Literally, on top of our Mt. Buller universe stood the Arlberg Hotel.
From the bottom of Bourke Street, at the base of our Blue chairlift, one couldn’t miss the Arlberg, which stood proud on the ridgeline. It was much farther and harder to get to, than to slide into Kooroora as we had to climb, Bourke Street, our main ski run, to get there.
Depending on what we drank while a the hotel, the return home was always hazardous and punctuated by falls on our rear end or even nose, that we conveniently put on the account of the extra-slippery Australian snow, or giving too many ski lessons during the day!
I remember that I was quite envious of Jean-Pierre who owned a pair cowboy boots with sleek soles and was trying to slide down the entire ski run of Bourke Street, without going over the handlebar, which wasn’t an easy feat…
The place was far more civilized, cleaner and quieter than Kooroora, that was just seedy, to say the least, but wasn’t altogether a bore.
On occasions, T-shirt contests, the rage in the early 70s, and other parties were held in the hotel’s theater room and they showed movies too. I remember seeing there “Easy Rider” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
While it took a special effort to get there, and of course return home in the wee hours, most of the times, we were always well rewarded when we made to the effort to climb to the Arlberg!
Few new products last forever or long enough for us to get tired of them by the time they expire.
Mobile phones for example are often made obsolete by larger memory becoming available, passage from 3G to 4 and 5G operating system, or as is always the case, their batteries dying and not designed to be easily replaced.
The problem then becoming one of pondering whether it’s worth incurring the cost of opening up the device to insert a new battery, instead of simply turning the page and buying a state-of-the-art phone.
Recently, I was inquiring about the life expectancy of our Nest thermostats that recently turn 7 years of age. We love them, they work fine and I learned that ours, the so-called generation is likely to see their batteries die after 10 years, against only 7 for the first generation.
I was disappointed in learning this. First, we have 3 units and each one is pretty expensive and second, they haven’t changed much since they were introduced. Sure there’s now a cheaper Nest version offered with replaceable batteries, but they can’t do all the things the better version is supposed to do and don’t look as durable.
So here you go, nothing these days last forever! By the way, I hope my personal batteries still have some good life left into them.
This was a steep, pretty weird run at the back of the building we were staying at. There was a Poma serving that slope that, if I can recall correctly, had two loading stations.
The top one, of average incline was were we trained for slalom, even had the Chamois test, that timed slalom race for recreational skiers, a remote equivalent of the American Nastar, in which pins of bronze, silver or (very, very rarely gold) were given to the fastest participants.
It seems to me that the lower portion of the slope was steep, wooded with a thin snow cover. Gérard also remembers that this lower section saw very little use, even by expert skiers who wanted to free-ski.
He adds: "I’d even say that this run, outside of being perfect for slalom training, was hardly ever used because it was out of the way from Bourke Street “magnetic power” and the access to the better ski runs served by the Bull Run lift”.
I remember that I had sold my pair of Dynastar MV2 and my Lange boots to Carey Petrovic, a fearless lifty from nearby Mt. Beauty, who managed to break one ski, clean, at the toe unit level. The guy was heavy, the speed high and the eucalyptus tree very, very hard!
Altogether, the lift served a total vertical drop of about 500 ft. (150 meters) which was not much by Alpine standard, but was serious for Mt. Buller! Today the original surface lift has been replaced in 1993 by a Doppelmayr double chair renamed “Lydia’s” en 2011, to honor Lydia Lassila after her 2010 gold medal, and the runs are used for freestyle training and competition.
Incidently, I remember that I interviewed Lydia in 2012, during the Freestyle World Cup in Deer Valley, while I was still producing videos for that resort.
When asked, most people will say they prefer “quality” over “quantity”. This comes as no surprise with folks equipped with a basic intellect and a reasonable amount of common sense.
For instance those of us we have lived long enough, would rather have less clothes or shoes, as long as they wear well, look good and are of good quality. In fact we tend to always gravitate towards wearing the same garments.
The same can apply to housing, furniture, electronics, leisure, etc. It can also be projected into size comparison, like “smaller and nice” vs. “large and ugly.”
Now, if we take the same reasoning and apply it to population, or closer issues related to family-unit, like the number of offspring, it doesn’t take a genius to prefer having less kids in order to give them better living conditions (at least better shelter, food and education), It seems that all parents ought to think that way, yet too few do, and then we have an overpopulated planet.
