There are many reasons why new year’s resolutions don’t stick. The one that seems to be the most compelling though, is their utility to us.
Is what we are setting ourselves to accomplish worth the time and effort we’ll put into it? Is the end result something we will like having or that we might really need?
Resolutions can’t be pulled out of a hat, willy-nilly at the last second. Good luck with yours, if you decide to set one up!
Traditionally, debriefing is an information-sharing and event-processing session conducted as a conversation between peers, in which group members become informants to each other about a situation or event that occurred to them as a group.
Recently, I was thinking, why not conduct the same session at the end of each day, as a personal exercise of introspection, critique, pat on the back and learning. 
That would revolve around an actual response and a summary of feelings about our daily plans and what was forced upon us by events that occurred during the course of that same day and the manners we handled them.
This, in my view, should be a great way of learning, remembering and improving one’s life, while counteracting a daily routine that keeps us into a static rut and precludes a continued and desirable personal growth.
Something I intend to explore in the near future and might even make my upcoming new year’s resolution...
I don’t know about your family, but mine as a special way with its members’ birth years. Look at the table and you’ll understand. Is that pure coincidence, serendipity or conspiracy theory?
I’d say the former, but it is simply amusing. What’s even more amazing is that the spacing always is multiple of 10.
What about yours?
This holiday season, I ski everyday with my daughter and my grandson.
To put it simply, in spite of skiing mostly on man-made snow and very limited terrain, we’re three crazy speed demons dodging other skiers and having lots of fun, even though our ages almost span a human lifetime: 12, 38 and 72 respectively!
That’s my quandary, as I’m supposed to be the pacesetter and the law-and-order element of that gang, but it’s so fun to be having so much fun in a three-generation ski outing!
It took me about almost seven decades to find out which way I should put my T-shirt in the appropriate direction.
In the past, I always relied on the tag stitched by the collar, but since shirts companies have been trying to save all the money they could, many of these are now imprinted and depending on the shirt color, barely legible if at all.
That’s about the time when I providentially discovered the presence of an inside tag on my T-shirts located on the left seam, that was meant to let me know for sure that my shirt was on the proper side of my body and, in the process, changed my humble daily life forever!
Ever since I can remember, I have received plenty of Christmas presents, except perhaps when I was a child when what I got was limited to an orange and some candies. My godparents, who owned a grocery store, once gave me a toy airplane that I really cherished…
The rest of the time, Christmas presents were objects that my wife and I purchased together, killing any element of surprise as we opened the package on Christmas Day. It was until this very Christmas Eve, when my daughter-in-law found for me a brand-new looking, used book about planning and architecture of French ski resorts.
The authors show how planners and architects addressed their real estate developments with solutions specific to each location. For each place, the book covers a time span ranging from the conception to the birth and the completion of these destination resorts, detailing multi-family to single family dwellings and common areas, plus including original drafts and an impressive array of interior photographs.
I’ve already began to read it and can’t wait to dig further into it!
In the late fifties, a French college professor who had bought a rustic chalet in my mountain hamlet used to come from the big city to spend three month into the fresh, Alpine air.
He and his wife had five daughters, and the seven of them would pile up inside a Renault Frégate, the largest French-made sedan at the time.
There was a little boy who might have been 6 or 7, that was attracted by the large automobile. In particular, it was its bulging chrome hubcaps that exerted a magnetic attraction for him.
Once he kicked one of them with his rugged mountain shoes and observed that it made a pretty big dent into the hemispheric shape of the wheel cover. His victory over seemingly hard-metal encouraged him to continue and to add dents to the first wheel and soon to the three other remaining ones.
He never got caught by the professor and I don’t know how the man reacted when he realized the extent of the vandalism. To this very day, I never could understand what happened in that little boy’s head to make him act in that manner.
Did he discover his unknown power in stamping metal or was it merely a matter of making his mark on things? Did he see breasts in the anatomically shaped hubcap?
I don’t think we’ll never ever know...
Before we get into the list that’s inside the bucket, it’s only fair to remember the origin of that expression. It was coined by the 2007 movie “The Bucket List” featuring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, playing two terminally ill men on their road trip with a wish list of things to do before they’d "kick the bucket".
This said, I don’t often consider what’s left, or should remain in my bucket list and I need to think hard to fill it with a bunch of wishes that could occupy my available time-space between now and my earthly departure.
As you can see, my bucket is pretty full and I better get going...
During our morning walk, we literally ran into an ermine (aka stoat, or Mustela erminea ) that was stealthy crossing our pass with its all-white call except for the black tip of its tail.
According to Wikipedia, the white winter fur is very dense and silky, but quite closely lying and short, while the summer fur is rougher, shorter and sparse. In summer, the fur is sandy-brown on the back and head and a white below.
The stoat moults or sheds twice a year. In spring, the shedding is slow, starting from the forehead, across the back, toward the belly. In autumn, the process is quicker, progressing in reverse order. The change in coat color, initiated by seasonal change in daylight, starts earlier in autumn and later in spring, at higher latitudes.
