One additional National Park

We have seen many American National Parks and without falling into a "collecting habit”, it’s always tempting to add an extra one to the list. That’s precisely what I did this time by visiting Death Valley National Park to our personal list. 

Not that I ever had good things about that place, but because it happens to be one of the favorites from French visitors and I wanted to know what the redeeming values of the place do to a Gallic crowd. So, outside of Zabriskie Point and the Sand Dunes, I wasn’t impressed. As a result, I still don’t understand why my countrymen are so infatuated with that Park. 

I suspect it’s because in July 1966, a French adventurer and former paratrooper named Jean Pierre Marquant, then aged 28, successfully hiked over 100 miles through Death Valley in extreme, record-breaking summer temperatures ranging from 100 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, a feat many experts thought would kill him. This factoid must have made a searing impression on the minds of the French tourists. 

We ended that second day on the road in Lone Pine, in California. Founded in the 1860s as a supply hub for gold and silver mines, Lone Pine was originally a rowdy frontier town. It was decimated by a massive earthquake in 1872. 

Later, it became "Hollywood’s West" as the primary filming location for hundreds of classic Westerns in the Alabama Hills. Today, the economy is driven by tourism, acting as the gateway to Mount Whitney (highest peak in the lower 48 (at 14,505 feet or 4,421 meters) and the Alabama Hills. 

It should thrive on hikers, outdoor enthusiasts, and film history buffs. One may wonder if local services, mining/quarrying, and accommodations can support the community, alongside a notable percentage of government workers? Still, at least to me, the town seems to be slowly dying as it seems incapable of capitalizing on its incredibly beautiful mountain background.

Return to Las Vegas

Our more recent road trip began at the end of April, as we set for mission to bring our daughter’s car on its last leg of a cross-country trip that took place begun in October 2025. We began with a first stage between Park City and Las Vegas, Nevada. I have been to Las Vegas, a quintessentially crazy town more than 20 times and have spent close to 120 days in that town when I attended the ski industry’s annual shows. 

I thought I knew that place well except that the last time I was there was in 20 years ago, in 2006, with a goal, among other things of attending an Elton John concert at one of the local Casinos. When we got to town late afternoon on April 28, I couldn’t believe how the place had changed, it was just unrecognizable. Not only that, but now check in operates like at the airports, at kiosks, without any human interaction. 

This didn’t work, not just for us old folks, but for most guests that were totally dumbfounded by the impossibility of the task. We were just pissed, as we should have been. We finally got in and went to a nearby hotel to see KÀ, the unprecedented, gravity-defying production by Cirque du Soleil  takes adventure to an all-new level. 

Be awed by a dynamic theatrical landscape, as an entire empire appears on the KÀ colossal stage and a captivating display of aerial acrobatics envelops the audience. That show redeemed our terrible check-in experience at our hotel and almost made worth it. I shouldn’t go that far to say that Las Vegas is worth the 6 1 ½ hour drive from home, but we’ll see… 

From Coast to Coast

My first coast to coast, American trip happened in 1971 when, upon arriving from Australia, I boarded a Greyhound bus in Los Angeles and went from city to city all the way to New York before traveling to Montreal where I caught my flight back to France.

Little did I know that it would be the prelude of a series of long road trips spanning over 55 years. The second big trip included my wife and our two rambunctious young children (5 and 3) that took us from Chappaqua in New York to Park City, our new promised land in 1985.

Between 2007 and 2012 we took a few road trips between Utah and Berkeley, California, where our daughter got her first job. In 2012, I accompanied my daughter to California as she switched from her small car to a nicer station-wagon. In November that same year, as she got a governmental position in Washington with the US Government, our daughter drove her car back to Utah and my wife and I drove it to Virginia where she lived.

It’s only in October 2025, when things started to unravel with Trump, that our daughter left her great job to return to California. We kept her car in our garage with the intent to drive it back to San Francisco in the spring and that’s just what we did between April and May, making a side trip to Las Vegas, Death Valley, the Pacific Coast and a second cruise North along Coastal Highway 5 in California.

If we add this all up we’d get to 13,700 miles. It’s a bit hard to say that we came full circle, but we’ve seen a lot of America over the years and we’re glad we did. In the next few blogs we’ll relate our adventures as we drove along...