Wouldn’t it be a fantastic idea for someone to explain that concept to future parents, no matter where they live, what they do, how they think and which deity they might believe in?
We are not going to be watching a lot of the Tokyo Olympics. My wife will be following the women’s gymnastics, as for me, we’ll see.
I don’t like the way Thomas Bach forced the Games onto the Japanese (and I’m certain, their prime minister) when almost 80% of the population against the idea. In this day and age, the I.O.C. has become the defacto decider and the one running the show, not the host country or the host city, even if his actions might seem heavy-handed.
This explains why the Tokyo Games will go on amid the pandemic, and also why, next year's, the Winter Games under the authoritarian Xi regime won’t be moved or canceled if pressure were to be applied by the I.O.C to hold China to account for its treatment of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, and for cracking down on democracy advocates in Hong Kong.
Now, more than ever, the I.O.C. is fully in charge, no matter what. As a testimony to the organization’s growing power, the I.O.C.’s staff at its Lausanne headquarters has grown from a couple dozen people in the 1980s to about 100 people in the ’90s, and to roughly 600 people today.
This growth, in turn, has diminished the role of the I.O.C.’s membership, a group of 102 sports officials from around the world who once handled many of the specialized tasks that are now undertaken by seasoned professionals in Lausanne under Bach’s firm leadership. On June 23, Bach officially opened up, with great fanfare a gigantic, new headquarters built at the modest cost of $205 million, including close to $15 million in “reserve”.
While his role as I.O.C. president remains technically that of a volunteer, it was revealed in 2015 that Bach was receiving an annual “indemnity” payment of 225,000 euros (roughly $244,000 at the time and certainly tax free) to cover his activities as president. Like the two I.O.C. presidents before him, he lives at the Lausanne Palace, a luxury hotel in the center of the city, free of charge, and (in my humble opinion) doesn’t travel economy class.
In the world of sports, the institution has now become the tail that wags the dog. Yet, if there were no Olympic games, there would be no need for that monstrosity that the I.O.C. has become and Bach would have no job. But since money and corruption still play such a central role in the I.O.C., there’s probably little that can be done about it, yet it’s become amply clear that Bach has destroyed the hopes of those who believed he’d be a different kind of president, and instead has embraced the kind of authoritarian role that he seem to play perfectly.
Bourke street was and still remains the heart of Mt. Buller, its mountain vital spine, the start of everything and all ski runs. Just like the planet gravitates around the sun, skiing used to be fully centered on Bourke Street.
In fact, that gentle, welcoming slope made the ski resort an ideal place to learn and, of course, teach. Its slope was and still is super gentle and could even be used in the evening or at night as a main pedestrian access boulevard to get to restaurants, entertainment or parties.
Gérard remembers that this ski run was iconic to the resort: “For me, Bourke Street said it all and represented a postcard view of that place that you don’t find easily anywhere else. I remember the lift towers and eucalyptus trees loaded with frosted snow, which for the operators was a constant nightmare, but looked so unique to the visitors!"
Since these days, the old double-chairlift has given way first to a detachable quad, and more recently to a six-pack, bringing even more folks to an already overcrowded beginners area. Bourke Street, takes its name after the Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne because of its high-traffic and hustle-bustle.
It’s also nicknamed “The busiest ski slope in the whole south hemisphere” In fact, it can be a really challenging place to learn how to ski or ride considering the density of certain weekend crowds, and also that some people, who don’t wait sunset, think it’s OK to walk down the middle of the ski runs amidst skieurs and riders.
Gérard also thinks that the run has since been widened: “I remember that the lower part was quite narrow, especially with beginners on it, plus on weekends, some visitors did not hesitate to slide down on trash bags right in the midle of ski classes..."
Interestingly, the double chair serving the Blue Lifts on Bourke Street was very first Doppelmayr double chairlift in the world. Sure its 295 ft (90 meters) vertical was not impressive but its 14.5% average slope prevented any wanton speeding!
That old lift was replaced in 1984 with a high-speed quad (Blue Bullet 1) along with another one (Blue Bullet 2) continuing to the top where the Blue Lift had build a double chair. In 2008, the Blue Bullet 2 was replaced by a high-speed six pack called the Abom with its base located where the Austrian ski school used to gather. All these detachable lifts were made by Doppelmayr.
So if you thought in 1971 that in your favorite resort the area for beginner skiers was particularly crowded, you would have only had to jump on a plane to sample the pleasures of Bourke Street, and you'd have changed your mind very fast.