In northern or snowy habitat, like Park City, it adopts a completely white coat (except for its characteristic black tail-tip) during winter which provides them with the perfect camouflage!
Many people who have gone to support Trump are finding democracy too complicated or too high-maintenance, and would prefer an authoritarian system unencumbered by choices. A one-size fits all society, if you prefer.
It’s true that democracy is a large tent that must make room for a wide variety of differences in people and for their great variety of aspirations and needs. All these complex issues are being fed into political and governmental systems that seem no longer able to process and digest all the multiple, diverse and complex requirements brought by today’s overpopulated and diverse society.
Social grievances might also bear some of the blame with traditions like religion, sexuality, family life and more, that are being challenged. At the same time, massive immigration, especially in the US and Europe, and the mobilization of oppressed minority groups have disrupted the existing social order, leaving some citizens angry and resentful.
All these elements often grind the process of governing to an exasperating halt. This is what has created a fertile terrain for nationalist and fascist ideas brought forth by the Trumps of the world, advocating for easy, simple and naive solutions against highly complex problems. Their leadership also means far less choices and options available compared to what’s offered under a more diverse, difficult and complex democratic society.
The choice is therefore simple: Democracy is a complicated luxury while tyranny is a simple tool and a seemingly happy prison.
I haven’t heard much from yesterday’s blog in terms of comments made about it. What is clear to me though, is that some countries are absolutely terrible compared to others.
Still in that category, I would somehow “excuse” countries like Mexico, Chile and Columbia, while “scolding” countries like the United Kingdom, the United States and France, as the latest is often given as an example for its exemplary healthcare system.
As for Belgium, it might be an aberration that someone will be able to explain some day. With two insane individuals at the head of the UK and the USA, such terrible results shouldn’t totally come as a surprise, but it’s fair to say that Mr Trump is clearly responsible for at least 100,000 death, because of his attitude, absence of action and lack of interest for fighting the pandemic.
The next mediocre category could be the 40 to 80 deaths per 100,000 people. In it, they could have done better, but were probably ill-prepared to fight Covid-19.
A more acceptable category, would fall between the 10 and 40 deaths category and would include Canada as well as Germany among others.
Places that the US and the entire EC could have emulated to perfection.
This, clearly is where our next Pandemic Best Practices ought to be coming from...
They’re not poor nations by any mean, on the contrary, its members and key partners represent 80% of the overall world trade and investment.
The goal of the OECD is to promote the economic welfare of its members. It also coordinates their efforts to aid developing countries outside of its membership.
Now, with this in mind, let’s see how each one of these 37 countries “performed” in terms of containing death from Covid-19, per capita.
With very few exceptions, these are country we should trust in terms of reporting their numbers and the open question addressed to my readers, is why we can observe such a (criminal) disparity.
Your comments are welcome!
Recently, I heard on the radio that Napoleon was “another dictator” and chuckled a bit, because, deep inside, I knew that there was some truth to this, but through my schooling in France, the one-time Emperor was mostly portrayed as a great general, statesman and even a hero.
Rather than to help ensure the development of France as a free republic, Napoleon decided that France and all of Europe needed a strong leader to run the continent. Napoleon also got interested in the French legal system of France, because he felt that a centralized judiciary would allow him to strengthen his regime and prevent political threats.
The same could be said of his instituting 18,000 gendarmes reporting daily to Fouché and his control of the media that repressed free speech and expression, becoming the government’s mouthpiece for all official propaganda.
Sure, Napoleon might have not been as bad as Hitler or Stalin but he sure had power and was determined to keep it. In the waning days of the Trump would-be dictatorship, it’s worth remembering that dictators come in all kinds of flavors and strengths.
Perhaps, Napoleon might have been a "light" version, but in my view, was nonetheless part of that nefarious club!
It took a very, very long time for Mitch McConnell to reluctantly admit that Trump had lost and Biden won the election. The same goes for the vast majority of the GOP members.
As we all know the mascot chosen by the American GOP or Republican Party, is an elephant. I propose that it be replaced by a scorpion. My thinking is triggered by that famous fable attributed to Aesop, known as the scorpion and the frog; it goes like this:
"A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, both would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog then agrees, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature."
Something Biden should always remember during the next four years!
If anything else, this pandemic is a unique common element that humans can share from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. If most countries had more good judgment, they should have leveraged that commonality of circumstances as well as knowledge, and extracted the best possible practices.
They haven’t and this has led to the disparity we’re still witnessing in terms of death per capita for each country.
On the other hand, that global crisis has launched a planetary race in order to find vaccines that could address that modern plague, and the speed at which the first ones have been developed is a positive benefit and a testimony to what works with globalism.
Quite possibly; at least the process has been initiated and as the Novel Coronavirus is clearly behind the fall of Trump, our nationalist, apprentice-dictator, it’s also not helping Boris Johnson’s cause, nor is it advancing that of both Andrzej Duda in Poland and Viktor Orbán in Hungary!