Trip planning with modern tools

In the past, going on a trip was 20% planning and 80% improvisation, but I don’t know about you, for me this process has been turned on its head too! In a next blog you’ll read about our recent trip to California in which we delivered our daughter’s car that we drove last Fall from Washington, DC, to Park City. 

This time our mission is to get it all the way to San Francisco after making a detour to visit spots we had never seen before and return to others we liked a lot. To put that plan together, I began 10 days before departure playing with Google maps to see where we’d go and stay, how long it would take us to get there and build some kind of itinerary. Not to leave any stone unturned,

I checked with AI to get a modicum of approval, which I failed to receive, so it was back several times to the drawing board. In between, I even check for entertainment since we had one stop planned in Las Vegas and wanted to see at least one new National Park, draw a quick budget on a spreadsheet, factoring in the high cost of gasoline as we wouldn’t be driving our electric car for that one-way road trip, and of course bought a pair of return plane ticket to get back home. 

Quite a program, too many confusing choices and a lot of time needed to digest all this and let it mature into a more practical plan! What’s certain is that technology added a lot of time to a complex decision process that was a bit overrated for a simple road trip!

Simple and easy, complicated and difficult

It’s not that I’m nostalgic, but I feel that in the past, when I was young, I remember life to be simple and easy, while today our reality has turned into something that’s become complicated and difficult. Is it because we’re faced with too many choices, are under time pressure, are victims of fear of missing out (FOMO), or what else? I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one who feels this way as my discussion with many people and social research seems to confirm. 

Life is objectively more complex than it was 50 years ago. While there might be a tinge of nostalgia in holding that view, it’s grounded in several measurable psychological and sociological shifts. First there’s what’s called the “The paradox of choice”. In the past, if I wanted to buy a pair of ski boots, I went to a ski shop and choose from maybe three brands. Today, there are 15 brands, 100 models, and thousands of online reviews to read.

Having too many options doesn't make us freer; it paralyzes us. We spend more time "optimizing" the decision than enjoying the result, leading to "decision fatigue." On top of that, we’ve become prisoners of connectivity. Yesterday, when I left home, I wasn’t reachable. Life had natural sheltered zones where nothing was expected of me. Today, we’re accessible 24/7 to every responsibility we have. Between managing text and email messages, updating some piece of software, and checking our news feed, our mental space is constantly used by some background processes. We are never truly "off," which makes life feel heavy. 

To make matters worse, technology has eliminated the "waiting" periods that used to buffer our days. For instance, when I wrote a letter, I had to wait a week for a reply. I walked to my bank to check a balance or a transaction. All these moments were forcing me to slow down, but now everything is instantaneous. This "time-space compression" creates a relentless pace. We feel under pressure not because we have more to do, but because we are expected to do it right now. 

Now, there’s a subtle but vital difference between complexity and complication. A mechanical watch is complicated, but it is a closed system. If one gear turns, another follows. Modern life is complex. It’s interconnected. A conflict in a different hemisphere can change the price of energy used to heat our home or charge our car. Everything is tied to everything else in a way that feels unpredictable and, therefore, difficult to navigate. 

Of course, one could argue that life was "simpler" in the past because we were less involved in fewer things. We accepted what the local doctor said, what the local paper printed, and what was available at the local store. Today, we have more power, more information, and much more options, but the "tax" for that power is the constant labor of managing it. Better stay strong and fit, we all need a lot work ahead of us… Good luck!

Market dominance and hubris (Part Three)

Nokia failed completely by totally losing its entire smartphone leadership and eventually sold it, leading to the end of the brand as a market leader. Nokia was founded in 1865 by mining engineer Fredrik Idestam, and operated as a paper mill in Finland. Eventually, Nokia’s paper mill, merged with rubber and cable companies in 1967, and only pivoted heavily to electronics and mobile phones business in the late 1970s to early 1980s, establishing Mobira Oy in 1979 and launching its first car phone, the Mobira Senator, in 1982. It then introduced their first handheld phone, the Mobira Cityman 900, in 1987, and shifted focus to telecoms in the early 1990s. 

