Aging well while staying young

No one escapes all age, but many don't pay attention to the toll it can exert on us.

Like wanting to move less, to close ourselves to the world, to lose interest in our surroundings, to become defensive, cynical, fearful, sad, or to develop a complex of persecution and to give up on all the fun and the good things life has to offer.

These traits, just like gravity, are trying to pull us down and bring us closer and faster to the grave.

I refuse and resist this kind of attitude and for me, growing older sets a constant challenge for keeping a younger and ever more open attitude towards life and its inherent supply of joy and wonderment.

America's allergy to world's best practices

Over recent decades, other developed nations have been playing catch-up fast with America and are now ahead of us in more than one domain.

• Look at education, why aren't we emulating what Finland, Japan and South Korea are doing? 
• Look at healthcare, why aren't we trying to do as well as Canada, the U.K. or France? 
• Look at the out-of-control dissemination and life threatening danger of firearms and why aren't we following the OCDE countries lead? 
• Look at the the Paris Accords on Climate? Why does the U.S. still want out, while both Nicaragua and Syria, the only two straggler nations besides us are now joining? 
• Look at the metric system? Why are we content to be part of only three nations along with Myanmar and Liberia stuck with this antiquated system? 

 

This is only a partial list and limited rant. Wake up America! Our “exceptionalism” has simply tipped and is now headed towards the bottom.

We'll soon sink if we don't begin to turn our pretentious attitude around. It's more than time for America to embrace "best world practices" and get off its "exceptionalism high horse"!

Skis and arms control

Depending on the year, there are up to 30,000 people killed and 70,000 injured by firearms in the United States. In turn, the NRA claims that it's people, not guns that killed or maim.

Now contrast this with skiing and snowboarding in which about 50 people die each year, but of course, there are plenty more of other ski-related injuries.

For instance, serious knee injury, usually involving a rupture of the ACL, accounts for some 20 percent of them, probably totaling more than 25,000 per winter in the U.S. alone. A pretty small number in relation to a total 50 to 60 million days of skiing each season.

The dangerous connotation of skiing is often identified as the main impediment to its growth. Since skiing is fun, everyone accepts a risk that is worth taking and therefore no one is up in arms (excuse the pun) to “punish” that sport, and since the pain and suffering related to skiing/snowboarding is self inflicted, society accepts it willingly.

Yet if we wanted to eradicate this source of accident, we'd simply need to ban skiing and snowboarding, and then – with the collected equipment – we could erect a colorful fence south or our border with it long enough to satisfy Trump.

Turn now the discussion towards firearms and apply the same logic to it. If we don't like tens of thousands of deaths every year in the U.S.A. and also agree that it is not a “fun” activity, we should recall all the lethal weapons not used for hunting and melt them on the spot.

So much for the Second Amendment and arming teachers inside the classroom!

My Olympic Conclusion

There is no question that – at least in America – the Winter Olympics are a terrific free promotion for all winter sports and particularly, skiing and snowboarding.

This said, we are forced to endure an overdose of questionable or unnecessary events mixed with a deluge of repetitive advertising commercials.

Thank God, we also had some memorable moments like Sophia Goggia's testimony or Ester Ledecka's twin gold medals in Snowboarding and Alpine, that showed the world that what counted was to ski fast, not the size on one's ski quiver.

I hope NBC will get the return it was looking for out of its $963 million investment and PyeongChang got all the publicity it could hope for.

I doubt the latter, because I learned nothing about the venue. The Olympics increasingly are a big, obscene deal, orchestrated by the IOC “mafia” in Lausane, Switzerland, but we need to keep everything into perspective.

After all, it's only a collection of individual competitions, compressed into two weeks, that have the dubious particularity to be framed and draped into some grossly overrated pomp and circumstance.

OCD, sharp focus or multi-tasking?

What a relief; the Olympics are almost over and we'll soon be able to refocus back into our normal routine and inside our home time-zone.

My biggest take-away during these games was how focus, or lack thereof, played an enormous role on an athlete performance and none – even the greatest champions – seem sheltered from moments of distraction.