For a long time, I’ve been wondering when and how Robert Redford, who is now 84 will organize his succession and was told last year that his children would probably take over the management of his iconic ski resort.
Well, since December 14, this has changed, as we’ve learned that Robert Redford is selling Sundance, his ski and mountain resort close to Park City, to a real estate investment group specializing in the hospitality industry.
Global warming and the required large investment to keep going probably played a big role with that decision. The transaction includes all the resort buildings, ski lifts, on-site dining venues, and event spaces.
Today, the resort offers 450 acres of skiable terrain spread across 44 trails, 2,150 feet of vertical served by five lifts, a year-round ZipTour, summer mountain biking, and hiking. Redford bought the small Timp Haven ski area in 1969.
The buyer, Broadreach and Cedar, said it would improve the ski experience, try to increase the resort bed base, and continue the development of creative and cultural activities. The sale does not affect the Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Catalog, Sundance TV, or the Redford Center.
Back in 2002, I began creating our own Holiday Cards (see picture) and continued until 2011 when I replace that medium with a video message.
Not counting the time I spend emailing the two-minute clip, it takes me from 24 to 36 hours to produce it. Sure, I get better with time, but I still don’t know if I’ll have the stamina to keep on churning out that annual project forever…
Should I use my time on more productive endeavors?
Recently, Rob Katz, the CEO of Vail Resorts, acknowledged some of the problems I had mentioned to him and to the Park City Mountain, General Manager, Mike Goar. His response, while recognizing a less than stellar performance from Vail’s customer service department, seemed to ignore the larger problem plaguing your reservation system.
More about this one later, but suffice to say that I tested the “improvements” made today to the company phone and chat services and was force to see that the Chat room didn’t operate at all and that it took me 62 minutes to get a response.
Without getting into the details, it requires a lot of time to manage and keep straight, and this is why I’m imploring Vail that, to avoid creating an impossible situation when the high season comes around, it get rid of that system of reservation.
It doesn’t exist in nearby Deer Valley and things work perfectly fine. Long lines? People can work around these by picking both the time they come out to ski and the order of lifts and the area they’ll go to. This is a foolish pursuit and it must be abandoned!
As I was searching for information about some older Salomon products, I stumbled upon a book written by a former Salomon’s manager, namely Walter Zibung, former Swiss subsidiary director for the French ski company.
A page-turner written with wit and some reasonable exaggerations, that autobiography uncannily mirrors my own career path, indirectly pays homage to Georges Salomon, the genius entrepreneur that, with his dad François, built Salomon to the number ski company in the world.
It shows that the late leader was chuck-full of common sense, knew how to pick the right associates as well as observe intensely and listen extremely well to the market.
It also shows that the company successive take-overs, beginning with Adidas, was the poison pill that killed the culture and the creative juice that ran through that company.
It’s also a reminder to all of us who were privileged to work in the ski industry as much as we did, that we're indeed a very lucky bunch…
Whenever I speak to my French friends, and ask them about vaccination in general, I sense a general lack of appetite for this type of protection.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, in 2018, a survey by Wellcome, a British medical charity, and conducted by Gallup, showed that France has the lowest levels of trust in vaccines globally.
The vast majority of my friends don’t get the annual flu vaccine, many don’t ever renew their Tetanus shots and are convinced the all is well. So, don’t even try to tell them about getting the Covid-19 vaccine;
I guess they’d rather die.
Pretty amazing!
A friend of mine sent me a video of what appeared to be an old newsreel, allegedly from February29, 1956, titled “Avoiding the future plague”. The piece looked pretty authentic and was predicting the future between then and now, to a tee, including the advent of Covid-19.
My sender is a serious, well rounded and educated individual who didn’t see the pure fabrication, and skilled editing behind that clip. Always a bit skeptical, I did some research and found that footage on YouTube (see below) which gave away the scheme and confessed it had been made up as a prank with archival and public domain footage acquired from Archive.org.
Too bad that the author didn’t label his piece as a humor piece, because, I’m pretty certain that many folks my age might have taken that piece of vintage news to the bank. Ten years ago, I remember being “had” on Facebook with a video showing a single engine plane landing with one wing torn off and this taught me a good lesson in critical thinking in a world of social media and fake news.
This is one more heads-up for all of us that the internet is fraught with poisonous information and that nothing should ever taken for granted. Always be wary!
As the ski season moves on, Vail Resorts’ approach to maximizing lift capacity is evolving.
At first, on a six passengers chair, the options seemed very limited with half the normal load on average.
Today, however, while three perfect strangers can only ride three on such a large chairlift, we can also have multiple combinations, like two households of two, sitting on either extremities.
Also, one stranger and one household of four as well as a household of two and one of three, leaving only one free space, or one household of two and two perfect stranger leaving on free space in each interval.