Well, in those days, we found this particular ski run to be extremely crowded, but, as Marcel points out: “Today, French beginner slopes often go far beyond the density of skiers that we observed at Mt. Buller back in 1971! "
Kooroora was the kind of place where anyone would be guaranteed to find us at night. At first, we didn’t know Kooroora for its hotel rooms, but rather for its rowdy, ear-piercing, noisy bar.
The establishment was a stone’s throw from our place and we were sent there at first to “meet the people”, in other words to accomplish some good PR work in order to lure folks into the Blue Lifts and the French Ski School.
Our essential assets were our French accent, our youth and natural beauty, not necessarily in that order.
Originally, Kooroora was an Aboriginal word meaning a place for happy gatherings. The name was suggested by a Melbourne ski shop owner to Ernest Forras, its founder way back in 1953. The Kooroora was the liveliest and loudest après-ski venue in the Victorian Alps, saturated from cigarette smoke, slippery from spilled beer and liquors and exploding with loud music.
The place’s reputation as “The party place” had been built on decades of boozy late nights where Victorian skiers would dance away on the sticky wooden floorboards where half of the alcohol consumed was dripping and most of them would awake terribly hung over the next morning if not completely dead.
This is the place where I got my first fundamental education on cocktails of all kind. Patrons must have paid for most of what some of us drank, because if they hadn’t, I’d still be washing dishes to pay my bar bills today!
Doctors might tell us that this wasn’t too good for our dwindling brain-cells, but educator were saying that it was excellent for improving our English as booze was eliminating the last ramparts of inhibition from our psyche.
We all believed we made much more sense after a series of warm-up drinks at the bar. Following a night a Koorora, which for me was a daily ritual, we walked on auto-pilot back to our building, somehow, levitated into the staircase and woke up minutes before breakfast was served.
Just like a second Mom, Kooroora was always there for us and never left us idle or thirsty for one second. Kooroora, ski instructing and bedtime – in descending order - where how we spent most of our time at Mt. Buller...
I’m driving to the store, get to the parking area, eye what seems to be a good spot to park my car and dang! there’s an abandoned shopping cart right in the middle of the space.
This is just what it takes to infuriate me and think: “What’s wrong with these people?”
Recently, an article in the magazine “Scientific American” was trying to answer my question, but the author, Krystal D'Costa, failed to understand what was the real reason for that behavior.
She said it’s either because the drop area is too far from where shoppers have parked their car, they have a kid they don’t want to leave unattended, it’s simply bad weather, they’re disabled, they count on someone else to put away their cart or, (I love that one) they're leaving the carts for someone else to easily pick up and use.
I say wrong! In ninety per cent of the cases, the reason is pure, unadulterated laziness!
In addition Krystal D’Costa failed to suggest as a remedy, the trick employed by European supermarkets, that consists at inserting a one euro coin to free the car and get the euro refunded when the cart is returned where it’s supposed to be put away.
Reasons for problems and solutions to them are often much simpler than they often appear or are explained away!
Pancakes at The Abom’ were almost a daily tradition in our early Mt. Buller days. Just a few steps away and up slope from our living quarters, was the Abominable, some sort of a bar, cafe where there was always a band mostly playing covers for CCR or Ike and Tina Turner.
The owner was a congenial chap by the name of Alistair Smith.
I remember that we used to get together, in the afternoon, after our ski lessons were over and in order to complement what might have been a lack of good selection of desserts from Karen, we would sugar-load by eating pancakes, a treat that was a poor copy of what we knew as crêpes in France. Ours patronizing the Abom’ was in the early days of the season, later on we’d skip the Abominable altogether to go to Kooroora full-time, where the real and all-important action was taking place until late in the early morning hours...
After a few days at Mt. Buller, it was back to work as usual. In fact we clicked back into our skis the day after we got there, and while I don’t remember which classes were given to us, we got back into the groove almost immediately and without lengthy transition.
In reality, the last time I was skiing was on May 16, not much more than two months before that. In 1971, Mt. Buller was far from what it is today.
First, there were two competing lift companies and ski schools, and while the Blue Lifts and French Ski School could ski on 5 lifts consisting of one fixed grip chair and the rest a mixture of T-bars and Poma surface lifts.
Our competitors had 8, but two of them, Summit and Baldy were twin lifts, running parallel to one another. Seemingly, another trick to increase lift capacity, in spite of the fact that a Poma with its detachable platter was moving much faster than a two-person Doppelmayr spring-loaded T-Bar, but had about the same uphill capacity per hour.
