Ever cheaper gasoline!

Early this month I was shocked at how inexpensive gasoline had become.

Yesterday, as I filled my tank at Costco, I found the price per gallon to be down to $1.899, which is just unbelievable! If you refer to my previous blog, this would have been $0.46 in 1977, the year I moved to America, while the price at the pump was an already low $0.60!

If there would be a time to tax fossil fuels in the United States, it should be now, and would go a long way towards repaying our debt, but instead we prefer watching our planet self-destruct.

Sad, indeed, while we may watch fuel prices continue falling...

Living in a bubble...

Many of us live in a bubble and don't even know or appreciate it.

Generally, it's a “good” bubble, where everything is routine, orderly, predictable and close to perfection. This has to do with our place of residence, our activity or lack-thereof, and in my case, retirement plain and simple.

If you're like me, we're no longer confronted to the ups and downs of the work place, the stress and the miseries that are part of it. So, it's easy to ignore the world at large, the rush hour traffic, the appointments as well as all the disappointments that come with a full day of labor.

Is bubble living good or bad?

It certainly can be cozy, but also fraught with danger of giving us a false impression that all is well, or not getting the true picture of the world we live in.

This is why getting out of our bubble every now and then, isn't not just a welcome change, it's a necessity of life.

My last day in the Air Force

This was just fifty years ago, a Wednesday, to be precise, as the next day would see my freedom from the asinine prison that was mandatory conscription.

I entered that jail on November 3, 1967, which would totally waste close to 16 months of my life.

On the eve of my liberation, I had no idea what my future might be, except for perhaps starting a real job, doing something somewhere, or maybe, embark on a dream career as a ski instructor that might take root if I passed a technical ski exam scheduled for the upcoming weeks.

Nothing was etched in stone, I was somehow elated, but in a total state of blur, my life has been frozen for too long and I needed to restart it...

The book I should write about skiing...

Most books about skiing are technical treatises that deal about weight transfer, body position and pole plant. All say little or nothing about speed.

In fact, they're all about tactics and don't say much about strategies. For example, most of what's been written is based on perfectly controlled snow surfaces that allow for carving and precise movement, but are too far removed from reality where speed control is crucial, snow irregularities and wavy surfaces abound.

So, I were to write a book about skiing, it would be much lighter on tactics (or technique, if you prefer) and more focused on strategies, like the best ways of harnessing fear, adapting to the ever changing environment that is part and parcel of that sport or how to ski certain terrain and snow condition, how to be progressive, when to do it or how to harness speed.

In a nutshell, it would be information all people could use or try to add to their day-to-day experience on the hill.

I believe that quantitative practice, or sheer mileage, is more important to gain skills than technical minutia that is often hard to incorporate into a person's way of skiing and generally falls into law of diminishing returns...

Peter Keelty, 1942-2019

Peter Keelty passed out from emphysema in Salt Lake City while I was skiing with friends in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Born on August 2nd 1942 in New England, skier, patrolman and eventually ski instructor in Stowe, Vermont, Peter soon became a ski rep for Salomon in New York City and Connecticut.

I first met and work with Peter on a video involving former ski racer Andy Mill when I worked for Lange. Always one to re-invent himself, a talented writer too, Peter was involved with ski newsletters and one of the co-founder of RealSkiers.com an online ski review publication.

Peter was a real nice guy, passionate about skiing and always ready to tell a good story. I last spoke with him on July 12, 2018 and truly regret not to have paid him a visit at his Salt Lake City home in the interim.

Ski lift riding odds...

There never seems to be a dull moment when riding a lift...

This past Wednesday, as I was skiing with my spouse, we rode twice the same lift with the same person on two different occasions! Did you understand what you just read?

Let me detail the story one lift ride at a time. We first picked up a single on the Iron Mountain high-speed quad chair. Let's call him the “Brit”, then two rides later another single joined us on that same chair that we'll call the “pilot”.

When we were totally frozen and decided to go home, we rode the triple Shortcut chair and who was our neighbor, but the “Brit”, who explained to us that after a four-year job stint in the USA, he was about to return to England.

Then, from the base of the Canyons, we rode what is called a cabriolet, a people mover that shuttles skiers from there to the parking lot, and who was next to us? The “pilot” who worked for Fedex and will soon move to Europe too and be based at the one of the company's European hubs, in Paris.

Now, you tell me, what could be the odds of this ever happening on the 41 lifts that count Park City Mountain?

Can Decathlon win the American consumer?