That’s not too bad and make more sense than the early combinations I had heard of, but still a bit complicated for most skiers to grasp and use effectively in a fluid and fast lift-line environment...
I wish I were the fly that landed and stayed for two minutes and three seconds on Mike Pence’s perfectly manicured hair, during the Vice-President debate, last October.
Unless Trump dies from a heart-attack, of natural causes, resigns to get Pence grant him a preemptive pardon, or got forbid, get assassinated by the Iranian who are pissed off at him, his chances of presidency are dwindling fast.
He should console himself that, while he was seen as a robotic, uncharismatic and dull VP, he was picked as a prized landing spot by a rare Nevada fly and got quite lasting fame and recognition out of it!
Park City doesn’t have an airport, because it doesn’t need one. With Salt Lake City airport 35 miles away and Heber City’s just within 20 miles, that’s plenty to land a plane. Except of course when you’re flying a small passenger plane, that oil pressure drop to zero and that the only engine one has stops.
This past Saturday, night had just fallen when Jackson Walker who was flying from Idaho Falls to Provo had no choice but land and made a safe landing with no damage to the aircraft or injuries to him and his passenger.
Before that, Walker said he tried to re-start the engine on several occasions, but to no avail, so, he stayed over I-80 hoping to make it to the Heber City airport, but that didn’t work and he had to land on the freeway, near the Park City exit.
The pilot, who had got his license in June flashed his landing lights to alert oncoming cars he was be landing on the freeway. A nearby driver, who happened to also be a pilot, noticed the plane coming down and alerted cars so they could slow down.
Inside the plane, the pilot saw the maneuver and started swerving to slow down traffic to create more room, trying to maintain the same speed as traffic until he could bring the plane to a stop.
What I conveniently forget to add is that it takes energy to compress the air that blow the mixture up into the air, and in Park City, our electrical power is still mostly made of fossil fuels that spew CO2 in the air...
Recently, I was watching a video interview between Jean-Marie Peyrin, a former buddy of mine at the Cluses School of Watchmaking by Kristin Marion for a local radio station, near Annecy, France.
Kristin started singing jazz at the age of 26, and has trained in jazz vocal and has participated in many workshops in schools and with jazz musicians. She completed her voice training in the US with online sessions at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Since August 2014 she has been the official Jazz Education Network representative in France.
In this informative and captivating exchange, Jean-Marie explains to us how he managed to merge Jazz and Watchmaking and retains an intense passion for both fields which don’t seem to have much in common.
I was also very impressed by the depth of knowledge of my former classmate and air force buddy (yes, we both served together in Salon de Provence, the equivalent of Colorado Springs Air Force Academy!) He knows his stuff and it shows.
Although the exchange lasts 38 minutes, if you understand French, I recommend that you invest some of your free-time to watch it!
Near my hometown in the French Alps is the ski town of Châtel, that sits next door to another one in Switzerland, called Morgins. Both are part of one of the largest Alpine ski interconnect known as “Portes du Soleil”.
Nicolas Rubin is Châtel’s mayor and a maverick of sorts. He is now challenging French President Macron’s edict to keep ski resorts shut down till sometime in January, if signs of a tapering off Covid-19 are materializing. He can’t understand that his Swiss neighbor Morgins, can stay open while he has to keep his community out of business.
To borrow a page from Trump’s bold playbook, Rubin might try to annex Switzerland like the US wanted to do the same with Greenland, and the embattled mayor should also build a wall west of Châtel and have Macron pay for it!
Of course, to add insult to injury, Macron now wants to punish French skiers who’d dare ski abroad, like in Switzerland, by imposing a quarantine upon their return from their ski holiday. This has prompted the French ski area association to sue the government.
To be continued...
While Donald Trump probably believes that he should pardon himself, including his own family, cronies and friend as a preemptive measure to shelter him from the deluge of legal actions waiting as soon as he exits the White House, I have myself wondering if I shouldn’t ask him for a preemptive pardon too.
I don’t intend to rob a bank, nor to commit any major crime, but I would love to do one simple thing while I’m alive. If and when I get that Tesla that has been in on my wish-list for a while, I intend to test it on Interstate 80, and particularly climbing the 6% grade preceding Parley Summit to see if I can get any close to the 155 mph announced for the model I covet.
That pardon would embolden me to try it as it would guarantee me some modicum of protection in case a Utah Highway Patrol car happens to be around and considering that we're in a 65 mph zone…
I’ve already been skiing a few times this season and have not really felt the threat of Covid-19 contamination, but again, how can we say that we “feel” that?
While the distancing in ski lines is a bit “elastic”, it is what it is, as long as I’m protected by an all-encompassing balaclava plus my goggles. When I’m riding the lifts (two or three strangers respectively together in the same quad, gondola, or six-pack) and when I ski down the hill, I experience the total freedom inherent with our sport.
