Foes, friends and adversity make us stronger

I’ve always been one who believes that adversity brought a lot to our construct and makes us much stronger than success and in the same vein, the same can be said of enemies that do everything they can to make our lives a tiny bit more miserable and painful. 

They’re in fact contributing to, or fabricating, whatever adversity we’re facing. 

Friends of course are the soothing element in which we find refuge to forget the bad things that hit us, get some encouragement or even some constructive advice. 

This is where I can see and I now fully understand the relationship between the “love your enemy” approach preached by Mahatma Gandhi and all others non-violent leaders. 

By the way, this universal law is confirmed in sports in which aggressive adversaries are key to high performance, where athletic talent stimulate and allow for records. Strong opponents fuel excellence. 

Now, and only now, can I understand that concept, live comfortably with it, and say: “Give me a good enemy to help me advance in life...” 

Sometime, profound ideas take a long time to sink in!

Madame Huguette Beyl, 1921-2021

This past week, I learned that Mrs. Beyl, wife of Look ski bindings founder, the late Jean Beyl, passed away after she had celebrated her 100th birthday earlier this year, on January 2. 

She was the person who gave me my first job as well as my big break into the wholesale ski industry and I will always be thankful to her from trusting me and letting me into that tightly closed business in which everyone would give their first born to get a job ! 

Tough, pragmatic and very perceptive, she could read people well (at least that’s what I firmly believe since she thought so highly of me!) and, if anything, she understood and appreciated her retailers. 

She and her husband got shafted by Bernard Tapie, but what goes around comes around, and today Tapie, with his stolen millions, remains a poor and a pityful soul. 

I’ll miss Madame Beyl, as we used to call her, and hope she’s now in a great place after an exceptional long and productive life.

My first voyage ‘round the world, part 3

Just fifty years ago was also a Saturday like today, and my brother Gaston drove me in his Peugeot 204 from Montriond, my home town, to Megeve, France, where I was to meet the fellow Jean-Pierre Chatellard, that would be my room-mate for the next four months and began our journey to Genoa, Italy. 

One of his friends, by the name of Pellissier, I think, himself a ski instructor in Whistler, had offered to drive us south, in his van, taking the crate contained the ski gear needed for us and our teammates flying to Australia. I don’t remember too many details as my mind was too blindly focused on the adventure that awaited us all. 

We got to Genoa harbor in time for checking-in into our ship, the Galileo Galilei, a 28,000 ton ocean liner from the Lloyd Triestino Line, able to carry 1,750 immigrants, including some first-class passengers to Australia, after crisscrossing the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. 

While the ship was big and impressive for the times, we were far too cool to be impressed. After saying good bye to our ride, we took possession of our cabin and while we were doing that, heard that a strike from the entire crew of the ship was up in the air... 

 

Another pelican sighting

The Great Salt Lake is huge, over 17,000 square miles of land owned by the federal government and the state of Utah. 

This inland sea is too salty to be an ideal fishing spot, but it attracts over 10 million migratory birds each year. 

About two years ago, we spotted some American white Pelicans fishing in one of the ponds surrounding the Park Meadows golf course. 

We saw them again this year and this Wednesday I filmed and photographed some passing and fishing through Park City, that’s only 50 km as the crow flies from the Great Salt Lake. 

Isn’t it fabulous to see these birds in the middle of our landlocked, Rocky Mountain town?

Why isn't the Klu Klux Klan considered a terrorist group?

This is a question I always ask myself, when I see how Hamas is decried as a genuine terrorist organization. 

According to Wikipedia, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), is an American white supremacist terrorist hate group whose primary targets are African Americans as well as Jews, immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Catholics, Muslims, and atheists. This means that I’m one of its potential targets. 

The KKK was formed on December 24,1865 and has terrorized American citizens for the color of their skin and their views ever since, lynching close to 5,000 individuals according to the Tuskeegee Institute. 

Without a question if fits the criteria of a terrorist group that uses of violence and intimidation in pursuit of political aims. If ISIS or even Hamas are labeled a terrorist group for their acts, then surely the KKK fall into that category. 

The KKK does not care to publicize its actions and the police don’t seem motivated in investigating it, further its members can be found in in many forms of our government and it’s fair to conclude with certainty that the KKK is the best example of a modern terrorist group. 