Decathlon, the French sporting good retailer that with 1,500 locations in 49 countries says to be the world's largest, plans to open a 47,000-square-foot store in Emeryville, California, in April 2019, in a former Toys R Us store, following the opening its own “lab store” in downtown San Francisco, a year before.

At about the same time, it will also open its first Canadian store in Quebec province. This the chain's second attempt at the U.S. market. Decathlon tried a first time in 1999 when it purchased the assets of MVP Sports Stores, a New England sporting goods retailer with 20 locations. It re-branded them as Decathlon, but shut them all down between 2003 and 2006.

While several major sporting goods chains have shut down in the U.S. in recent years, Decathlon differs most from them because it exclusively sells its house brands. It's one of the reason why it claim that its vertical integration allows it to offer extremely low prices.

It will be interesting to see how the sport-minded American consumer will take the Decathlon's bait and will be happy with its image-less and cheap, offering and if it will be able to motivate its staff by paying them close to nothing, and hoping to just cheer them up into excitement like they do in France.

Many Europeans concepts ranging from Club Med to Ikea have had a tough time successfully translating to the U.S. consumer. Hopefully, the giant retailer will have learned a few things about the American market from its lackluster experience at the beginning of this century...

Ice-age leadership at FIS

In an interview with Tages-Anzeiger, a Swiss newspaper, Gian Franco Kasper, the 75 years old president of the International Ski Federation (FIS) showed once more that he's more a dinosaur than a CEO in tune with his times.

He had begun making demented statements 13 years ago when he had claimed that “ski jumping wasn't appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view”, and recently continued to affirm his iconoclastic views about dictators and climate change.

About tyrants, first, Kasper is alleged to have said: “dictators can organize events ... without asking the people's permission” and “from the business side, I say: I just want to go to dictatorships. I do not want to argue with environmentalists.”

In that same interview, he also referred to “so-called” climate change. To shore up his argument, he mentioned last year’s cold Korean Winter Olympics as a proof, confusing just like Trump, weather with climate.
 
Finally he also inferred that immigrants were to blame for the decline of winter sports in Switzerland. He has since apologized that his comments were taken out of context but what he blurted out hasn't made him many friends in the ski industry.

Many have asked him to resign. Mikaela Shiffrin, Petra Vlova, Marcel Hirscher and Clément Noël, all deserve better. When is FIS going to finally get a worldly, modern, 50 year old CEO?

A-Basin “divorces” Vail Resorts

Starting next winter season, Arapahoe Basin, the Colorado ski resort famous for its late spring skiing, will end its twenty-year Epic pass partnership program with Vail Resorts.

The official reason for the split announced by A-Basin is that the joint business deal has created “a pinch on parking and facility space” and due to these constraints, “Arapahoe Basin believes its staff can take better care of its guests by separating from Vail Resorts”, the company statement continued.

To me there as to be more than these flimsy reasons for that breakup and this might be symptomatic in cracks in that multi-resort pass experiment.

What was striking though, is that A-Basin chief operating officer, Alan Henceroth, added that in the coming months, “he'll be discussing opportunities with several resorts and resort groups”, and one obvious suitor might be Alterra...

Growth, the antithesis of preservation

It's always the same story, countries that experience a birth-rate drop, like Japan or Italy for instance, seem condemned to economic recession or regression.

This would suggest that in order to sustain a certain level of economic comfort and prosperity, the world is doomed to growth today, and by extension, to environmental destruction tomorrow.

Another way to look at it, is that sustained growth addresses our short-term hedonist needs, while our long term future is under attack and menaced by massive and irreversible destruction, but we choose to stick our head in the sand and cherish our short term pleasure regardless of the ominous cost we'll end up paying much sooner than we think...

Iconic vs. Effective

There are many things in this world that are called “iconic” but are woefully ineffective.

I'm talking today about ski lifts and returning to the topic of the good old “iconic” tram, following my recent ski trip to Jackson Hole.

Some see in it the best lift in North America, but it only can whisk 650 passengers per hour over the 4,139 feet vertical.

Well how does this compare with today's state of the art, namely the new 3S Gondola, with its two fixed, fully locked track ropes, plus a traveling carrier travels pulled by a circulating haul rope is clamped to the 8-wheel carriages?

Not so well anymore; this new detachable lift offers both performance and reliability with its 30+ passenger cabins that granted, take skiers a bit slower than the Jackson tram (8.5 m/s vs 10/m/s) but offer more than 2,000 passenger per hour capacity, in complete stability even in the most extreme wind conditions.