Clearly, keeping a constant focus should be the goal (so much for the virtues of multi-tasking!), but Obsessive-Compulsive behavior might still be a better formula if it didn't conjure a form of mental disease...

Team spirit and personal opinion

On February 18, French alpine skier Matthieu Faivre was interviewed after what he thought was a lackluster 7th position which solidified a good French performance as a team he blurted out: “If you knew if I cared about the team performance, I'm here for me and for my run.”

That politically incorrect statement got him disciplined and sent back to France on the spot. Some regret the harshness of the punishment, however is skiing is an individual sport, it's the team, its infrastructure and programs that make an individual victory possible.

Should athletes be able to express themselves? Yes. If so, should they be responsible for what they say and able to exert some self control? Absolutely. While the French women's team is struggling, the technical men's group is remarkably strong as evidenced by the excellent group's results in both GS and slalom.

Now, contrast this to a February 15 article in the New York Times, detailing how the Norvegian men skiers, one of the smallest men’s Alpine teams on the World Cup circuit, handles its team building and stands as a lesson for all teams, including probably the French and most importantly the American that sit at the extreme pole of individuality.

Among other principles, no “jerks” are allowed within the team, no class-structure, rookies vs. seniors or other “special treatment”. They spend 250 days a year together, eat together, sleep two-a-room, sometimes sharing a double-bed and most importantly help each other along the way.

Even when young maverick Henrik Kristoffersen, locked horns with his national federation in a battle over a “Red Bull” sponsorship agreement, he eventually relented and agreed to follow the rules.

Without a question, the Norwegian team is highly successful and might serve as a benchmark to a bunch of other teams that are too often plagued by the excesses of a few that hinder the collective atmosphere and the overall team results.

Too much of a good thing

Yesterday, the New York Times told his readers that Mikaela Shiffrin brought “only” 35 pairs of racing skis with her here at the PyeongChang Winter Games instead of the 70 pairs she “normally” carries to races.

I don't know how she along with her “helicopter-mom, Kim Erlandsson her technician and Mike Day her coach decide which board to pick, but this must be an impossible task.

Between this impossible choice and the pressures of all kinds, including those coming from the media, it's a miracle that she was able to win so many races back-to-back until recently.

Something is blatently wrong when there seems to be an “arm race” waged on behalf of the major “stars” by equipment suppliers, while developing skiers in the U.S are barely supported by the Ski Team.

At the end of January, ski legend's Ingemar Stenmark who attended the Ispo winter trade show was quoted as saying: "I got four pairs of skis for the whole winter from my ski manufacturer Elan: two for slalom, two for giant slalom..."

Just like Ingemar, I “only” have four pairs of skis; they're not great, but they work for me; two are rock-skis and two are in pretty good condition. I feel blessed, content and never blame my equipment for any reason.

End of career

Both Ligety and Vonn had pegged some big hopes for these Olympic Games. They just didn't quite materialize.

The defeat was hard on Lindsey Vonn and brutal on Ted Ligety. Things change, technique evolves and new strong talent pop-up.

Being a great champion includes building to that point, managing the elusive fame and saying goodbye with class. Hard to be flawless on all counts.

The high cost of extreme risk-taking

Late January, a French mountain climber and her Polish companion got stuck on Nanga Parbat, a 26,657 feet (8 126 meter) Kashmir peak, and she was finally saved after her mate died on their winter climb.

Elizabeth Revol who survived the ordeal was recently interviewed by a French TV station for their “Envoyé Spécial” news show, and lamented about the poor Pakistani response to their call for rescue. To address the lackluster response, Masha Gordon, an Anglo-russian climber organized a crowd-funding on Facebook that garnered 157,000 euros to pay for part of Revol's rescue costs.

What's amazing to me is that First World nations like France and Poland keep on selfishly be counting on developing, poor countries like Pakistan, to pay for the likely consequences of their extreme whims.

While Revol didn't strike me for her smarts, Catherine Destivelle, an other famous French climber interviewed on that show, seemed to concur with her, suggesting that Pakistan should have done better.