So why is it not considered as such? Simply because we still are a nation of hypocrites.

Learning with videos…

This week, I’m repairing a wall that I had to take apart to address a plumbing problem, and since it’s not too large an area, I’ve decided to do it myself, by learning through YouTube videos and asking my son, who knows his way around drywall, for advice. 

It’s not the first time that I attempt to learn through videos, and depending on the task involved, the results vary vastly, both in time and quality. But plastering (or muddying, as experts call it) isn’t as easy as it appears on a computer or phone screen. 

It requires hours if not years of practice. A few years ago, I had covered the obvious truth about the time it takes to acquire a skill, aka “the 10,000 Hour Rule”, that proves that learning almost inevitably takes much more time than we would like to think or admit. 

So, on Monday, as I began my week with that project, I was quickly reminded that without a teacher available to correct me on spot, I was a lost soul, struggling like a rank beginner, even though I had seen hours of video, prior to getting my hands dirty with plaster. It's therefore much easier to observe than to literally gets one's pair of hands dirty! 

As a result, the next day, I decided to start the day by watching more video, in attempt to see what I was doing wrong the previous day and get a tiny bit more productive... 

The antidote to the “boring life”…

I don’t know about you, but when all goes too well, I get bored really fast. 

I seem to be someone who needs a smidgen of adversity every now and then to keep my interest high and use whatever little creativity I’m able to muster. 

This is why the idea of a perfect Heaven after death, if there’s such thing, scares the Bejesus out of me. 

Just like a piece of halibut needs seasoning to be edible, our lives need some pepper and salt under the form of challenges, anxiety, fear, pain and suffering, as long as all that “seasoning” doesn’t last too long or doesn’t leave damaging and permanent scars. 

When all goes too smoothly in my little boring life, I know – deep inside – that it’s time for some rough times to make me regain a healthy attention. 

If that stimulus doesn’t come naturally, I can create it in a hurry from a long list of things I hate to do!

The fallacy of the two-state solution

Still today, Biden says he remains in favor of the “two-state solution” that would create an independent Israel and Palestine, in which both Israelis and Palestinians could run their countries differently. 

Israelis with their Jewish flavor, and the Palestinians (maybe) with a Muslim one. The problem however is that over the years, there’s not much left of the Palestinian state to make it viable. It’s become so small and so fragmented that the Arabs can’t accept it in its current form and the Israelis want even less, not more Arabs around them. 

Folks who believe in that doomed concept are either naive, stupid or hypocrit, and it only serves Netanyahou’s extremist government who counts on time to further erode and totally destroy what could be (on paper only) an Arab state. 

That leaves us with the “one-state solution”, that is the merger of Israel with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into a larger, more viable country that could be formidably viable without an endless war. 

We should get used to the idea, because the two-state idea has proven to be a dead-end dream. Instead, there should be a federation of Jews and Arabs in a single democratic and secular country, where the concept of Jewish-only state would have to disappear.

This change would be painful and difficult to swallow and get used to for all parties involved, but would by be far much more preferable than the apartheid-style of governance Israel is forcing on its Arab neighbors and the endless fights and recrimination this dysfunctional relationship forces upon its population…

Bibi, the natural terrorist

When it comes to bad, very bad terrorists, no one beats Bibi Netanyahu. 

Maybe Hamas comes next, but Bibi can’t stop hitting, abusing people, if given the smallest opportunity. It’s simply embedded in his DNA. 

He seems to love to be provoked by Hamas, even though it is said that Gaza’s crude rockets only hit Israeli targets 90% of the times. 

With his high tech armament payed for by us, the US taxpayers, Bibi is able to inflict punishing harm to the Palestinian and keep on advancing his genocidal, ethnic cleansing agenda. 

That makes him a more potent and much more determined terrorist than Hamas, and if Biden had not (probably) menaced him to cut part or totality of its military aid, he’d still be bombing Gaza out of existence...

Getting to hard-to-access places (cont’d.)

...I tried everything I could think of, to get that small hexagonal screw head to release and clear the way for the part I wanted to clean. 

I first tried a flat wrench, but since it was designed to handle a tiny hex screw, it was far too short, then I extended it by attaching a lever to it, so I could reach the end, then a much longer wrench, then the new, fancy “right-angle” drill extensions that power-drills now offer as needed accessories, but those couldn’t clear the narrow space available.