In summary, skiing is apparently less risky than going shopping or flying three passengers sitting in a triple row. So why is the French government (prodded by Germany’s) keeping their ski lifts shut down till January 2021? This hardly seems justifiable, or am I missing something?
Of course I’m not talking about piling up people inside tiny accommodations and controlling wild après-ski parties. This is the objective danger that nations should be concerned about and ready to control and clamp down on any abuse.
I don’t about you, but I no longer sleep as tight as I used to, and this is simply because, as I age, my sleep has become much more lighter and my many dreams can be so vivid that they keep on waking me up.
This is when I return to my old, proven method for falling asleep that I developed over years of extensive international travels when planes used to be pretty empty.
What I do is quite simple: I mentally picture the vacant center row seats in the economy section of a wide body airplane, and I see and feel myself laying there comfortably, stretching as much as can and falling deeply asleep in spite of the roaring engine noise.
November is a transitional month that begins just after Halloween and ends after Thanksgiving. For us it’s usually marked with some natural snowfalls in various quantities and that’s when ski resorts open and start making artificial snow in earnest.
We also have elections and this year was a big one. Up until now, and for the past four years, time has slowed down to a crawl as we were under the thumb of Dictator Trump.
But now, with Trump leaving us soon and vaccines arriving to the rescue, fast times are back, so hang on to your seats and don’t wonder why November went in a flash!
I don’t know what Biden will do, or better yet, his attorney general, in pursuing Trump for the host of Federal charges he should be indicted for, like his interference into the fact-finding investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller to determine if Russia attempted to subvert our electoral system, not to mention a host of old and potential future claims that might lend him in jail.
Biden seems too intent on reconciliation. His extended hand shouldn’t be strictly limited in time, and if the GOP doesn’t embrace it, then his administration should go as hard it possibly can after Donald J. Trump.
Send him to Guantanamo Naval Base.
The tropical weather should be to his liking and it’s never too late for him to learn Arabic!
Let’s start by establishing a few, hard facts. Donald Trump is just a tenant of the White House. This iconic home is also the undivided property of all tax-paying, citizens of the United States of America. So, if you are an American, you and I are Trump’s landlords.
So we’re now stuck with a misbehaving, broke, bad tenant whose lease is about to expire and I’m worried about that. As a landlord, I’m right to fear that he won’t leave, not the just the physical property, but also the moral property of America in much worse shape than what it was when he found it.
Sure there are the lawyers, the Sheriff too, that can throw the bum out. I also realize now, “Where in hell is our security deposit?” Since we didn’t for one, we have no financial recourse.
Perhaps the only solution would be to ask the 74 million smart Americans who wanted Trump’s lease renewed to pay for all the damages he created, present and future, which by my estimation amount to about $5 trillion; thus to contribute a hefty $68 million by elector.
Good luck on that one...
I’m no fan of Hillary Clinton, but I must confess that her choice of the term “deplorable” to qualify Trump supporters in 2016 was right on the money.
That cost her some votes, because Trump knew how to turn the expression against her, but it remains clear that “deplorable” meant what it said:
This means that Democrats may have won, but American is split in half with a considerable half made of either idiot, gullible, malevolent individuals or a combination of these three flaws.
This past Tuesday, we watched Macron deliver his televised speech about re-opening France and while one might agree or disagree with his proposed measures, we still think there’s something about his style that is not quite working.
Even though, he’s trying, he’s failing to level with his constituents and that gap isn’t helping him in any way. He would gain tremendously at being more relaxed, at appearing more “normal”, but that runs against his nature and is fodder for his forty-two percent low approval rating.
This sure will cost him big, sixteen month from now, when comes re-election time...
In Ridgeview, the first neighborhood we moved to when we arrived in Park City, more than 35 years ago, there’s a house that recently errected a chain-link fence around its yard.
We noticed it when we walked there, earlier this week, and I told my wife that such fencing was illegal within our City limits.
Then our attention went to a two-page notice that explained why such a “diversion” had been built. I leave you with the story as it was told on the signs…
Dear Deer,
The buffet line is closed. Your bedroom and bathroom privileges are revoked. Enough is enough! For over 30 years we have shared this space. It was great to have one or two of you stop by every few weeks for a surprise visit. But times have changed. It is no longer a surprise.
Now you are a herd, often numbering over a dozen, and in the winter you are here everyday. The annual cost of repairing your damage to the yard now exceeds our summer water bills. In the winter our driveway is covered in your excrement. In the spring , hundred of pounds of your waste must be racked from the yard before we can use it.
You have eaten our Mugos to nubs, damaged more of the juniper and broken the lower branches of the spruce. It took 30 year to grow these plants. You destroyed decades of growth in days last winter. We suspect your numbers swelled when a few neighbors put out food to encourage you to visit their yards.
They may have started modestly, but one neighbor tells me his efforts grow until he was putting out a hundred ponds of food a day for you. As the food supply grew, so did your numbers. As the food through appeared bottomless you stopped roaming and took up permanent residence.