My bottom line is fairly simple: If someone is so inclined to take extreme risks, they should purchase insurance. This ought be the First World way to play with privileged westerners that come to play on their territory.

Winter (finally) begins in earnest!

Almost two months after winter solstice, snow is beginning to fall all over Park City.

I don't know who placed the purchase order for powder in Utah, this season, but that guy should be fired!

Well, as most say, better late than never, and with a good cover, we might be able to finally leave our rock skis on the rack.

They deserve some rest!

The changed GS technique

The Olympic men's GS was one for the history books. Imperial for Hirscher, inspiring for Kristoffersen to produce a huge come back in the second run, and impressive for Pinturault and the French Team that placed his four racers in the top seven finishers.

It must have also been humiliating for Ted Ligety who saw his own star fade precipitously during what will probably be his last Olympics. During his absence for almost two seasons due to repeated injuries, the GS technique has changed drastically and has become much more aggressive.

Instead of “milking” long, fast curves, racers (and Hirscher in particular) are now pivoting at the last minute over the gate, cutting it as close as they can, while carving the bottom portion to the next “pivot”.

This new approach seems much faster, particularly in steep terrain. Ligety is one of many racers that seem to have a difficult time adopting this new approach, sticking to his old ways, which look smoother and nicer, but have cost him an invaluable amount of time and a decent finish.

Change is always hard to absorb, especially when a method has been so productive and rewarding in the past. I can guarantee you that adapting to Hirscher's fast and furious approach is likely to be on everyone's agenda during this spring and summer...

A refreshing Olympic story

Without any question, my favorite Olympic moment happened on Friday night, when long after the favorite racers had crossed the finish line, Ester Ledecka from the Czech Republic came and stole the Super G victory from under them.

She sure wasn't expecting to win, as she only ranked 43rd in Super-G.

While she was a known entity in snowboarding with multiple championship wins to her credit, she showed that without “celebrity-media-pressure” and heightened public expectations, as well as an absence of “helicopter parents” to screw her up, she could get to a surprise victory and set an example that many more athletes should follow.

At any rate, a deep lesson in humility for most.

Who am I spiritually?

Sometimes, I get confused when I need clarify my belief system into a neat, well defined cubbyhole.

While I reject organized beliefs like the Abrahamic kind, there are aspects of Taoism or Buddhism that I like, but at the end of the end, I'm straddling somewhere between Humanism and Pantheism.

If, like me, labels keep on confusing you, Humanism is a system of thought relying on the importance of our humanity instead of counting entirely on some divine or supernatural force. Humanists generally believe in the value and goodness of humans, favor their needs, and only look for rational ways of solving human problems.

Pantheism, on the other hand, is a doctrine that identifies God with nature and the universe, or see them as a manifestation of God.

Which side of that debate are you?

Another School massacre

The NRA, Congress and Trump clearly have blood on your hands. I must be the only American who really believe that we have outgrown - and abused - our Second Amendment which allows people to purchase, carry and use their guns on a whim.

Time to rejoin the community of "Civilized Nations" and go "cold turkey" on guns like Australia just did.

Big air vs. snow contact

Some folks assert that “while catching air, there's no way someone can get hurt skiing”. Another great truism, right?

I was reminded of it during a family discussion that got started as we were watching the Olympic men's half-pipe event. I've never liked snow-related events when athletes spend more than 10 percent of their competitive run, gesticulating and flying up in the air.

In those instances, contact with snow is so short that skiing or snowboarding skills becomes totally accessory to the performance. This is obviously true with freestyle aerials, half-pipe and slope-side (both on skis and snowboard).

In my opinion, these athletic prowess belong to the circus and not to winter sports. What's your take on this?

Marcel Rosset, 1944-2018

Marcel passed away on February 13. The first time I met him, I was in Cluses at the “Ecole National d'Horlogerie”. He was a junior then, and I looked up to him.

Next, I remember doing the Vallée Blanche, in Chamonix, with him in the spring of 1970. We had picked him up at his place in Scionzier, where he worked as a technician.