It’s when Jorma Ollila, CEO from 1992 to 2006, is said to have stayed "too long" (14 years) at the helm of the Finnish company. He led Nokia to become the world’s largest handset manufacturer, but the company struggled to transition to smartphones, lagging behind in software (Symbian) and failing to respond to the iPhone's launch. He was replaced by Stephen Elop as CEO (2010–2014) who would be heavily criticized for the "burning platform" strategy, leading to the sale of Nokia’s phone business to Microsoft. 

 

On the other hand, Jean Beyl the inventor of the early Look bindings, also remained in charge for too long and soon became a problem because the skill sets required to create his inventions (creativity, passion, deep technical knowledge) went against the skills required to scale a business (delegation, operational discipline, sound marketing, financial management). 

While Beyl was a visionary in his own right, he always struggled to transition from "doing" into "leading," micromanaging and creating bottlenecks in decision-making and erecting a "founder's syndrome" where the organization became constrained by his management style, ego, German girlfriends and refusal to delegate. Still Look did survive. 

Having come too late with its “9 series” to enjoy a positive impact, the company went bankrupt, was picked up for one Franc* by Tapie, a French raider whose sole focus was to line-up his pockets, leading to another quick sale, another long hiatus, until Rossignol skis picked up the pieces, intelligently simplified the line and made it an accessory to its ski line instead of being a self-standing philosophical statement. 

So unlike Nokia, Look did not disappear but kept chugging along as it gradually transitioned. The iPhone was a "tsunami" that metamorphosed the industry in 2 to 3 years. While there are parallels between the origin of the two stories, the outcomes were drastically different as Nokia didn’t change hands until it was too late, while Look benefited from the hiatus created by two or three different owners. 

Also the nature of the ski business made it extremely unique with its inherent seasonality, its challenging short three-month annual cash-flow period, and its small number of participants (around 75 to 100 millions skiers in the late 2000s?) plus the gigantic difference in size of the respective industries (mobile phones being 1,000 times larger than alpine ski binding in sales volume) can’t be overstated even though both markets spanned the globe... 

 *As opposed to Salomon’s $1.4 billion acquisition by Adidas in 1997

Market dominance and hubris (Part Two)

When it comes to comparing how the iPhone took over of Nokia, to what Salomon did to Look in the ski industry, I can only speak from personal experience as a former Look employee, in thinking how Salomon rose to prominence over Look ski bindings in the 1970s, culminating in the late-70s launch of the S727 "Driver" series. 

This product evolution holds a strong parallel to the Nokia-Apple shift, as it highlights a technological pivot from an established, engineering-heavy design to a user-centric, more functional, and more accepted solution that redefined industry standards. Beginning in the 1960s, Look was a dominant, trusted, high-performance, and high-prestige ski binding manufacturer with its Nevada & Grand-Prix models.

Salomon, however, changed the game by shifting the intangible idea of ski-safety into user-focused design. The big difference was the hubris from Look’s inventor Jean Beyl who didn’t believe in funding a strong R&D and listening to his market, as opposed to the open mind and common sense exhibited by Georges Salomon who took their respective companies in dramatically different directions. 

Look bindings (like the Nevada) often required specific, sometimes difficult installation on skis and adjustments to ski boots, but most significantly was rather inconvenient to use on snow. Salomon began by simplifying its engineering, making it less costly to manufacture, designing bindings that were easier to install and adjust at the ski shop level, and ultimately much easier to use by the end-consumer. 

After years of struggling with its 404 and 505 then 555 series, Salomon gradually introduced several “game-changer”. First the 444 a mid-range ski binding, super easy to get in and out of, then its functional ski brake that made safety straps obsolete, followed by the release in the late 1970s of the Salomon S727 that was the final nail into Look’s coffin.

Unlike Look, which initially was slower to integrate the brake into the binding mostly because of its specific design, Salomon, also a leader in patents, was a leader in integrating a sleek brake technology that tied the skis together, which quickly became a standard replacement for run-away straps. Then at the back-shop level came the “pre-mount” system that had mounting screws already attached to the bindings and ready to screw into the holes, not to mention its much more convenient mounting templates. 

Salomon was able to place itself in the end-user shoes (shops and consumers) while Look simply would not. Tomorrow we’ll see the similarities and also the key differences between these two declines...