Doubling the lift did the trick and offered superior capacity. The illustration, including the tables has been verified and updated, with lift equipment description and vertical drop for each one.
Today, there are 22 lifts ran by the same company (the Blue lifts merged with the Orange in 1985, as John Hilton-Wood finally purchased half of the Orange Lifts and formed the Bourke Street Ski Lift Company). In 2021, these lifts were said to move 40,000 people per hour, which 50 years later isn’t a huge feat by Alpine or North American standards, but respectable for Oceania!
In terms of mountain topography, Mt. Buller is a semi-flat ridge where all the easy runs can be found near the village, while the steeper and more challenging trails are hidden on the south facing slopes (remember we’re down-under) but where the usable vertical used to be, at best, around 790-920 feet, so this wasn’t Chamonix and the Grands Montets!
The top elevation reached by skilifts was 5,840 ft and the village base, where we lived, was around 4,920 ft. Yet, since the good skiing was below the village, the bottom of Federation was at about 4,630 ft and Bull Run as well as Chamois reached as low as 4,730 ft.
Today, Mt. Buller claims it offers a theoretical 1,330 ft vertical, which isn’t really feasible, if one can ski top to bottom to the new lower parking lots, so don’t even think of running a FIS downhill there! In summary, if skiers began their day from the resort village, they could ski slightly up, but mostly down if they were expert skiers, just like at Jack Frost in Pennsylvania where the base sits… on top!
To refresh your memory as to what Mt. Buller was like, and see what it became of in 2018, watch this short video. At 15 seconds you will see two skiers cruising down "Summit Slide", a run served by the Grimus triple-chair installed in 1979 and that also reaches the top of the mountain.
More than six month ago, I began a new year’s resolution by which, every evening, in lieu of religious prayer that I dutifully avoid, I conduct what I now call DSD (Direct Self Debriefing) as a personal exercise of introspection, critique, pat on the back if you will, and above-all, self-improvement system, based on what I have done during the course day.
I’ve stuck with it since December 30, 2020, without missing one single day so far and it’s had a wonderful effect on me, as I take time to ponder all the good and bad things I accomplished in the course of 24 hours.
This has led me to become more thoughtful about my actions, thoughts and their consequences at the moment I’m triggering them, since of course I will have to review them and ponder their consequences a few hours later.
Overall, I believe that it has had a wonderful and positive impact on my behavior. Eventually I will explain it in more details either on this blog a through a book. In the meantime, this was a wonderful decision as well as an enriching move. Now, I’m hooked and I will continue!
At Bull Run Enterprises, our living quarters were rather spartan, but quite livable, especially after Gérard had brought them to 20th century standards by equipping our bedrooms with modern, electric power.
I remember that we had bunk beds, but where only two of us to a room, so I continued to share one of them with JP and that was fine.
In my early twenties, all mattresses were (almost) created equal and since my hours of sleep were slim, I always slept like a log.
Our sleeping accommodations were on the second floor of the building, with a bathroom and a laundry room on the other side of the hallway.
A staircase led downstairs while we could directly access our living/dinning room and kitchen from that same hallway.
In the kitchen Karen was the cook. She was always perky and making sure that we had all what we wanted. She was, I believe, helped by Wanda, another local girl, while Maureen, a more reserved, dignified young lady, very much “British Style”. A former stewardess for Quantas. was in charge of selling ski school lesson and lift passes and do some administration work.
All were very kind, I should say saints, given our natural, evil minds! I remember the breakfast was okay and both lunch and dinner were especially heavy on mutton which, at the end, became a real cross to bear.
No one seems able to remember where these girls where staying and the same thing was true for Cheryl (the Kiwi girl), Peter Knight (the Brit) as well as the other instructors were sleeping either. I don’t know either if our top boss, John Hilton-Wood and his wife Marjorie where staying either.
I remember that there was a turntable by the entrance to the dinning area and the Beatles’ Abbey Road album was getting most of the play.
Downstairs, one could find lift passes and ski lessons ticket counters, a passage way that led the public to the chairlift bottom station and the chairlift itself with its engine hidden from view.
These were true “ski-in, ski-out” accommodations, probably the very best in town and we weren’t even aware of the value this represented at a ski resort!
It’s a well-known fact that Americans have a huge problem with spelling; it’s plenty evident when one reads comments on line, receives emails or electronic messages of any kind.