He hated that job and missed Morzine so much, that soon thereafter, he kissed his engineering education goodbye and joined us at the Avoriaz ski school.

Ever since, I saw him early every morning (we both were early-birds) prepping and waxing his skis.

In addition to his regular hobbies like fishing, hunting and gardening, he had teamed-up with another ski instructor to set up a home maintenance company during the off-season.

Since I have been in America, we closely kept in touch. I visited with him on October 2013 and the last time we chatted over the phone was on October 21, 2017.

I'll miss his good nature, his sense of humor and his total lack of pretentiousness. Mostly, I'll miss him as a good friend.

Where's my Olympic spirit?

Like many others people, I used to get excited about the Olympic season and whenever I could, was stuck on TV to catch everything possible.

Time, cynicism, too many superfluous events, scandals of all kinds, runaway costs (particularly at Sochi), unbridled commercialism, dumb TV commercials, poor TV programming, inconvenient schedules, and crass chauvinism have eroded that enthusiasm.

For me, the bottom line is that each Olympic event is nothing more than another race, or put it into an athlete perspective, another day in the office.

I'll watch some skiing and some ice-skating and that will be about it. I stay away from opening and closing ceremonies have grown to be over the top and an escalation in cost, complexity and pagentry.

In fact, over the years, at small doses, by tweaking its own little formula on its own and focusing too much on its navel, the IOC has done everything it possibly could to choke the goose that laid the gold medals.

Careful Grandpa!

Last Saturday, I skied with my daughter and a good friend of hers. Morning skiing had been terrific with some new snow and first tracks in some great spots.

We stopped for lunch at one of the mountain restaurants and I took care of the beverage.

As I was carefully bringing three large glasses of beer full to the rim, and slaloming my way back to our table in the crowded eating place, someone yelled at me “Careful, grandpa!”

This stopped me right in my tracks. I'd never been called “grandpa” yet, by some stranger in a public place...

The staircase and the elevator

This past week, the U.S. stock market illustrated for us what the difference was between a staircase an elevator.

Usually, stocks take a rather long time to build up in value, just like an arduous climbing of stairs, while they can also drop suddenly, as fast as a high-speed elevator in free-fall, when investors' confidence is eroded.

That analogy has been used many times during the last stock market “correction” which was induced by a bunch of nefarious maneuvers, including a broad speculating on the VIX, also know as “volatility index”.

This comparison doesn't just apply to the stock market. It also applies to the cities of Dresden, Mosul and Raqqa that were destroyed in a few days (the elevator) while it took centuries to be build them (the stairs).

The same also applies to a person's reputation that has been built over time and can be destroyed in a sudden. Generally, building takes far much longer than demolishing. The list of extra comparisons could go on forever.

While I love and respect the staircase, I despise the elevator. I hate gratuitous destruction and wish deplorable human-beings that press the “down” button of the elevator knew much better...

Don't let your imagination run dry!

If my memory isn't playing tricks on me, I seemed to have more imagination when I was a kid than today. Some scientific studies link memories to imagination and assert that, as we age, both tend to wither.

This makes sense to me, based at least on my personal observations concerning imagination.

For years, a fertile imagination has always open door for me, made me more creative and has helped me in countless other ways. In fact, it's been the ingredient I've constantly used to map out my path into life.

Today, I'm concerned about losing some of that tool that, I feel, gave me a special, useful edge in all my endeavors. Even if and my imagination seems to remain reasonably vivid, it might be worth focusing on ways to maintaining it fired up for as long as I live.

I still can use plenty of it along the way!

Jupiter's hidden skiing treasures

On Wednesday, I skied Jupiter all afternoon long with my daughter, and our experience rated as a A+ in an otherwise bleak snow year.

There was still good stashes of powder from the day before and we barely touched any rock.

Except for the west facing side of the cirque that is woefully poor on snow this season, and Scott's bowl that's always a bit to far for comfortable reach, we almost did all the great combinations that incredible playground keeps on offering.

A day that belongs to our collective memory book!