There are also many funicular designs that might be environmentally more suited and these, too, can carry loads of passenger up the hill at a rate of 2,000 per hour, thus averting the 20th century lift lines that seem to be a daily occurrence at the Jackson tram...

Finally, a normal winter!

In the past few days, I was able to ski Park City in perfect conditions.

No more rocks or stumps when I ventured on my favorite playgrounds!

It seemed like all the early season suffering, pesky rocks and near-misses had been the down payment for arriving to a perfect snow cover. 

As I ski for the 34th season in Park City, I would perhaps venture to say that if 50% of the seasons were mediocre, 35% were average like this one and 15% exceptional.

Wait a minute, the season isn't over yet!

The end of the Airbus A380

Early this month, Airbus announced that it would stop the production of its A380, double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner by 2021.

At its inception, the Anglo-Franco-German-Spanish company dreamed it would unseat the Boeing 747 and completely change air travel in the 21st century. Boeing's marketers never agreed with that notion and instead believed that the industry future belonged to smaller, nimbler planes offering more flexibility in terms of capacity, more in tune with a point-to-point than hub utilization. 

At the end, it only sold en masse for a rich Arabic airline (Emirates) that didn't have the regular guy's economic concerns in mind while France and Germany flag carriers only bought respectively 10 and 20 of the giant planes at $450 million a pop (MSRP), but more like $250 in actual “street price”.

I would have thought Airbus knew what it was doing, but were out-marketed on that one by their savvier American competitor, just like Concorde had been a commercial pipe-dream of its own.

I'm not even talking about its fuel consumption that's 30% more than the Boeing 787's, not too mention the airport infrastructure demanded by the enormous size and the two deck design of the aircraft.

In spite of Airbus' good overall profits the A380 “adventure” has cost the company some $1 million in losses. The decision to shut down the plane happened when Emirates, their big client, told Airbus that it was cutting orders from 162 to 123 aircraft, leaving the company with no substantial backlog and no basis to sustain production.

Stopping production not only may affect 3,500 job, but it will also cost Airbus $521 million with about $1.2 billion in European government loans forgiven, in other words, paid by the tax payers.

All told, a huge product blunder...

A credible compliment

A few days ago, as I was skiing with my wife, we rode the new, QuickSilver gondola with a couple visiting from Whistler-Blackcomb, in Canada.

They told us they were very impressed by the large size of the entire ski area that Park City covers, as well as the wide variety of ski runs they did discover along the way. Of course, they also loved Old Town, Park City.

That says an awful lot, especially when it comes from folks living in what I consider the best ski resort in North America!

How's love?

On this Valentine Day, I've heard a lot of heartwarming tidbits as soon as I turned on the radio this morning.

A few got my attention: “Come live in my heart and pay no rent” or “You don’t marry someone you can live with, you marry the person who you cannot live without.”

Yet, my favorite was a modified version of a quote about life: “Love is like the game of chess. You won't win if you don't make a move!”

Happy Valentine Day!

How not to steer up envy?

Simply shutting up is probably the best method for preventing envy.

That's right, we all tend to speak far too much about ourselves and it's so difficult to refrain from tooting one's horn.


Yet, when we blurt out something about our new car, a bigger house, a fancy carbon-fiber mountain-bike or the smart and successful kids we have, we often steer up envy and of course resentment.

The solution therefore is to lay low, said little, or better yet, almost nothing, and we won't steer up that anger and envy that poison most relationships.

Why did you stay in America ?

This is a question I get asked a lot.

Most people believe that the life French are leading is much better, significantly socially-oriented and more fun that our own American life. They're probably right on many counts when they think that way.

Yet, I often answer their question quite bluntly, and not necessarily in these very terms: “I stayed here because of the money!”

That's right; money is much better and easier without as much pain and efforts in the United States that it will ever be in my birth country.

That may sound callous, but it true. At least as long as one stays healthy and don't receive a stray bullet in the head...

Revisiting binding placement...

Maurice Muffat, my former neighbor from France,works at Dynastar and helped me untangle the quandary I have with the right way to correctly position the bindings on my skis.

I'm not there yet, but will work on fine tuning that spot. All seems to revolve around the mid-sole mark on the ski boot, which is a standard that was hastily pushed by DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung), the German institute for standards.

This, in my view, was a bad idea because the mid-sole point is arbitrary and do not relate to any anatomical placement or function in skiing.

What's more related would be the axis of the leg or the ankle that are pretty much regardless of sole length.

This placement is way too far forward, which exacerbates an excessive backward position with long boot soles. I certainly don't have a good answer for what a better method would be at this point, but intend to get to it through further observation, evaluation as well as trial and error.