Finally I found a one foot long drill bit flexible, soft shaft extension, that could adapt to the rather convoluted space I was dealing with. 

Even with that tool, its magnetic screw bit holder was too deep to securely hold on to the screw, and I had to take ¼” off it, add an extra small magnet inside the cavity, so I finally could securely hold the screw so I wouldn’t lose it in the underbelly of the furnace. 

Only then, was I in business; I took off the screw, removed the flame sensor, cleaned it thoroughly before I could replace the whole assembly without struggling to much. 

A lot of problem-solving and work that only retirement could both afford and justify!

Getting to hard-to-access places

Sometimes, it seems that some engineers are woefully unable to think straight and place elements that need to be regularly tuned or replaced in all but accessible spots. 

They just drop them where it’s convenient to them, hoping the users will find a way to get it. 

We get our heat from a natural gas furnace and while it works very well, we need to pay attention to its flame sensor, a key safety element. During ignition, the gas gets ignited and the flame sensor rod generates a slight electrical current (in micro amps). 

If the furnace’s control board can’t read that current, the furnace will securely stop. Over time, the stainless steel rod will get soiled or build up carbon that must be cleaned. 

This is what I tried to do the other day when I realized that the small ¼” screw holding the heat sensor was extremely hard to reach and that prompted me to look for a solution, which was far from obvious since the small screw could be lost too easily inside the furnace underbelly before I simply could remove it or replace it. 

Tomorrow, I’ll explain how I solved that puzzle…

Ideas for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

With the Jewish state encroaching more and more into Arab lands through colonization and annexation, the famed “Two State Solution” is looking more and more as a ludicrous idea, as the Palestinians would have a disconnected, disjointed and isolated bunch of communities that would never amount to a state. 

I have also thought about a simpler option which would be a partition on a straight line, somewhere between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, just like we have in Korea, in which the North part would go to Israel and the South to the Palestinians, with whatever each party feel comfortable with in terms of physical partition (nothing at all, a fence or a formidable wall). 

People would be free to stay where they live today, but their lives would fall under either the Israeli or the Palestinian administrations. This would be a very tough sale. 

The other – and better option, I believe – would be to have all these folks living peacefully in one country named United Palestine and that would no longer be the Jewish Theocracy as we know it today, but a secular, democratic government, where all faiths and ethnic origins would have to live, work and coexist peacefully, whether they love it or not. 

That’s right coexist! At least this would for a change be something positive to look forward to...

The specter of eternal life

We all want to go to Heaven when we die and stay there forever, right? I’m not so sure... 

I found that quote from Mark Twain who allegedly said: “If Christians really and truly believed what their religious faith purports, they would be crying at births and dancing at funerals”. 

In reality they don’t, or at least they get it backwards, as like many of us, they feel joy at the coming of new life, and pain and sadness at its end. All this to speculate that few really believe in what their religion promises them, if it does. I often think that life after-death might be quite boring in fact.

How would you feel if you didn’t really like the place, its rules and conditions, God puts you in after death, and were stuck there forever? 

Would there be good food, booze, sex, loud rock-and-roll and of course, skiing? I’m not so sure. Forever is also a concept we can hardly imagine here on earth as we are constantly fighting against time, but if it’s “forever”, it better be good, or else, we’re “forever” screwed! 

Also, if we die old, limping and sick, God forbid, missing a limb, a few teeth too, when and if we resurrect, what kind of body do we get? A brand-new, fully restored, 25 years old one, a middle-aged version or the old carcass we now have? I don’t think the Bible or the Koran give enough details about the exact conditions of our eternal life. 

So, given the uncertainty, I’d rather not count on the kind of eternal life religion has promised me since I was a kid. It sounds terribly boring as well as uncertain, so I’ll continue to call this life down to earth a true paradise, in spite of all the challenges and suffering that may befall us from time to time...

America’s insane handling of Palestine

Regardless of what happens today, it’s fair to say that the multiple plans concocted by the Anglo-french alliance about a century ago was inspired by Zionists without any regard nor input for the spread out Arab communities that constituted the majority of people living in Palestine, but were judged too primitive or backward to be able to form their own Nation. 

