The Great Tree Harvest

Our property is boarded by trees on its east, west and south sides, but while my wife tolerate evergreens, she doesn't particularly appreciate aspens that she considers like invading “weeds.”

I don't mind them and hate to cut any kind of tree, and that difference of opinion is exactly shared, along gender lines with Michelle and Bret, our neighbors to the west.

So, this past Sunday, we had an informal meeting between the two households and the two men basically acquiesced to the ladies' demands, agreeing to cut many of the offending aspen trees between our two properties.

After that harsh death sentence fell on trees that had committed no crimes, I began to have “buyer's remorse”, but that didn't prevent me from running to the store and get a brand new saw that got tested a few moments later when I fell seven aspen trees in less than one hour.

Granted, these trees weren't huge, but their future was bright, especially every month of October! A few larger trees asked for a stay of execution which I immediately granted, mostly on the ground that their trunk was too large and that they were too much work to cut.

After assessing the scope of the decimating work, my spouse seemed happy, my neighbors impressed and I hope the subject won't come up again for another year...

The Sölden half-mess

I didn't watch the women's GS and couldn't see the men either as it got canceled. This said, I might have watched post-race videos as I won't get up anymore in the wee hours of the day to admire a ski competition.

The women had a good race, without much surprise. As usual, Lindsey Vonn, did her best to steal the show by first announcing that she would finally take part in the race, little did she expect that she would fail to qualify.

At about the same time, in an October 24 interview with Sweden's Aftonbladet, she spoke about the women's circuit and stated: “I think it’s important for women to have equal rights, there definitely is a generalization that we are kind of second-rate on the World Cup. You know, we’re the pony show, and the men are the real race horses.”

Well, she's probably right and I'm afraid that the sport is globally too small, has not enough sponsorship money and fans to change this sad state of affair.

As for the men, well, too much wind canceled the affair on Sunday, but why in the world have the organizers not postponed the race to the following day (the weather forecast was improved by then) and waste precious time and obscene travel costs to athletes and their support team? 

This to me is inexcusable and show, if it needed to, that the international ski federation is ran by a bunch of incompetent, not-grounded bureaucrats.

Time to pick a new mayor!

In a little more than a week, Park City citizens will pick a new mayor and two new city council members. The bigger contest though, is about who will become our little-town mayor (8,000 people) for the next 4 years.

This is mostly a honorific and goal-setting position, as the day-to-day city management is left to a professional. Dana Williams, 62 years of age, one of the two contestants, has been mayor for three-terms or 12 years, and after taken a break for the past 4 years, wants to return, thinking he's still the best and is badly needed.

Andy Beerman, his opponent, is currently a city council member and doesn't offer a program that is drastically different than Williams', but his biggest assets over the previous mayor are his age (48 years old) and his rather successful forays in various local businesses that stand in stark contrast with Williams' mediocre professional record.

I have worked alongside Williams during a brief period and wasn't impressed at all. He basks in what he believes are his past “achievements”, talks a much better story than he's able to walk it, and as he said when he entered the race, is doing so essentially because the job now pays better than during the dozen of year he was at the helm ($50,000 per year).

My take on all this is that Dana Williams had his days in the sun and we're now ready for some lots of new ideas, refreshing directions and much energetic blood!

High ski-pass prices, low wages

Last spring, I was shocked at how Park City Mountain and Deer Valley, our local ski resorts, had jacked up their season pass prices in relation to the consumer price index (CPI).

Over the past two seasons, they had gone up by more than 5 percent a year or 10 times more than the CPI. This morning I heard on the radio that Utah's ski resorts were struggling to fill thousand of seasonal jobs, which they were able to satisfy in the past by relying upon overseas workers coming on special J-1 visa (foreign work exchange program, for college students).

Today, these are under threat by Trump and many members of congress that have all criticized the visa program, saying that companies should hire American workers first. Of course these jobs are seasonal and pay close to minimum wage, so no locals or even other American want them.

Which leads me to wonder that with a 5 to 6 percent increase in their pass prices that must generate a volume comprised between $120 to $140 million, the annual “hike” in lift ticket prices amounts a least to $6 or $7 million.