If the neighbors who feed you want a herd of deer in their yards, and accept the accompanying damage, that is their choice. We no longer accept the costs their actions have imposed upon us. This diversion is to help you break your habits and protect our vegetation.
When you need to sleep, defecate, wrestle, or just want to taste a real plant again instead of food from a bag, go down the street and indulge yourself in someone else’s yard.
P.P.S. We would rather not have this diversion, but it has become necessary to protect the vegetation from ravenous, artiodactyl ungulates. The low junipers were eaten to nubs two years ago. Extensive watering brought some of them back, but is expensive and laborious. The Mugo pine you see was stripped to a height of over seven feet. It is never going to recover. Another Mugo ten feet to the east was completely denuded and had to be cut down. We replaced the Mugos with Arborvitae this spring as supposedly deer do not like to eat Arborvitae. Well they did not eat them, but the deer destroyed several of them two weeks ago rubbing the velvet of their antlers. We have had enough. We are protecting the vegetation.
P.P.P.S. We have spoken to our neighbors about their compulsion to feed wildlife. Several people tell us they have called the DWR. After a few weeks or months, the neighbors seem to start putting out food again. This diversion seemed both more polite and more expeditious that filing another report with the DWR.
I only skied three runs, the snow was okay, the crowd pretty thin and social distancing with three others fellow passengers, on a six-person chair, went perfectly well. I made one turn for each one of the guys dear to me that passed away this summer:
Gaston, my big brother, Jean-Pierre the friend who was like a sibling to me and my dear buddy François from Neuchâtel.
The turns weren’t the greatest, but they were as round as I could make them. Hopefully, there will be more good skiing soon…
To cope with Covid-19, Vail Resorts (VR) decided to opt for a reservations system in order to limit the number of users on the mountain during each single day, based on its available uphill capacity, greatly reduced (from 75% to 30%, in most cases) through social distancing in the lines and on the lifts.
This idea wasn’t selected by most other resorts and for some pretty obvious reasons that you’ll discover as you read. This reservations idea was the typical good idea that was not thought through at all, and as well all know, the devil always loves to hide inside the details!
Back in August, I tried to understand the rules behind VR’s reservations program, but couldn’t make any sense of it. I emailed VR, asking them for clarification, and copied Mike Goar, the VP and General Manager of Park City Mountain (PCM). I never got any response from either party. Mid September, I watched a video in which Rob Katz VR’s CEO was supposed to explain his resorts confusing reservation system. This was fruitless, as he failed to explain anything.
So, on Friday, I showed up at PCM around 12:15 pm and was turned back as I was scanned in the line and told I had no reservation, so I went home, licked my wounds, tried to call Vail Resorts and was told by its voice mail message that there was too long a waiting line and got automatically disconnected. Great customer service!
Not one to give up easily, I tried the Chat service and after waiting a good while was told that I would get a response in 233 minutes (translation: almost 4 hour!) I then sent an incendiary email to PCM's General Manager, in which I explained my experience for the day. He clarified some of the things I never understood in Vail Resorts’ res system, apologized for my frustration with the system.
He told me that “PCM experienced a very high volume, which coupled with reduced capacity due to limited terrain makes it challenging to secure reservations this week. All of the safety protocols came on top of that, leading to these difficulties.” He also conveniently ignored my comments about Vail Resorts’ terrible customer service (phone and chat).
After that needless torture, I began to understand how flawed VR’s reservations system was. What began as an original idea was terribly designed, poorly explained, not discussed thoroughly and obviously not tested either! The way the system is designed, folks can preempt most of the available space without using it (the system promotes tons of "no-shows").
Further, its “one-day unit” is senseless; Many locals ski for 1, 2 hours, half-day mostly, and yet, their reservation counts for a full day! Still, VR RFID system would allow for fractional time and optimize the number of users on the slopes.
What I’d propose to fix would be both doable and simple: With 7 ski-hours in a day (9 am – 4 pm). It would be possible to reserve 2, 3 or 4 hours per day. 7 hours reserved would count for a day. Reservations should be canceled 24 hours in advance or else, they would be deemed no show if the skier doesn’t use them.
The penalty for no-show could be one less day of floating reservation through the rest of the season. This said, I’m still very concerned that Vail Resorts and Park City Mountain are cheating people who have paid a lot of money for the passes by giving them only a fraction of the product promised.
Refunds anyone?
In fact, imperfection is like a vaccine, if we take it in stride, it makes us more stronger and much more resilient! That doesn’t mean that our goals and objective can be mediocre; far from it!
To get something imperfect but good enough, it helps a great deal if our guiding elements are as perfect as we can imagine them. If they’re less than perfect we’re just cheating ourselves and missing out on what life has to offer.
Anyway, that’s how I’ve always looked at things: Dream big and if the results are a bit eroded from the original vision, we should cherish them anyway.