Since that time, Israel has maintained a de-facto apartheid and domination over the Palestinian, helped by the largess of the US government that through this day has provided Israel with about $250 billion in today’s dollars, in military, economic, and missile defense funding, making Israel the largest cumulative recipient of US. assistance since World War II.

While Israel receives more foreign military financing than all other countries in the world combined, it is more than capable of purchasing its own weapons. According to the World Bank, it has the twenty-ninth-largest per capita GDP in the world, ahead of the United Kingdom, New Zealand, France, and Japan. 

What are the Palestinian receiving from the US? Biden just reinstated $200m in annual aid to Palestinians that were previously slashed by Trump. 

So, we have this absurd situation in which the Israelis are given by American taxpayers more than 3 billion dollars a year to destroy Palestine, while the later must make do with 200 million to buy enough body bags, bury its dead and clean the rubble in Gaza. If this isn’t insanity, I don't know what is!

The high cost of perfectionism

Most of us like to do things right, live a good life and as much as possible, be good, productive citizens. We want to improve our lives, eliminate our poor habits, learn new skills to become more knowledgeable or competent, and all this leads us to grow into perfectionists without even realizing it. 

Sure there are varying degrees in the way we want to perfect ourselves and the result can be a huge contributor to our personal stress and anxiety. Feelings of stress can zap one’s energy, potentially increasing anxiety, and triggering all kinds of panic. 

The good question to ask ourselves could be summarized as such: “Is life really too short to warrant all of this heap of useless stress?” I do think so, but, once you’ve made it a lifelong habit, striving for doing things right and aiming for perfection seems a powerful habit impossible to eradicate... 

 

Skiing Vorlaz

Fifty years ago today, in the company of three other friends, I climbed and ski Vorlaz peak that towers over the Lindarets valley, near Avoriaz, France. 

That would be one of the two times I’d ski that nice, steep bowl. 

The first time was, a year or so earlier, when a helicopter from the “Protection Civile”, now Sécurité Civile, a french arm of the government, graciously whisked me along with Henri Marullaz, a colleague ski instructor, to the top in just minutes at taxpayers' expense.. 

The conditions were good and the experience very, very pleasurable. I’d never skied it again as I was now on the cusp of leaving for a new world of adventures, down under, in Australia, and most likely I may never ski down that special place in the future. 

Thank God, they didn’t install a lift on top of that peak (one of my old, highly questionable wish!)

(Almost) fully vaccinated!

As of Friday, my entire family living in America has at least received one injection of Covid-19 vaccine, as our grandson got his first of two shots. 

Another three weeks and he’ll be on his way to be fully immunized. This is thanks to the official decision made last week to administer the Pfizer vaccine to the 12 to 15 age group. 

Let’s hope that the rest of the nation lighten and smarten up to the need of getting vaccinated and we might be on the way out of that pandemic nightmare ...

The Palestinian ethnic cleansing continues…

While most people don’t remember that the continued Israeli-Palestinian conflict began in 1917 with a public statement from the British government, in the midst of World War I supporting the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then under the Ottoman rule and that only included a small minority Jewish population. 

Known as the Balfour declaration, this statement from the UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour was addressed to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, with input from Zionist Jews but without any representation from the local population in Palestine. 

This declaration would have many long-lasting consequences. It greatly increased popular support for Zionism within Jewish communities worldwide, and became a core component of the British Mandate for Palestine, the founding document of Mandatory Palestine, which later became Israel and the Palestinian territories. 

As a result, it is considered a principal cause of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The Brits, by trying to break the Ottoman Empire screwed up big time and created this monster that continues to be the world's most intractable conflict. 

The Arab Palestinians got shafted in that deal and for the past several decades, Israel seems intent on eradicating them from what’s left of Palestine. The former abused, under Nazi Germany, has become the abuser and the United States, France, the UK and a few others are supporting the colonialist power that Israel represents.

Obviously, Arabs and Muslims are not well liked and it’s easy to beat on them and cheer for Israel. It’s pretty clear to most enlightened folks however, that the Jewish State is intent on driving away or exterminating all Arabs and, little by little, annex their remaining territories. 

It is as disgusting as it is unjust, and when I watched the New York World Trade Center collapse on September 11, 2001, my first reaction was: “Payback for the unconditional US support of Israel.”