Instead of stashing this extra profit in the resorts bottom line, this should go a long way into attracting more local and American ski resort workers by paying them well, recruiting at home and relying less on dirt-cheap, foreign labor...

Shopping for a... plot!

Yesterday, I went shopping for some very special real estate. Since Park City has become our home, we'd like to make sure it remains this way for a very, very long time, especially after we have taken our very last breath.

Now, you see the piece of real estate I'm talking about! Not that I'm in any hurry to kick the bucket, but some planning might be in order, especially in view of the growth that keeps on creeping in, all over Park City, so I thought that buying a burial plot before the city runs out of them might not be such a bad idea.

Compared to the rest of our local real estate, that particular kind is still quite affordable, so why not jump on the opportunity while it's plentiful and affordable!

Want to impress someone?

If there's a forum where impressing seems to be going out of control it's on social media in general and Facebook in particular. Folks showing off that they're handsome, smart, knowledgeable, affluent, well-traveled, famous and so on.

Evidently, the anxious human condition finds in affecting others a marvelous outlet, and social media is the ideal place for that, so when there's an urge to impress, there's a magic and easy tool immediately available to everyone.

Does it hit its target, namely impress all the onlookers? Partly so. Does it go further? You bet; it also fosters envy, jealousy and a host of other nefarious feelings. In fact, impressing seldom hits it target with all of its might. It splatters its energy under the form of resentment and other dark reactions.

When all is said and done, we can only impress ourselves and what's posted on Facebook to influence others is often so perverted that it would hardly touch us if we were truly objective about its contents.

A good place to start might be to work much harder at impressing ourselves and forgetting about the gallery of Facebook “voyeurs” altogether. Then, and only then, we might be impressed of the impression we make...

More ski resort numbers...

Just yesterday we discuss ski resort acquisition prices per skier day. The concept may sound new to you, but find it particularly helpful when we're looking for meaningful metric to better understand the economic reality of the ski industry.

If we stay with Vail Resorts, we can get a better sense of the inner working of its financial reality. In 2017, Vail Resorts claim 12 million skier-days for about $1,890 million in sales. While its income before income taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was $593 million, its net income was $211 million.

Based on skier-day, these number translate to $158 in sale, $49 in EBITDA and $18 in net income. One more thing, the effective ticket price (ETP), the lift ticket revenue divided by total skier visits, amounted to $68 about half Vail Resorts' peak season daily lift ticket.

Now, you can compare these numbers to the $525/skier-day acquisition cost of Whistler that we discussed yesterday and figure a 30 times earning-ratio, that also include real estate, various equipment and other non ski related assets.

This price earning-ratio is pretty much the same as Vail Resorts' stock (MTN) current P/E ratio for 2017 at 30.92 and its 28.73 projection for 2018...

The ski resorts acquisition binge

In these days of global warming, you'd think that only Trump would be foolish enough buying a ski resort, as the prime denier of human-caused climate change, but this is not quite the case.

In the past years, some major conglomerates have been purchasing ski resorts, left and right, with seemingly little concern or regard about average global temperatures on the rise and a ski market size that stubbornly refuses to grow.

The recent purchase price of Deer Valley Resort to KSL/Crown wasn't disclosed but it must have been hefty to convince its former owners to sell.

If we were to use a metric to peg recent ski resorts acquisition cost and begin with Whistler's purchase for $1.1 billion by Vail Resorts, based on 2,100,000 skier visits during the 2015-2016 season, this would equate to about $525 per skier day.

If we apply that same rule to Deer Valley, we'd get to $360 million, but my own sense and the fact that Vail Resorts must have participated in the bid, tell me that the transaction much have been at least pushed to the $500 million mark to reach the tipping point that shocked everyone.

The planet isn't the only thing that is heating up these days!

Skis too long? Fold' em!

Ever since skis have existed, they've had their advantages and their downsides. One of their key advantage was to allow a skier to stand over soft snow without sinking in.

The downside of this was their length that made them hard to steer and clumsy to carry. We stay with the last idea: Ease of transportation.