Just like Trump, her boss, Nancy DeVos, proved woefully ineffective as his secretary of education. Take for instance this roadside sign, put up by a Provo developer that plan to build an office building near the Park City cemetery and headlined: “Build to Suite”.
I assume that he meant a commercial complex under which the developer or landlord agrees to build a property according to the lessee's requirements.
No, buddy it shouldn’t be written “Build to Suite”, but “Build to Suit”. You’re a developer for crying out loud, you ought to at least know that. Likewise, the sign-maker that let that mistake go isn’t much smarter.
This is why, to put an end to this blatant public display of ignorance, I packed a large marker pen on my walk today and effected the overdue correction. Now, thanks to my intervention, the developer can say that he “stands corrected!”
Recently, Gérard Brémond, the sole developper of Avoriaz real estate since the French ski resort inception, has been fighting hard to get his new hotel, “Le Téléphérique”, off the ground by December 2023.
While his resort has always elicited plenty of comments, good and bad, most of them have been on the positive side of the ledger, as in many ways its architecture was always seen as innovative, and a welcome alternative to the housing projects developed everywhere else in the French Alps.
Further, each building was meant to “blend” perfectly with its rugged and stratified cliff environment, for a totally distinctive look. Over the years, it’s been a steady source of revenue for Brémond, who will turn 84 this coming September and, I guess, would love to add a few more millions to his net worth.
So to make a quicker buck, he’s fired the 86 year old Jacques Labro and his team, who was behind Avoriaz unique cachet, for a new fellow, ten years his junior, by the name of Jean Nouvel, whose surname means new in English!
In response, Nouvel, whose work includes a few contemporary buildings in France, Spain and the Czech Republic, has concocted a rather horrible and uniform bloc supposed to, according to Gérard Brémond, “To be a large-scale project whose architecture must dialogue and break with the environment”.
It certainly does, but not in the way most Avoriaz lovers and home-owners would have liked. It’s ugly as hell and smell like a “quick-buck” to me (click here to see detailed views). There’s been some wrangling about it with the Morzine City Council, before the building permit was pulled last February.
Sure, 450 extra “warm” pillows are not to be sneezed at by the municipality, but in my opinion this sad building is a step in the wrong direction as a far as architecture goes.
Further, the land is owned by la “Société du Crôt aux Chiens” a real-estate trust made of a thousand of local households that is signing a 49 year lease with the developer and that is looking to get a long and good stream of income for years to come, so who could pass a great opportunity to make some extra money?
Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that its lower position on the “Avoriaz totem pole” in the chalet Delfour and the Petit Vatel's spots, makes the whole project looks like a low-income housing complex. I know, but in these days, those are in very high demand too!
After some very emotional goodbyes with fellow passengers leaving the ship or staying to sail on to Sydney, we disembarked from the Gallileo-Gallilei. We had finally made it into Melbourne harbor!
It felt as if we had spent 50 days at Club Med; our intellect and our bodies were all in terrible shape and we promised ourselves that we would never do that ever again. I had been to Club Med in Kusadasi, Turkey, the year before with my ski-school colleagues, so I knew what I was talking about, yet I managed to return twice once more since, which goes a long way in saying that humans never learn!
In 1971, Melbourne was Australia’s second largest city with 2.5 million people and today that figure has doubled!
At no time did I worry about whether there was snow or not at Mt. Buller, or if Alexis, Gérard and Marcel were getting along and doing well. I lived in my bubble, just in the moment, and didn't care about anything else. A weird and unique time in my life!
When we finally gathered our belongings from the ship, we find our wooden crate still intact, with all the skis untouched (we didn’t sell one single pair!) and we finally were met by John Hilton-Wood, our big boss, and managed to stuff everything into his car, that looked like an AMC Hornet station wagon.
I can’t remember if he had a trailer hitched-on, in which we could have fitted the crate, or how we loaded its cumbersome contents inside his car. He found JP and I quite plump, still well tanned and absolutely not jet-lagged (an appreciable benefit of traveling by sea).
The ride to Mt. Buller was long, tiring, Hilton-Wood’s driving style making me at times nervous, plus the fact that we were now using the "wrong" side of the road. On the way up he said: “There’s good snow, business is good and on this a busy weekend, the ski school will welcome some extra help!”
As I was quietly sitting on my toilet, bothering no one, doing what I was doing, things suddenly began to rumble under me and soon, I thought I was dreaming that I was in Japan or that my wife had just purchased, unbeknownst to me, one of these “smart-toilet” from the land of the rising sun.