You might ask what’s the point to aim for the absolute and hardly ever getting a full return for it? Well, it’s all about, closing that gap, living and getting better as well as keeping a fighting spirit going, so forget about the friction that drags along the way!
o I decided to hike there instead. I got to the based of Payday, the only big chairlift open where there was a pretty sizable line, spaced out as per Covid rules, and when it came my turn to be scanned, I was rejected because I had not made a reservation!
I thought that such thing was only necessary during what PCM or Vail Resorts call the “core” or high season. Well, I turned back, skied down to the parking lot and went home.
These few precious first turns were, as you might have guessed… priceless, and I was mightily pissed at Vail Resorts and their stupid reservations system that is fraught with problems and simply doesn't work...
Some think Donald Trump is dumb, other say he’s smart and many believe he’s nuts. This therefore beg the question what’s really inside his head. He doesn’t read but watches a lot of TV instead and rambles a lot. This won’t help in making him the intellectual person of the year!
Yet, the man also appears to be cunning and generally mean and cruel. Just like smiles don’t belong to his face, there’s no good words coming out of his mouth, yet some of his tactics have worked perfectly to his advantage.
Of course, he’s got Steve Bannon and Steve Miller in the background, engineering most of Trump’s nefarious moves and populating him like a Trojan horse. This said, Trump got elected on the basis he was a fantastic businessman and to back it up, one worth a whopping 10 billion dollars!
This of course was another lie. He’s got very little business acumen, if at all, and his net worth was at best one quarter of what he was boasting. He was lucky to ride the Obama’s economic recovery, fueled by a corporate tax-cut that boosted Wall Street to record levels and made sure Steve Munchin would keep that balloon inflated through this last election.
Then, there’s been the systematic lying, a Trump trademark, that no one found objectionable, and now there is his denial of the election results that sometime makes me think that the man might truly believe in his own B.S. if he isn’t totally demented.
So back to the original question: “What inside Trump’s head?” the answer might be “Unadulterated crap.”
On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that the embattled Boeing’s 737 Max could fly again, some 20 months after it was grounded for two bad crashes.
So the next question I’m asking myself is “Can I trust liars like Boeing and the FAA this time around”. That’s indeed the big problem with lying, a dubious practice that leaves irremovable stains, even though that style of communication been widely legalized by Trump over the past four years.
In an attempt to break the public’s skepticism, Stephen Dickson, the FAA big boss declared, as he was officially lifting the grounding: “I am 100 percent comfortable with my family flying on it.” The question that immediately came to my mind was: “Does this man really love his family?”
We have all been there with software upgrades that weren’t what they were billed for, from Android, to Apple or Microsoft. From what I’ve been able to learn, this modified plane can’t fly with a complex software crutch. In my view, it should be discontinued and sent to the scrapyard.
Why would Boeing and the FAA deserve our unfettered truth after what they’ve been telling us in recent years? Well for one thing, Boeing's CEO, David Calhoun, is expected to get a $7 million bonus if he can to get the 737 Max to fly again and I’m certain that Boeing will wine and dine other air safety agencies the world over to ease into the end of the ban.
From “Low energy Jeb” to “Lying Ted” or “Little Rubio”, no one had the practical understanding of the maneuver and gut to say something, or better yet organize the group into demanding a “cease-and-desist” from the offender.
Had he kept on misbehaving, the group would have kicked him out of the debate and Trump would have never penetrated the political arena. They were so shell-shocked by the man that they forgot to think clearly and by so doing, protect themselves from the deadly intruder.
By choosing to do nothing, the group began the process of enabling the monster and creating normality in his behavior as seen by the American public. By the end of the primary, Trump was established in his role of name-caller and iconoclast and a substantial segment of the population warmed up to him in the process as they gladly drank his snake-oil medicine.
It then continued with the Democratic Party Primary and later with Hillary Clinton and the die was cast. Something to remember next time a would-by-tyrant rear his ugly nose.
Christmas lights seem to be a very big deal in Park City, which shows the trivial and superficial priorities of our affluent community.
Not only are people highlighting the silhouettes of their roofs and homes, but they are turning their trees into spectacular light-shows as well.
Some leave the LED bulbs in place year-round, a move that can’t be too good for the tree, but worst than that, the safety of the workers who hang them up all around town, doesn’t appear to be a major priority.
My wife asked me if they could grab a branch to hold on to, should they lose their footing, and I told her that this kind of tree limbs are extremely brittle and would snap instantly.
An irresponsible business owner and a terrible way for these men to earn a few dollars!
We are beginning our ninth month under the Covid menace and what have we done with all that precious time that should have yielded a host of opportunities to learn, grow as a person, even recreate and adding something meaningful to our lives?
In many cases, a lot of folks were caught like a deer in the headlights, just frozen in place. I tried to ask myself that question and had not much to show for it in terms of tangible realizations. I started meditating seriously, but that began sometime in January, before I had even heard the word “pandemic”.