For years, inventors have been toying with a folding ski that could be thrown inside a rucksack and allow someone to climb steep mountains without having one long pair of boards hindering their progression and destabilizing them in some precarious sections of the climb.

I know of the Swiss makers Attenhoffer in 1925 and Shraner in 1934 that proposed designs that didn't pass muster with the market. More recently MTN Approach was another execution of the stubborn idea that received limited attention.

This was until Elan, the father of modern carving skis, came up with yet another version of the ski that literally folds in half from the middle. Sounds good to me, but I like to see things before I quite believe them, so I've looked everywhere for a video of this folding contraption, but they still must be filming it!

Short of this kind of video-proof, I heard that Elan sponsored Davo Karničar, a famous mountaineer, to ski down Everest on its new two-piece, Ibex model. Apparently, he made it to the base camp without folding!

Are your spare tires full of air?

My recent flat-tire incident inspired me to check the pressure of the temporary spare tire in my wife's Mini. This was a bad and good idea.

Bad idea first, because I discovered that finding the spare tire and getting it out required a full-engineering degree and also good idea, because the spare tire, after years of ignoring its existence was as flat as a pancake.

My advice to all readers of this blog: Get under your cars and check if you have a spare tire; if you can find out where it hides, learn how to take it down and if check if there's enough air in them.

Do it sooner than later, because later might be at night, on a rainy evening, on the wrong side of a busy highway (that's happened to me before)!

Another flat tire!

There are things in life we're never ready for; winning the loto, dying or having a flat tire. Less than 300 yards after leaving home yesterday, I noticed that something was wrong with my car and pretty soon I realized that I must have had a flat.

Since I was in the middle of an hairpin turn I pulled over safely enough in front of the next available driveway and proceeded to change the wheel that had caught an ubiquitous construction screw. In the meanwhile two young Latinos stopped by and alarmed by my frailty, very kindly asked if we needed help.

I politely refused, but for the life of me couldn't find all the accessories needed to remove the wheel. This is the second time this happens with that car and while I knew the missing jack handle (#3 on the drawing) was hidden somewhere, I couldn't remember where exactly.

I opened the front hood (?) without any result and while I was frenetically thumbing through the owner's manual, it suddenly dawned on me that this particular tool was hidden under a panel located to the left of the spare wheel well.

When I finally removed the bad wheel and installed the limited service spare tire I saw that it needed some air, so I returned home, gave it lots of psi and drove over to the tire shop.

That's when I got thinking that a regular emergency rehearsal to remember where everything is, along with a check of the spare tire inflation, might not be such a bad idea in the future, right?

Weather or not snow comes?

Yesterday, NOAA's, America's climate prediction center told us how this next winter might be.
According to what they are asserting, la Niña should be back this season and play a major role on what will fall on us during the course of next winter.

Of course, my first reaction has been to decipher how Utah would fare in terms of snow and what I found out is that our average temperatures might be higher (not surprising and not good) and so would our precipitations (great as long as they are “solid”).

Now, I need to go back to that blog around the middle of next April to check if this forecast is something worth believing or if it's pure fantasy. We'll see!

How will KSL & Co handle Deer Valley?

Yesterday, I was talking to a skier buddy of mine about how Deer Valley Resort might change out under new ownership. He thought Deer Valley brand was so strong that it couldn't be affected. I didn't see it quite the same way.

As a private-equity group, and in spite of what it announces to re-assure patrons of newly acquired resort, the affiliates of KSL Capital Partners and Henry Crown and Company (KSL & Co) isn't putting its collection of resorts together without expecting to achieve large economies of scale, consolidate best practices throughout them and compete head-to-head with Vail Resorts.

While Deer Valley may bask in the glow of Ski Magazine somehow flawed and narrowly based rankings, it suffered from a few issues that could be seen as opportunities for growth and progress by its new owners, like appealing more to younger crowds, broadening its product offering and even more simply, innovating, a policy that has dissipated soon after the resort's inception.

If KSL & Co is to be a success down the road, expect to see some drastic changes affecting its entire grouping of new resorts, including of course, Deer Valley.

Overrated tax incentives?

