Mounting new skis

Yesterday, I mounted my new pair of Scott Mission skis with an existing pair of Look bindings that I took from my trashed Dynastar Intuitiv 74. Ever since I have been in the ski industry and actually before I went to work for Look bindings, I’ve always installed my bindings, with very few exceptions. This is a special work that I love doing. I don’t have a jig, so I end up measuring every hole with a watchmaker’s precision and it’s done! Perhaps it’s a rite of passage into the winter season. I remember my first pair of Dynastar Compound RG5 purchased for the winter of 1964-65. I bought them at the factory, in Sallanches, when the company was still called “Starflex” and didn’t belong yet to Rossignol. These skis – just like the Dynamic VR7 – were the first fiberglass “wrapped” torsion box construction made. Their tips were very low and would often dig into big moguls. Between the time I picked them at the factory and the time they were mounted with an elementary Salomon toe-piece and a basic Look turntable plus long thongs, I would go everyday in the back of my parents’ house storage room to admire them, flex them, and dream about all the good skiing I’d be doing on them. Things haven’t changed much. I still have a lot of reverence for my ski equipment. Today, in installing my new set, I felt once more the same pleasure, filled with positive anticipation.

No snow yet?

If you’re a skier or a rider and are anxious about early snowfalls, just remember how to manage your expectations. After more than 5 decades spent in the mountains and working closely within the snow industry, I can admit that I’ve worried more than my just share about whether we’d get snow or not. I’ve looked up towards the sky, hoping, dreaming and sometimes even praying. In the long run, I have learned, like many others, that most of our worries are a terrible waste of time and mental energy. Today, I’ve changed my tune for the better. I’ve now succeeded in training myself to expect very little or almost nothing in terms of snowfall when the season comes upon us. This way, any change in my expectation, as far as snow is concerned, is likely to be an excellent surprise and great news. This zero-expectation approach may sound a bit cynical, but it works and is the best antidote to disappointments when rosy schemes fail to materialize. While I now religiously apply it to snow storms, its field of use is pretty much universal and it can be put to work against any uncertainties that may cause endless worries and eventually, high stress. My next move is to apply it to investing in the stock market…

Dressed for school?

When we went running this morning, the temperature was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit and we really felt the bite! Half-a-mile into our route, we came across what could have been an 11-12 year old girl walking to the school bus stop. While we were running – not walking – and wearing hat and gloves, this girl had a just a pair of jeans and a shirt on and was wearing… tongs. When we saw that, we hoped that all the stuff she carried in her backpack would keep her warm, but seriously we could not help thinking how in the world her dad or mom would let her go out in that skimpy attire in such a cold weather. The reality, however, might have been that her dad and mom were long gone to work by the time she left home…

When bad is good

If you’re an active investor, be prepared to the psychological roller-coaster of being successively elated and depressed. When the market is going up and your positions are doing well, you will instantly come to the conclusion that – somehow – you must be some kind of a genius. When this mode of thinking starts seeping through your little brains, you should sell and take your profits if you are indeed very smart. That seldom happens as we’re not nearly as bright as we think we are. The reverse is totally symmetrical. When hell breaks lose and the market goes down, despair becomes the order of the day and you want to disappear, go into profound hibernation or even die.
The paradox is that when you hit bottom is when the best buying opportunity is found. Without a doubt this theory sounds like music to everyone’s ear, but to be able to exert that option, you should have listened to your first admonition, which was to sell (raise cash) when the going was good and when you were convinced that you were SO intelligent. Easier said than done…

Strike a vein

Today, I went for a blood test as a follow up to yesterday’s annual medical checkup (it’s been in fact a couple of years.) As a joke and since it’s timely as we’re just in 2007, I call this procedure my 60,000 mile service. So here I show up this morning and a young male nurse undertakes to draw blood from me. Before hand, I warn him that it would be easier to draw blood out of a turnip, but it doesn't register. We try one arm without any luck; then the other with the same result. At each time, the very-hard-to-locate vessel rolls under the needle and instead of blood, a great deal of invisible frustration percolates into the plastic conduit. At that point, I’m about to suggest that the nurse slits my throat open and we put and end to that game. Not willing to go for my final solution, he undertakes to poke the top of my right hand and a microscopic drip starts filling the tiny tube; just like a movie in slow motion, or watching grass grow. After 30 minutes of that game of patience, the three test vials are somehow filled up and I’m on my way back home.

By the way, I’ve decided on yesterday’s blog question. All my very serious thinking (is that an oxymoron or what?) will appear in Go Politics, my other English-only blog and we’ll leave that blog and its French counterpart intact.

About this blog

I really started this blog immediately after I sustained my Achilles’ tendon rupture, just to do something during my recovery and to get into the habit of writing regularly (or perhaps not to lose the little I had altogether.) For similar reasons, I chose to write it in both English and French. I’ve been irregular at times with it, but decided – back in September – to either do it consistently or just drop it. At this point, I’m looking at focusing its direction and its contents towards issues that are important to me, rather than just trivia or daily happenings. In the next weeks, I’ll decide whether to discuss issues that are important to me; most are political and involve immigration, right to health care, planet preservation and democratic tools. Some that are inextricably connected to the former are religion and humanistic philosophy. So please, stay tuned…

Can we still trust God?

When I see what our dollar is fetching these days, I just wonder who was in charge and would let that happen. This is especially striking when you stare at the “In God We Trust” motto emblazoning all of our dollar bills and ask yourself “what for?” To be frank, I think that God, whom we have trusted so much for so long, has just not been paying attention lately. I’m not just talking about the falling dollar, but 9/11, Katrina, AIDS, the obesity epidemic and the sub-prime crisis to list a few issues. It might be time for us to do something about his mediocre performance. Last week, this is just what happened to E. Stanley O'Neal, the CEO of Merrill Lynch and Charles Prince, that of Citigroup, who both had to resign after they brought some very bad news to their respective shareholders. I’m not suggesting we should fire God, but Treasury Secretary Polson and Fed Chairman Bernanke, who are both decent men, should nicely pressure him to resign, or at the very least, be re-assigned somewhere else. God could for instance move to that new solar system “55 Cancri” where a planet looking like earth was spotted this past Tuesday, over on the other side of the Milky Way, only 41 light-years from here. There would be a lot of benefits if God were to resign and move there; for one thing, he’d get a most deserved change of venue, we could check on him with a powerful telescope but he wouldn’t see us, and it would be a bonanza for our planet. Most armed conflicts that are raging at the moment would suddenly come to a screeching halt, birth rate would immediately go into a free fall, and soon, life on earth would return to full sustainability. Then, what’s the government waiting for?