We also did some improvement around the house, but those would have happened virus or not. That’s when it downed on me, how fast and spontaneously we very quickly learned to accept and adapt to the new situation.
A powerful rebuke to “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks!” We can see that the human being is highly adaptable. Fear of dying must be a great motivator indeed!
Recently a friend sent me a podcast about a 2006 French athlete who happens to be starting his own new ski brand from scratch. His name is Antoine Dénériaz, who won the 2006 Olympic Downhill in Sestriere, Italy.
The reason why he’s embarking on this challenging business development is summarized in his company philosophy, that focuses on the skier genuine Alpine origins, his appreciation for excellent, carefully crafted equipment and objects of beauty.
These qualities are typical of most luxury products. It’s all in the ether and not necessarily in the realm of tangible product features and user’s benefits. Luxury products are at the whims of what’s fashionable today and can vanish much more easily than they come to market.
Need some examples? Lacroix or Volant skis. Moreover, skis fall into a tough product category. They’re a real commodity as they are to skiing what tires are to automobile driving. Aside from lightweight and stability, two opposite qualities that have yet to be blended into one single product, there doesn’t seem to be much room for innovation.
The same can’t be said about ski boots or ski bindings that are both plagued with some very vexing shortcomings, like weight, ease of entry and exit, warmth, walk-ability for boots, or greater convenience and enhanced protection for bindings.
These could be seen as unsolvable goals to attain, yet I’m confident that someday, someone smart will resolve them markedly. Product innovation is what makes a start-up viable and lasting. Simply creating a faddish product may get a brand going, but won’t sustain it for long.
At least, that is my humble “two-cents”. In the meantime, I wish Antoine a lasting patience, continued creativity and very deep pockets!
As it does all the time for Democrats, Park City voted massively for Biden. Sure, we don’t have stats for our town alone, as those are lumped into our county. That’s right, Summit County has a total population of 42,145 people, including 27,850 who live in the western part of its territory and have a Park City mailing address.
This means that about two-third of the county’s population lives in the greater Park City area. Park City Municipal, where we live only accounts for 8,488 inhabitants, which means that the 19,362 other “Parkites” live in the unincorporated part of the Park City School District.
Back to the election, out of 28,785 eligible Summit County voters, 25,790 of them cast a ballot (a whopping 89.6% participation!), with 14,497 or 56.21% voting for Biden and 9,928 or 38.5% for Trump. We need to remember that, outside of Park City, the remaining third of the county is in vast majority Mormon, therefore these folks are for the most part Trump supporters.
Our state of Utah and its 3.2 million population, which in fact is a theocracy like Iran and Israel, has supported Trump, 58% to 37.8% for Biden.
Only two other counties, Salt Lake and Moab voted for Biden! We still have to work hard in order to make a Democratic dent in that ultra-conservative states!
To prepare for that, I went on a 5 mile walk today, and tested a newly purchased balaclava, that I worn with some goggles to see if I could stand one and a half hour of exercise with a face covering that people normally use to rob banks.
I found that it did work for me and I’m encouraged that this new germ-stopper is not only likely to protect me against the early winter cold, but also should filter out some of the nasty Novel Coronavirus that is said to make some people very sick or even kill them.
Just look for a comprehensive on snow test-drive in an upcoming blog!
During this past electoral campaign, ma wife often asked: “Why are more Trump supporters unhappy about his style and his way of running the country? What has he done for them?”
Frankly, I understood exactly what she meant, but couldn’t find the words or the argument, to answer her questions to her heart content. Then, came the 2020 vote. At this point of time, Biden is credited with 77 million votes, Trump with 72.
The difference is far from negligible, yet, more than 70 million folks stuck with Trump in spite of his lies, his racism, his cruelty and his lack of managerial acumen. Such a loyalty is both illogical and hard to understand or even explain.
I would suggest than in the case of Biden it could be 60% program versus 40% ideology. Trump, on the other hand, has no program, therefore it’s fair to assume that his entire presidency is made of ideology created out of thin-air.
Not much different from Jim Jones, this American cult leader that staged a mass-suicide of himself and his followers in the Guyana jungle, at Jonestown, in 1978.
For the most part, Trump’s followers like simple – I should say crude and infantile – solutions, like institutionalized lying and cheating, good old fashion racism, self-sufficiency, religiosity and white supremacy, to name just a few.
No reasoning can get through ideology and it remains to be seen how American society can best annihilate this scourge outside of good old education and common sense, but that medication isn’t easily administered!
Early this month, I predicted that Trump would lose, but also that he would be a piece of work between the election and the time he must be forcibly removed from office, on January 20, 2021.
He clearly is a wounded lion, a predator in great pain, already posing a do or die defense, a desperate fight to harm its enemy.
Since Donald Trump only cares about himself, he’s ready to adopt a scorched earth policy to find a semblance of solace, regardless of the fact that what he does might hurt his faithful followers as equally as his opponents.
Expect much damage from that wild and cruel beast, some of it, irreparable!
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