First year in America

On May 2, 1977, Evelyne and I arrived at New York JFK airport via Swissair, were picked up by a limo, and whisked to the Ramada Inn, in Elmsford, New York. So far, so good.

The only bad news was that the weather was terribly hot and humid, we only had 2 weeks to find a place to stay, and my wife had to learn English in a hurry.

Looking for an apartment is always depressing and sooner than later we found one in White Plains, my wife enrolled in an ESL class, we bought a small Datsun and I went to work, hoping some kind of guidance from Paul, my boss, but it really was “the blind guiding the blind”. In fact I was the one teaching him about the ski industry while he couldn’t teach me anything about American business.

From the get-go, this wasn’t looking good. Later in the month, Evelyne and I traveled to Nova Scotia for a Canadian Ski Patrol symposium and a few days later, I was off to Europe for a Look sales meeting at Les Deux Alpes, where I met Jean-François Deschamps, the newly hired marketing manager who seemed to live on a cloud of textbook theories. I also met Thierry Convert, my replacement.

This said, there were still no visible signs of future improvements or positive changes.

Back in the office, I was terrorized by having to pick up phone calls from disgruntled dealers, having to write letters and memos, and truly felt like a fish out of water. What became obviously clear from day one, was Paul’s total incompetence.

My good common sense felt violated everyday as I watched him around and wonder where I had gotten into. In fact, through pain and despair, I learned an awful lot by watching people around me do totally stupid things. As one might have expected, Paul got fired at the year end.

Another bright spot was that I also began running to alleviate my daily stress and this became a passion that would last and benefit me for about 40 years.

At the end of the year, when Evelyne and I flew back to France for the Christmas Holidays on Icelandic Airlines, this was a welcome break in an otherwise grueling first eight months...