 right in the middle of the road.  John took advantage of that 360 and passed him, flipping him off as he's passing.  So now Jack is behind John.  John takes off up the mountain laughing his ass off.  They both get to main street so you now have to slow down just out of pure respect for driving slow through town.  We all know that.  John is driving respectively slow through town and Jack comes up behind him and rams John's truck now.  Game on.  They did this over and over.  I never knew this before and it shocked me to hear of the bumper game they played with each other.  Never mind the danger.  That's why it was so much fun.   
Jack then was reminiscing about the time they were at the Snake.  The Snake is a bar/restaurant that has been up here longer than any other in the county.  It is in Keystone and John worked there for years as a waiter.  How he didn't kill an unruly table is beyond me.    We have spent countless hours there, sorry to say.  One night after skiing all day, Jack and John ended up at the Snake.  Not unusual.  John's infamous for Jamison shots.  He can drink a lot of Jamison.  The bartenders were sick and tired of John and told him to leave.  John informed us that he told the bartender he wasn't finished drinking yet so he wasn't going to leave.  Jack, the guy who hates confrontation more than anyone I know, is trying to pacify drunk, Irishman John.  Jack thinks he has done his job.  They walk out and the folks inside lock all of the doors so John can't get back inside.  John didn't like this one bit so he gets in his old white truck with Jack in the passenger seat and drives around to the back and rams that truck right into the side of the building.  This is an old log building and probably not very sturdy.  John is hanging out of the window of his truck yelling "I'LL HUFF AND I'LL PUFF AND I'LL BLOW THIS HOUSE DOWN!!"  Well, he was serious and kept ramming the side of the building until they decided to let him back in.  They did and John did another shot of Jamison. 
One of our friends was telling us about the first time he met John.  John and Jack were at the Snake, shocking, and John was extremely pissed about something another one our friends did.  John leaves the bar and comes back in with his chainsaw because he is so pissed off he decided he was going to saw the bar in half.  He's trying to start the chainsaw but he's too liquored up to figure out where the start switch was and never could get it started.  If you knew John, everyone in that bar was praying to God that he wouldn't get that chainsaw started because if he did, there would be carnage.
Jack and John had more fun skiing together than anything.  Both were into going big.  They'd hike and hike and ski huge vertical and talk about it over shots of Jamison.  They were skiing uncharted territory before anyone was skiing it.  They were taking big chances.  I'm surprised they survived any of it.  Powder day's were abundant and they were like kids in a candy store.  And they still are.  When it snows on the mountain and they run into each other they are like little boy's enjoying the best day of their lives.  At the time it is the best day of their lives.    
As we were sitting there in the hospital talking about the past and all of the stupid things that took place John was pressing his pain med button because he was laughing and it was causing him a great deal of pain.  He kept telling us he couldn't laugh so we had to stop telling these stories.   He was happy talking about the good ol' days and it was great to see him smile.  The ski stories started up and we could have gone on and on.  Visiting hours were coming to an end and we had to get dinner so we said our good buys. 
It was a good visit and our good friend John has been diagnosed with cancer.  I'm going to try to get as many of those crazy times on paper because they are so worth telling.
We'll know more next week how bad his cancer is.  I'll keep you posted.