Time to ski on “yellow snow”?

Next to the Big Sky ski resort in Montana is a private ski resort, known as the Yellowstone Club, that counts celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Bill Gates as its member.

Like most American ski resorts it now needs to make snow in order to guarantee it can operate, but instead of using culinary water, it wants to be greener by recycling its wastewater into artificial snow. That’s new and creative! 

The idea is being criticized though, because it appears that typically, according to a recent UNESCO study, treated sewage can only remove about half of the chemical products like pharmaceutical and other drugs from the water, and as it turns into snow and eventually melts, it can seep into streams and pollute their surroundings. 

By trying to be greener, the Yellowstone Club wants to add more colors to it trail map and perhaps offer a few brown and a beige ski runs in addition to its blue and black trails, next ski season, if its permit application, currently under review with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality gets the… green light! 

In the meantime, in the event Bill Gates invites me to ski with him in Montana, I’ll remember my mom’s admonition: “Don’t eat yellow snow!”

Searching, persisting and finding

At many points in our lives, we are looking for something, for someone, or for solutions. 

While always overwhelming, search needs to begin somewhere and depending on the subject, can be fraught with a variety of results that may run the gamut, from extraordinary, promising, questionable or simply negative.

And it’s through this thicket of options that discouragement rears its head and pushes many to give up at diverse stages along the way. That’s were persisting come in and become the tool needed to get closer to a resolution and, in the end, makes all the difference between individuals. 

The more adversity, the more persistence is required and in the end, the degree of persistence is the critical ingredient in finding the desired solution. It’s also fair to say that, in the end, the process is an invaluable teacher for those who embrace it fully and are willing to work hard throughout the process...

A nasty faucet…

Sometime small incidents can escalate out of proportion. I’ll try to make that story clear, short and simple. 

As my son and I were installing some broken tiles on May 1, and I was trying to clean our tools, I noticed that my outdoor watering hose was woefully lacking pressure. I assumed there was still ice in it. In the ensuing days, I tried to thaw it, change the spigot, the reel, then the hose itself, to absolutely no avail. Thru elimination, the next element was the faucet itself. 

I examined at it and realized that it was indeed the problem. It’s a freeze-free outdoor faucet, that I started to take apart, hoping I’d clear some obstruction or change a faulty seal, but all this without any success. That’s when I noticed some wet cement falling apart around the outside wall, next to the faucet, that I realized that it might have burst. 

While I always take good care of not leaving the reel hose connected to the faucet in late fall, I might have been taken by surprise by an early, unusual October frost that permanently damaged it by bursting its foot long interior mechanism, and flooded the interior wall through all my subsequent attempts to test the system. 

This forced me to take apart portion of the wall in order to cure the problem ten days after I first noticed the it. At the end of the story, a huge amount of work for a minor incident.

My first voyage ‘round the world, part 2

Early May, fifty years ago, I drove to meet Alexis Saudan at his house, in Chamonix. This would be my first face-to-face encounter with him, following a short telephone conversation in which I expressed my desire to be a member of his Australian team and he offered me a position. 

I remember that his wife was there, the discussion took place on the patio in front of his house, and wasn’t sure who else attended that meeting. Fortunately, my friend Marcel remembers it well: 

“Once the choice [of the candidates] was made, we had a meeting at Alexis' place to plan the next steps involved. Gérard, Go11 and me. Alexis had to call Jean-Pierre who arrived from Megève (he was chopping wood!) Alexis asked Go11 to translate the terms of the contract. Both departure dates and means of transportation were also decided at that meeting. Go11 and JP would sail to Australia taking with them the team members’ skis, while I would fly over with Christophe, Alexis' son.” 

I also remember that we talked about getting the free equipment we were getting from Dynamic and Salomon mounted and crated into the personal effects carried by me and Jean-Pierre (I think we took at least 10 pairs of skis and were allowed some 880 lbs of luggage!). 

After we had signed the contracts, I was getting excited at the idea that by the end of the month, we’d be sailing off Genoa for a scheduled one-month voyage half around the world (in those days, Suez was still closed following the six-days war)!

Another of my ski biz dreams

Funny how dreams I remember sometimes come in a close series. 

The Rossignol company was founded and owned for a long time by a Frenchman, the late Laurent Boix-Vives who passed almost one year ago. 

