Michael Blakesley, Aspen Snowmass
"My name's Michael Blakesley. I'm a lift mechanic on Aspen mountain at Aspen Snowmass. I've been here for 25 years. It's been a great job. Day-to-day varies summer to winter, performing preventative maintenance tasks, everything from working on doors, gondola cabins to going through the structures on big towers and greasing the wheels on this very, very old lift. In the winter, we're more like firemen—waiting for things to break. There's always a lot of work on the gondola. It's the biggest lift in the state of Colorado. When I'm not working, I love to ski. I got out of college and I was working in a bank in Boulder and it was snowing hard and I said, what the hell am I doing here? I gotta go home and start skiing. I also loved mountain biking prior to kids and I climbed a lot, but I don't do that now. My wife would not like that. But I love living in the mountains. And I love small towns. There's a good feeling in walking around a small mountain town. There's an appreciation for nature and a focus on how the environment should be and how to preserve it."