Amazon is searching for its second headquarter outside of Seattle, and soliciting bids from cities across North America for a place to build it.

The firm said it would invest $5 billion and eventually create some 50,000 jobs. Ideally, its new home should be a city with at least 1 million people, an international airport, and a "stable and business-friendly environment."

To attract the high-tech retailer, cities are rolling out a red carpet stuffed with tax-incentives. My question of course is whether these tricks will get the deal, or will ever break-even, as smart companies look much further than tax giveaways to build their strategies.

This precisely was this morning's topic of conversation on NPR, as to whether tax incentives are what drive companies.

The reporter, Alina Selyukh, framed the answer to that question by quoting Paul O'Neill, former CEO of aluminum giant Alcoa, when he told Congress at his 2001 U.S. Treasury Secretary confirmation hearing : "I never made an investment decision based on the tax code; if you're giving money away, I'll take it. If you want to give me inducements for something I'm going to do anyway, I'll take it. But good business people don't do things because of inducements."

To me, this makes a lot of sense and also confirms how reducing corporate taxes has never worked in order to stimulate the economy. Business goals and needs are what drive it.

Jet lag and old folks

I used to travel an awful lot and through the years, developed my own technique in dealing with jet lag.

For one thing, I always adhered to the following principles: 

• Try to sleep as much as possible during the flight. 
• Run or exercise strenuously upon arrival at my new destination. 
• Convince myself that the new local time is the real one and never “translate” with the time at home. 

 The bottom line is that it worked pretty well for me as I was trained and much younger. I've also always experienced that eastward travel was much tougher as I was losing precious sleeping time and my circadian rhythms were more perturbed.

Westward flying was much easier, of course, for the very same reasons. Sitting still for hours plus breathing recirculated foul air wasn't helping either.

Today as I am getting close to 70, most of these negative elements seem to have amplified and jet lag is no longer a fun and enjoyable game to play. Morale of the story:

Don't wait until you're 80 to do all your heavy traveling!

Post-vacation chores

Returning home after a vacation always feel good. Re-discovering one's own home, re-experiencing one's own bed ; nothing beats these feelings.

There's of course all the mail to sort, the bills to pay and the urgencies to address. Along with all of this there are the other by-product of all that the time-off, like pictures and videos, among others.

These are also my biggest pet-peeve that we seem to accumulate in huge quantities, especially now, in that smart-phone era, where we always have a camera or worse, a video-camera in our pocket. How do we deal with that deluge of material?

I usually leaves that for last. I get to do my daily blog first and then, when it's all published, go to the pictures. That's what I just started today. This is hard work because is requires sorting, which mean choosing and major brain damage.

Wish me luck!

A former colleague drops by...

My countryman Patrick and I used to work for a while at the same ski school, in Avoriaz, up in the northern French Alps and both of us had since moved on, he to Canada, me to the United States.

Yesterday happened to be a superb opportunity for us to meet again when he, along with his wife Vicky, came to visit me and my wife in Park City. Lots of stuff to reminisce about and old memories to dust off.

A wonderful day for all of us!

KLM's toxic food

In case you didn't know it, the “KLM” acronym, means Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij, which simply put, stands for Royal Dutch Airlines. Sound good, except that the food they serve on some of their flight is downright poisonous.

When we flew KLM from Nice to Amsterdam on our way back to America, the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands served us cheese sandwiches for breakfast that were not really attractive. My wife took a bite of it and tossed it away. I was hungry and ate the whole thing, not knowing that sometime later that Dutch delicacy would strike me with a vengeance.

You could think that KLM's recent merger with Air France would have had a positive influence on the airline culinary style, but apparently not. Upon my return home, I got food poisoning so severe that I thought I would die.

Since I'm writing this, I did survive it, but enough to remember never again to fly KLM or eat their spoiled food.

Better yet, regardless of the airline we'll fly in the future, we'll a point to pack up our food before boarding. Don't we learn something new everyday?

What could Deer Valley improve?

Being the “number one ski resort” in North America would suggest perfection, but perfection exists nowhere and for those that know Deer Valley Resort well, there are quite a few things that still could be improved.