Music's “Silicone Valleys”

Last night, we made the effort to watch a big chunk of the Grammy Awards
 
While we were not particularly awed by the musical performance, as a male, I was struck by the huge number of plunging necklines and total absence of bras prevalent among the female contingent and particularly Alicia Keys' who was emceeing the event.

It looked so good that I surprised myself enjoying it so much, much more than the musical component of the entire show.

As some say, “go figure”, but for me, she won the Grammys!

Sun Valley & Snowbasin go Epic!

At the end of August, I was wondering which company, of Altera or Vail Resorts, would acquire Snowbasin and Sun Valley.

While this isn't an outright acquisition, there's now an alliance planned for 2019/2020 for including the two lone resorts into Vail's Epic Pass.

I was right to wonder... This is good news for me as I'll be able to sample these two ski places within a year, especially Snowbasin that is a mere hour drive from Park City!

On picking skiing partners...

Hey boys! So you think of going on ski trip with your male ski buddies? Here are a few tips that I'd like to share with you and that might help you a great deal when you plan your outing and help you manage your expectations.

Do it with friends you know well. Unknown quantities in terms of characters that reveal themselves in the midst of a sojourn might taint your experience to the point of spoiling it totally.

Know the skiing abilities, terrain and snow preferences of every member before hand; this will help you tailor a program in which there's something for everyone.

This leads me of course to the next point that is that if you want a manageable program, chose folks that are at about at the same technical level and share the same preferences.

Give some thought about the social aspect covering your stay, from lodging, to bedding, to food and drinks, so you can design something that won't give you headaches during and after...

Finally, give more than you receive, be a gracious person and don't count your efforts and contribution just to be “even”; being generous from the get-go is a must-do, when being part of a group. The reverse is never an option.

Now have fun!

Skiing and reminiscing…

Skiing in Jackson has been exceeding my expectations and those of my two buddies. Today was no exception.

The weather was mostly good and except for a cold temperature and some wind, we were able to enjoy ourselves to the fullest.

More skiing today too, and in the afternoon, a lot of reminiscing about the good old days in the Alps and particularly in Haute Savoie with Philippe Mollard who shared the same pastoral lifestyle as I did, and who's someone I truly can relate too.

As a way to conclude the day on that same theme, I hooked up my computer to the TV and we watched old French videos showing ski champions and resort from 50 to years ago..

Finally some uninterrupted skiing!

Today, the skies finally cleared up a bit and in spite of -7 degree Fareinheit, all was good.

After the usual snow clearing and a spat with a permanent resident at the condo complex who didn't appreciate my car standing next to his Toyota 4Runner while we were loading our gear, we drove the 8 miles in Teton Village direction.

We did non-stop laps under the Bridger Gondola, a lift that serves 2,730 vertical feet, stood in line forever for a ride in the tram that wasn't worth the effort, and had lunch on the mountain.

This tram is more hype than real fun and this Jackson Hole's icon is in fact a white elephant when one think that it did cost a fortune to built and still does to operate, only to carry a maximum of 650 passengers per hour up the mountain, compared to more than 2,000 with a modern gondola like Bridger! The runs in Jackson Hole are very, very steep and are crisscrossed with traverses that are meant to funnel skiers back down to the bottom at the lifts departure point.

My take out for the day was that there were three paramount elements in skiing: Having a good knowledge of the the terrain and the mountain, being able to see reasonably well and being 10 year younger to have even more fun, but still my experience so far almost made the trip worth its while and erased most of the problems we experienced!

Another crazy day in Jackson

The day began as we realized we were again snowed in and the first thing I did was to dig up the car.

Philippe soon came to help me and together we finally got ready to go skiing, loaded the skis and the rest of the gear and drove in the direction of Teton Village, that is the name of Jackson Hole’s ski resort.

We soon found ourselves bumper-to-bumper with hundreds of other cars all eager to sample the newly fallen snow. Everyone took a "sick day" it seemed...

It took us forever to find a parking spot and when we did, I realized that I had forgotten my helmet at the condo. Of course, I blamed my comrades and also myself for the error and had no choice but leave my two friends to their skiing, drive back to the condo, queue again to get to the parking lot and when I rejoined them, the morning was almost over.

The visibility was non-existent, but the powder snow was deep and wonderful. Then after a few runs, our friend Philippe fell sick and we had no other alternatives but drive back to the condo. Both Jean-Louis and Philippe were tired and getting from sea level to higher altitude also had an impact on them.