He also owned Lange ski boots during the time I worked for that company, and I had met him on many occasions for meetings and at shows.

The dream in question was especially involving Boix-Vives and me, interacting during a serious meeting, and on several occasions, I caught myself addressing him as “Monsieur Rossignol”, and each time I struggled correcting myself, conscious that I was looking bad and making the absolute wrong impression when my aim was the total opposite. 

That terrible drama was enough to wake me up at 4 o'clock!

Checking if God’s paying attention…

While meditating, I have always thought this was the best time to be receptive to divine messages and interventions, so, during my daily session, I’ve tried to invite God (I mean anyone of any persuasion, whether it might be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, animist, etc.) to come and whisper in my ears that he or she was the one I should listen to, and follow from now on. 

Even tough I’ve tried my best to listen and pay attention, I haven’t heard a thing, so I think God could care less or might be on an extended vacation. 

I’m also certain that managing (should I say “babysitting”) 7.8 billion humans must be as hard as it is stressful, and I’m not surprised that whoever it is, our Supreme Being doesn’t seem to care about me, my concerns about global warming, melting glaciers and shorter ski seasons.

I think I’ve got the message; I’ll keep on meditating and leave my door open for an always possible but highly unlikely divine intrusion into my lowly life. Just stay tuned...

Dream under extreme tension!

I dream quite a bit, and each dream has the nasty habit of waking me up not just once a day, but more often, several times a night... 

The problem is that I rarely remember them. Exceptionally, last night, I did. I was on an old style telephone with a long coiled cord.

I got out of my house as I was still engaged in some intense telephone conversation. I kept on walking, and soon, found myself in an altogether different Park City neighborhood, some three miles away from my home, and now the cord felt extremely tense!

It didn’t break, but I woke up.

Biden’s upcoming challenges

I like Biden much better than I liked Trump, yet this said, I’m concerned about his overly ambitious infrastructure and family plans. 

I don’t like either plans in their entirety and think that some parts should be trimmed down or eliminated and I don’t believe that Biden will be able to “negotiate” with the Republicans and find a solution that has been a commonly reached compromise. 

Instead, he’ll have to go alone, meaning with his Democrat fellows, using budget reconciliation if he can shepherd all of his Senators towards a single goal. While this isn’t impossible, it will be extremely tight if it ever works out. 

Forget about health care improvements, eliminating the filibuster or packing the Supreme Court. I don’t think there will be enough fuel or political left for all these other goals. 

Am I pessimistic? Not really, I simply want to believe in miracles and I hope there’s a strategy under these grand plans that we, common mortals, can’t even imagine, see and understand, but it might magically gel to save the day. 

As Albert Einstein once said: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

Park City’s real estate price explosion!

From 1985 to this day, the consumer price index (cost of living) has been multiplied by about 2.5 which means that in the US, a decent car that could be purchased for $12,000 would now cost $30,000. 

Some products like televisions or computers would have seen less of a price increase or even some decrease, not to mention be a much better buy today. 

The same can’t be said about real estate, at least where we live in Park City, Utah. When we came to town in the summer of 1985, we purchased a home for $250,000. Yesterday, I found out that 36 years and four or five owners later, that very home just sold for $2,8 million, that’s more than 11 times more than what we originally paid for!

Granted, the house has kept up with the times, receiving several upgrades, but still the soaring real estate prices all over our small town are both unbelievable and unsustainable.

Just like Wall Street’s current levels, all of these sky-high and numbing records might be part and parcel of a giant bubble ready to blow up, as it remains at the mercy of some dramatic world developments or, closer to home, the tax hikes that are inevitable should Biden prevails with his big infrastructure and family plans.

A moose on a roll?

Not quite, more like the other way around, “a roll on moose!” 

For more than a dozen years, a fake moose, made of thin aluminum alloy, has been standing sentinel in front of a log home not far from our house, getting more bird droppings all over it than admiration. 

So, the other day, as we walked by, I noticed a full roll of toilet paper lying in the grass, twenty feet away from the metal sculpture. After Covid-19, toilet paper rolls have almost taken a symbolic meaning and have picked up a significant value in the whole humanity’s minds.

When I witnessed the scene, I did what Jesus would have done, I picked up the roll and anchored it to the animal’s antler for easy and free dispensation. 