These are personal thoughts coming through seasons of experience and observations. Let's start from the beginning, with parking. The current set up, while permitting unloading at the top, still requires one driver or a ski party skipping the whole valet thing to walk up to the resort or wait for the little shuttle-train.

What about instead, a series of covered moving walkways, just like the escalators at Beaver Creek? Then, there is the antiquated paper lift ticket that needs to be attached to the jacket or the pass that needs to somehow hang out.

Time to move to RFID and get a real count of how many skiers are on the mountain; I'm certain the new owners will do it! There, on the slopes, there is definite need for some in-between grade between the steep runs (terrifying for intermediates) at the top of Bald Mountain and the sheer flatness of Homeward Bound, as well as widening congested zones like Ontario run for example; some creative design is required to address these problem!

Also, be a bit more customer-oriented and delayed closing time at Empire and Lady Morgan, not to mention getting Carpenter to start a tiny bit earlier to disgorge skiers faster out of Snow Park. Having all ski instructors wear a helmet might also go a long way in setting example for all skiers and while we are at it, isn't it time for letting all users (skiers and snowboarders) enjoy the mountain together?

Discriminating against boarders pleases the dying crowd that still is – until now – the core constituency of Deer Valley, but it might be prudent to attract more millennials by walking the talk and creating more youthful activities to the resort by designating and building a series of real Park for the new generations and get rid of Cadillac as the official car of the resort?

Finally, tastes change and evolve all the time and it seems to me that the resort's food services have stayed stuck in the past and should strive to maintain their leadership through innovation in dining.

I won't even mention the creation of a good website and a workable app, but you get my drift...

Jean Ferrat's lust for life

When we found ourselves in Ardèche, I wanted to visit the village that the French singer Jean Ferrat literally “adopted” leaving Paris and its glamour behind.

The village of Antraigue sur Volane fits my one of my favorite French singer like a glove and while I never was fond of Ferrat's political views (he openly espoused communism for quite a long time until discovering Stalin's true work) I loved all of his other songs.

Seeing the kind of place and lifestyle he picked for himself in Ardèche made sense to me and fell perfectly in line with the image I had of the man and the poet.

Morzine vs. Park City; that's the question!

Upon my return from France, my wife is asking me how I feel about my distant hometown in the French Alps and how it compares with Park City.

My response never really changes. French lifestyle is fun but is also quite complicated. Park City's is super casual and totally uncomplicated.

The weather in Morzine is humid and subject to change almost all the time with about 250 days of precipitations a year. Contrast this with Park City's 250 days of dry and steady weather.

Skiing is just incredibly good in Utah while far too crowded, bordering on dangerous in France.

Then there's on big thing: Food. We eat like kings in France, while we tend to eat like our new president in American, but fortunately – and we have 40 years to attest to that – the gap is closing fast plus my wife and I have stayed thin!

Wishing for supersonic travel!

Airplane GPS information is something I've loved ever since it became ubiquitous on all long-haul flights.

For one thing, I'm a graphic animal, I also love geography and can't stand not being able to see where I am in the world, especially while prisoner inside a flying tube, so instead of watching numbing movies and shows,

I leave the flight-tracker on while I read, so from time to time, I can raise my sight and check our progress. My wife is here to remind me that we're barely moving on a flight of over 10 hours and our path exasperating slow. Internally, I simply lament the premature death of supersonic travel!

I'm full, time to leave Club Med!

Club Med suffers the problem that ails any “all you can eat” eating establishment.

Even though the food has nothing to do with your typical American mass-eatery and is, on the contrary, quite delicious, you simply end up eating too much and adding inches to your waistline.

After four days of “filling” the old body, it felt as it was grossly overflowing and that gave us the timely signal that it was time to return to a more restrained lifestyle.

We can't wait to melt these extra kilos!

Behind Club Med's business model

Club Med relies heavily on young GO (gentle organizers) to entertain, amuse and coach their guests.

They're not paid well, but the organization covers all of their needs and even take them to assignment in faraway, exotic places and pay them minimum wage, knowing full well that this total charge taking is very hard to break away from.