“Shiffrinize” your skiing!

I've always been a proponent of “skiing light”.

By this, I mean skiing like a feather on snow, barely touching it, doing just the minimum of what's required in terms of gestures, stay centered and previewing the terrain just before it reaches my skis so I can expand as little energy as possible and extract the essence of the sport.

Now, we has shown she can do all of that better than anyone? Our very own Mikaela Shiffrin.

So, this is why whenever I can think of it, I picture her in my mind's eye and try to ski exactly as she would do. I said “try” of course, but the result seems great enough for me.

Isn't it time for you to also “Shiffrinize” your skiing?

Just a simple snowblower wheel...

At first it looked like just a simple job; changing both tires and tubes on a 27 year old snowblower.

I recently had a previous problem with one tire that tore off just by the ream, but the mechanic that was supposed to fix the problem didn't see what was causing it, only changed the inner tube and charged me $65 for it.

Two days later, I realized I had to change the defective tire as the tube bulged out of the rim. I looked for some aftermarket replacement parts (Honda's genuine ones are simply too expensive), ordered a pair of tires and tubes and went to work.

When all what said and done, took me two days and about 8 hours of hard work to get the job done, because I had never done it before and also removing and installing such a tire gets extremely strenuous and complicated if you don't have the tools professionals use.

Yet through perseverance and sweat, I finally got the job done right a felt very proud of my accomplishment.

Now, where's the snow?

Welcome to the simpler and easier life...

As we get older, we know much more about living and all that experience accumulated over time allows us to become extremely efficient if we apply ourselves to it. So basic tasks can be executed with minimum effort if we simply pay attention.

Like putting things back where they belong, in order not to have to desperately look for them later, handling bills when we get them, and so on.

This is part of a virtuous circle that we create for our own comfort, because as we age, we have less energy and it becomes essential to be energy-minded at all times.

All in all, this make for a much simpler and easier life, in which stress takes a back seat and life is finally cool...

Another life for doomed TDI diesels?

While we are on the VW subject, what is the German company going – or likely – to do, with all these TDI diesels sitting on parking lots? Fix them (how?), crush them or who knows?

These cars that VW had to purchase back from consumers have been piling up in large sites, all around the country, but since the automaker can't store them forever, how will it get rid of the hundred thousands that it has collected?

In fact, Volkswagen has until June 30, 2019, to buy back or fix some 482,000 2.0-liter diesel vehicles. Passed that date, VW may, once again, face hefty fines totaling tens of millions for missed deadlines.

Under the terms of the agreement with the U.S. government, VW has to remove at least 85 percent of the affected diesel models from the road, repair the other 15 percent, then either crush or repair the majority of diesels it bought back.

Doing either will cost the company so much that I wouldn't be surprised, based on its DNA and ethical track record that many, most, or even all of them might “percolate” south of the border to be somehow resold as good, used cars, and give some badly needed cash back to the derelict company.

So next time you're in Mexico, the Caribbeans, Central America or even all the way down into Patagonia, don't be surprised if you recognized your own, or your neighbor's TDI diesel, still roaming the streets and polluting the planet!

Volkswagen's gas chamber

After having defrauded government agencies and its own consumers, we learned last week that Volkswagen paid to have monkeys inhale exhaust fumes to prove that its diesel emissions were harmless.

This weekend I saw the Netflix documentary (Dirty Money series) exposing the scheme and retracing the fraudulent emission rigging followed by the “real life” test conducted in 2014. Initially, the test was intended to expose a human pedaling an exercise bike amidst diesel fumes.

According to the documentary, researchers intended to “poke and prod that person later to determine what type of health effects they would see from this person being gassed.”

When it was judged a bit “over the top” he use of humans in the test was scrubbed and replaced by 10 monkeys, placed in airtight chambers, watching cartoons as they breathed fumes from a 2013 VW Beetle TDI compared to an older dirty diesel Ford F250 truck. 