It’s been there for several days now and no one has dared help themselves, yet!

Comparing winter weather forecast to reality

When we can remember to check it, it’s always enlightening to compare long term, winter forecast to reality. 

Let’s begin first with reality. Our winter began miserably with little to no precipitation until late January, then February got quite snowy, while March precipitations tapered a bit, but the overall temperatures stayed cool. 

The winter ended up okay and Park City remained totally skiable through April, albeit just enough to allow some good skiing in its second half, but temperatures never broke record cold. In contrast with that reality, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had issued a grim forecast, unfavorable to us, in Park City, Utah or the whole of Colorado, for that matter. 

Precipitation were expected to be average all winter while temperature are predicted to be significantly warmer. This wasn’t far from the truth overall but its timing was quite vague. 

As for the Farmer’s Almanac’s snow forecast, it predicted precipitations to be slightly below normal, on average. In terms of temperatures, our winter should have been slightly milder than normal, with cold periods in early to mid-December, late January, and late February, which was more inaccurate than NOAA’s. 

Bottom line, a mixed bag and a waste of my time and attention. In the future, I shouldn’t pay too much attention to these forecast and remember that global warming is here to make our future winters more miserable when it comes to skiing conditions.

Broken tiles and consequences…

Last year, as I was doing the yearly full-clean of walls and ceilings around our house, as I set up one of the leg from a small ladder on the corner of a bathroom tile, downstairs, and I cracked it. 

When my wife initially noticed it and told me about it, I thought it happened during the March 18 earthquake (5.7 in Magna, near Salt Lake), but I reasoned that it was more likely to be the thin leg of the ladder. So, last week, I set up to fix the problem by first removing the large broken tile (20” x 20”). 

As I was prying it lose, I broke the tile next to it and then realized that it was sounding “hollow” and I remove that second one, I saw that it had received almost on quick set, like the first one by the way. What is likely to have happened is that the workers who installed it ran out of cement to attach these last two tiles and “spread” the little they had left far too thin. 

Thank God, I’m a pack-rat and had set aside a dozen spare tiles “just in case!” To make a long story short, I spent close to 10 hours to fix the problem, including two of which when my son came with his tile cutter and his tiling expertise (he’s done 3,000 square feet of tiling in his two houses) to help me finish off the project. 

All this to say that one little crack in one tile, has some huge consequences in terms of repair and replacement, not to mention an infestation of dust on the entire floor that has yet to be addressed. If I had to pay someone to do that small job, that would have easily run me into the $1,200 to $1,500 range!

Cloud-gazing in Park City

In those fairly rare instance when we have clouds in our Park City skies, there is not just plenty to see, but in most cases a fascinating show that keeps on changing and entertaining those of us who are perceptive enough to look into the heavens.

Even though they’re so common and their recipe is simple - rising air and moisture - clouds are an ever evolving spectacle. Perched at 7,000 feet, Park City provides the perfect observatory for this display of elusive, modern art form. 

Often times, when my wife asks me “Take a shot of that beautiful cloud!”, whether it’s some unique cloud formation, a perfect reflection of the morning sun upon its crest or a stunning sunset, all has changed by the time I pull out my phone and frame the picture in. 

Evanescence is the name of the game with clouds, as well as an endless supply of second chances to snap a perfect photograph the next time all changes again for another, never-seen-before art form...

Should I be glad to have moved out?

I just ran into another ranking, this one involved 34,837 French Cities and Villages based on the overall quality of life they offer their residents. 

This ranking is based on a survey that has been conducted since 2017. 

Respondents were selected based on sex, age, socioeconomic categories, types of city and region of residence and questions ranked quality of life, safety, transports, shopping and services, healthcare, education, recreation and social climate. 

The study is called “Villes et Village of France où il fait bon vivre” (French cities and villages where life is good) and, even though it’s in French, you can check it out here. 

What village or city won that contest? Unsurprisingly, it’s Annecy, in Haute-Savoie. This the major city where I come from; it’s also called the Venice of the Alps. 

There, I checked the small town of Montriond. Population 905, where I was raised, and realized to my dismay that it ranked only 11,717th out of 34,847 towns and cities.

This made me feel sad, but on the other hand, I was delighted that I made the move to Park City Utah.