By that time I was furious about the circumstances, and since I’m not one to give up easily, we agreed with Jean-Louis that he would keep an eye on Philippe while I returned skiing by myself. That's just when the skies suddenly cleared up and I had the time of my life in the powder, the trees and some very gnarly runs.

When I returned under a rekindled snow storm, my two buddies were hard at work clearing a parking spot for me. We grabbed something to eat at the grocery store and watched Trump’s State of the Union while munching on our dinner…

On the road to Jackson Hole…

In winter, Jackson Hole can be a long way from Park City, especially when it snows pretty hard and the wind is blowing, the 260 miles trip can be quite bad.

Along with Jean-Louis et Philippe, we left Park City under the snow and got to Jackson almost 6 hours later in one foot of fresh powder.

First we couldn’t find our condo, they all looked the same with names that were hardly legible, we got stuck with the car, had to shovel it out, and we we finally found our place, we had no better idea than to lock ourselves out of our unit, and had to wait one good hour before an employee, who was gone out of town could come and open up the door.

With no other alternative, we waited inside the car drinking a beer while waiting for the condo to be unlocked. It was night by then, and suddenly a big moose came close to the car and begun eating at some tree.

I had to go out of the car to rejoin the employee, but didn’t dare because I was afraid of the moose. I finally summoned my courage and the animal ran away.

Exhausted, we finally moved all of our belongings inside the unit, returned to the grocery store in Jackson to buy some food and then, finally, had quietly
a bite to eat at the condo...

My buddy, the writer...

Many of us, including myself, often “threaten” their friends and the world that we'll write at least one great book, but very few do it, and of course, I can be found among those who fall short of meeting their lofty goals.

Thank God, some exceptional individuals accomplish what they say they will, write the next great American novel as this seems to be the case for my friend William Bocq that has already written a handful of books and get them out at an impressive rate.

His last novel, “Le Nécromantique” is in French and blends a romantic story with what appears to be a very somber plot.

If you can read French, you'll love the down-to-earth characters that inhabit this page-turner chuck full of details, and you'll find yourself devouring the book to discover who's the mysterious character that sets-up an unstoppable and life-changing chain of events!

World freestyle championships

This week, Park City is hosting the 2019 world freestyle championships. Am I excited about it? Not particularly!

Over the years, I have found to distance myself from jumps and moguls, plus I was never a fan of boarder- or ski-cross, even less of slope-side. Why? Because this doesn't represent the kind of ski I practice and love.

I see it more as a commercial as well as an entertaining perversion of the sport, instead of a healthy representation of what regular people can expect to accomplish themselves.

Sure, I'm in awe when I see these guys twisting and turning while they're catching some big air, but my admiration stops there.

Now, in contrast to that viewpoint, why do I still enjoy watching alpine ski racing when given a chance? Simply because I ran through gates, both in slalom and GS when I was young and still can relate to it.

I would much more like watching a so-called extreme skiing competition, but those aren't too popular and receive almost no media coverage, too bad, because this is the closest form of skiing most of us will ever experience!

Now, with all this said, will I watch the Park City world championships? No, I'll go skiing instead.

My only Sundance movie

On Thursday, I went to see my “token” Sundance movie of this festival, and I'm glad to report that it was a very good one.

In a slice-of-life style, the documentary recounts one full year during which, director, camerawoman and one-person producer's Alison Klayman was basically granted full access to Steve Bannon during his post-Trump crusade.

The movie shows Bannon’s alibis for pushing a far-right agenda while keeping a straight face, from Brexit to Trump, the French “Yellow Vests” and the the right's big loss at the November elections.

It ultimately suggests that while if Bannon got lucky with Trump, carrying his nationalist and fascist gospel forward isn't easy, especially among Europeans, we might not get quite enamored by his rough, brutal style of communicating and his deep misunderstanding of cultures beyond his very own.

The land of cheap gasoline

I came to America in 1977. At that time, the price of gasoline was about $0.60 a gallon.

A few days ago, I filled my gas tank and realized that I only paid $2.06 per gallon. Now, if I account for the difference in cost of living during these two periods, I see that consumer prices are 4.17 times more today than they were back then.

This means that the $2.06 I paid today should have been $0.49 in 1977, while they were actually $0.60 at the time!

All this to show, that gas, in today's dollars, is even cheaper than 42 years ago and continues to poison the planet.

Sure there were only 4.25 billion folks on earth back then, and we're 7.67 billion today, an 80% increase, which shows how powerful Big Oil has been with most governments in general, and that of the United States in particular...