We haven't seen the test result, but I bet the old Ford truck did better than the new “clean diesel” Beetle. Thomas Steg, head of external relations and sustainability at VW, has taken full responsibility for reviving the Hitler-era practiced and will be another “sacrificial lamb” on the altar of the Audi, Porsche, Seat, Skoda, and Volkswagen automobile empire.

Clearly, Angela Merkel prefers the annual 10,000 death no one sees from diesel pollution in Germany, to any uptick in unemployment.

I hope that, just like me, you won't ever buy any of these vehicles.

“A friend of a friend...”

In over 30 years living in Park City, we've seen our share of free-loaders sent over to us by some “friend” of ours, and ending up staying and eating for free at our place for some undetermined period of time.

I'm sure we don't stand alone in the universe of ski towns and this is an obvious downside of living in these kinds of places.

Since we're older though, we've decided to put an end to our activity of hotel and restaurant providers and let these surprise-visitors fend for themselves, using their creative talents on someone else or failing that, using their own credit cards.

This almost happened again to us yesterday when a friend of mine, who usually never calls me, left me a voice-mail message going like this: “Hello, a grand cousin of mine and her boyfriend are now in Salt Lake City, and I thought that since you hail from Haute-Savoie (my home region in France) I'm sure you'll be delighted to meet them; besides, I gave them your phone number so you're not surprised when they call you.”

Having been through that scheme many times before, I called my friend back and told them that I had gotten his message, and while I would have like to help theses youngsters, our household was no longer in the “hospitality business”.

One hour later we got the phone call from the couple. I asked them: “Do you have a mean of transportation?” They went, “No, we take buses and carpool.” Then, “How long do you plan to stay in Utah?” The responded, “We aren't sure; maybe one or two weeks...”

I had now plenty of information and a clear picture going forward; I said: “I have things planned for the next few days (true statement), I can't just help you on such short notice!”

They agreed and we left it at that. We've been through these situations before, where we had to house, feed and entertain people we didn't know, for days on end, just for the fun of it, a rather thankless task and we're now past that.

Times change, we get older, we learn a lot and, thank God, our memory is still good...

Another Olympics in Salt Lake?

For a while, Utah officials have been studying the possibility of Salt Lake City making a bid to host another Winter Olympics like in 2030, or even in 2026, should no one bid for these games.

It's also true that Denver and Reno have both expressed interest, as well as other cities like Sion, Switzerland; Calgary, Canada; and Sapporo, Japan.

Fourteen years ago, early February, Salt Lake and Park City were getting ready to welcome the world with a much colder weather and much, much more snow.

This leads me to say that if Salt Lake is ready for an Olympic encore, it better get going sooner than later, while our local resorts still can make snow.

Based on this year temperatures and precipitations, another Olympic Games in Utah, seems more than ever a big stretch.

Unless, of course, Trump decide to nuke Norh Korea, puts an end to these pesky climate warming rumors and precipitates a propitious nuclear winter!

Wasted vertical drop

How are you enjoying spending what could be some good skiing time stuck in a “people mover”? Not much if you're like me. In fact, I avoid these like the plague whenever I can.

Still Park City Mountain is so large and there's so little natural snow this season that riding people movers is sometimes hard to avoid. Case in point is the QuickSilver gondola that whisk skiers back and forth between the Canyons and the Park City sides.

If the west side (665' vertical) of the two-way ridge is skiable by everyone on a normal year, the same can't be said of the east side that is woefully ill-equipped to allow users to experience what could be a picturesque and pleasant downhill on the Park City side (about 1,042' vertical) instead of riding down a ski lift which is heresy to me.

What it would just take is bulldoze a wide enough trail from the ridge top (narrow and fairly flat at first) and then widening as it enters the aspen groves, then meandering and turning down into the Mother Lode chairlift access area.

The top cornice should be regularly blasted for avalanche control, like anywhere else. The grade and width should be like those of “White Pine” and “Harmony” runs for instance with nicely form turns instead of hairpin-style ones. If users want to ski down the bowl and “crawl” on the flat service road or plunge below when it's open, they still could do it. Simple, fun and feasible.

What is Park City Mountain waiting for?