Club Med tell its GM that they can save most of their money as they're only charged some 20% of their earnings for room and board, that they're learning an awful lot and that their job is a springboard to a great career down the road.

Their training appears to be minimum and clearly limited to what they need to know. Further, employee empowerment has no currency at Club Med. To me, the system breeds dependency and makes it often hard from a young person to eventually leave and try something different.

Virtual internet at Club Med

Internet connection is like freedom; I see it as an inalienable right; period.

Well, not so fast; when we arrived at Club Med, as we do in any hotel or resort we get to, we immediately logged into its Wifi system with variable results.

My wife could get into her iPad, but at struggling speed and I wasn't able to make my laptop and phone work on what turned out later to be an anemic, if not half-dead internet delivery system.

At first, I blamed my laptop and one of the browsers I always use. It took me 2 days to realize that I should have questioned Club Med's bandwidth, right from the start!

Club Med at Opio knows that their regular Wifi is useless so they advertise an optional “broadband” for an extra price.

I come from the standpoint that if I can get excellent internet service in hotels that charge less than 100 euros a night, I ought to get the same at Club Med that charges two to four times more than that!

After struggling about a day and having to be mean and threatening, I finally got the magic pass that opened the door to a decent internet speed. Oh yes, just for our last day of stay!

Enough one-night stands!

For the past five nights, we hoped from one place to the next, visiting many beautiful towns, seeing an awful lot of wonderful spots, but all this, at the cost packing and unpacking every single night.

When this routine goes on for so long, it soon becomes not being fun and we're now ready to dropping our suitcases in a place where we won't have to touch them for at least four nights!

The price for Mediterranean beauty

I've always said the French Riviera is just like California: Beautiful weather, beaches, hills and homes. Luxuriant vegetation everywhere too.

In both cases, a paradise coveted by all and with it, too many people, too many cars and too many small roads to carry all these vehicles and their passengers.

Did I mentioned the outrageous cost of real estate? That's right beauty always comes with a price, and while we've often toyed with the idea of buying a place in either spots, we've settled on the idea that it makes much more sense to just visiting...

Marseille and the calanques

As it enters Marseille, the “autoroute” offers a spectacular overview of the city (the second largest in France, after Paris) and it's pretty easy to drive on La Canebière and get a sense of this diverse and unique urban complex.

Yet, just a few minutes away, on the seaside are “The calanques”, a geological formation can be found extending 20 km in length and 4 km in width along the coast between Marseille and Cassis, culminating in Marseilleveyre (432 m) and Mont Puget (565 m).

They are popular among tourists and locals, offering some spectacular and totally wild vistas. A great number of hikers frequent the area, following numerous pre-marked trails. The cliffs are also popular among rock climbers.

Most of the calanques are closed to the public during the summer (typically July through September) due to the fire danger that exits during the dry season. We were there right in time!

Authentic Ardèche

I always wanted to visit Ardèche, this poor and mostly rural French department that is peppered with incredibly beautiful stone villages all cradled into a superb landscape that make the place unique because it's so undeveloped.

Just like in Corsica, this place is not popular among real-estate developers and has escaped the over-commercialization that can be found all over the places and all over the world. Unlike Corsica, where dynamite kept the developers at bay, sheer poverty kept them clear of Ardèche.

Whereas three quarter of the French population is now urban, that small department of 325,000 people has still half of its population spread in its rural countryside.

It's authentic, simple, beautiful. Come and visit before it gets spoiled.

Siblings are getting old...

I had not seen my siblings and their families for four years and while we often are on the phone, seeing each other in person is a totally different experience.

We then are forced to realize the passage of time and the fact that we aren't getting any younger.

This of course goes both ways, from me to them and them back to me. God, I'm so glad I got to spend some good quality time with all of them!

Remembering the road

Memory is an amazing function. Whenever I find myself back in my home region of France, it takes very little time to remember everything, including every twist and turns of each alpine road on which I drove while I was young, more than forty years ago.

If nothing has changed significantly in the road path, it just comes back so naturally that I often wonder if I ever left that place. Well, this stands definitely as a piece of good news when I have to struggle to remember a name or an event on a daily basis...