Yes, not only did I got shaken, but also generously sprayed in the rear-end, and finally it downed on me that the “Sewer Patrol” was at it again!
I dressed-up in a flash and dashed outdoors and ran around the bend to find two big trucks tinkering inside the man-hole of our block sewer system.
I sure wasn’t kind to the man I talk to, or I should say screamed at, from the top of my lungs: “What in hell is wrong with you guys? What are you doing to the sewer pipes?” One of the two guys reeling a bunch of pipes into the sewer entry point told me: “We’re cleaning the pipe so another crew in a few weeks can put a protective lining inside…”
The other fellow, was more aggressive and tried to turn the blame on me, Trump style, by saying: “You must not have the necessary valve system!” I replied that my house was almost brand new and built to code.
Then he mollified and admitted: “Things like this [sh...t] happen from time to time, and I’ll personally come clean any damage…”
By the time they were finished and he showed up at the house, my wife had already cleaned all the bathrooms, so the man just had to sanitize them to remove the stench that by then, had invaded the whole house.
This is now the third time this type of incident happens to us and I can guarantee you that the sewer company will hear from me when they open up this morning!
That Friday, we took more time to visit downtown Adelaide, even caught a movie and were now about to spend one last night on what had been our floating home since May 29.
JP had explained to me that he had got in the middle of a police investigation the previous day, a dark thing involving a murder, in which he was held for a few moments as a person of interest.
Fortunately, he had been able to exonerate himself and get back to the boat. He always had a knack to getting involved in the most unbelievable situations and always landing right back on his two feet!
Both of us were now expecting that someone from Mt. Buller would be at the pier waiting for us, the next day, as we had not heard from anyone since before we had departed from Genoa at the end of May.
Boy, did it feel good to wake up Thursday morning in the comfort of our small cabin following five sleepless nights either outside or cramped inside the Volkswagen minibus!
Adelaide was about the same size as Perth, but wouldn’t grow as much in the ensuing years. Today, this capital of Australia’s wine country, it’s less than 1.5 million strong.
Later that morning, we discover that our remarkable Nullarbor crossing was already reported on the newspapers, except that my name, for some unexplained reasons, had been incorrectly reported by the article's author.
JP had also arrived in time, from his last-minute bus trip, and there wasn’t never enough to share our respective adventures when we go together.
As we drove along for many, many hours, stopping just to sleep in the minibus and grabb something to eat in the rare food places open along the way, we saw the road around us littered with dead kangaroos and wild pigs.
The Nullarbor Plains are a unique and strange landscape to experience; it is said to be the largest piece of limestone on earth.
This area gets its name from the latin 'nullus' (nothing) and 'arbor' (tree), to describe this mostly barren landscape devoid of tall trees, and instead features low-lying drought tolerant shrubs called saltbush and bluebush.
We contributed our pocket money to buying gas and food for the three of us. I’m ashamed to say that I don’t even recall the name of our driver. He was such a sweet guy!
When after three days of driving, just on Bastille Day, we got close to Adelaide at night, our driver was kind enough to drop us not far from the pier where our ship was still moored, waiting for us…
We were extremely lucky, we had just covered 2046 miles (3290 km) in record time and had made it safe and sound to our destination. With hindsight, this foolish endeavor could have been, much, much worse.
Early this month, I was watching the PBS Newhour, and Judy Woodruf, the anchor that night was interviewing the IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva.
She was responding to questions about an annual report released Thursday by the International Monetary Fund, that projected that the U.S. economy would grow about 7% this year because stimulus programs would boost consumer spending, and that growth would raise the risk of inflation.
Mrs. Georgieva also underscored that the U.S. should help other countries cope with the pandemic. Seemingly good advice, but Kristalina Georgieva, just like Christine Lagarde before her, pays zero taxes in her cushy job (she made $467,940 a year in salary, plus $83,760 in allowance).
This said, I have a hard time with her audacity to suggest that the U.S., that is, us, the taxpayers, help other countries cope with the pandemic.
If this isn't outrageous, I don't know what is.
This of course should open an entirely new discussion about the UN and its daughters organization like the WHO or UNESCO and UNICEF, whose leaders ask us, taxpayers, for being charitable, but don’t pay one red cent in taxes. This has got to stop!
With the popularity and widespread availability of Wi-Fi, many have forgotten about the good old Ethernet cable and don’t even suspect that their internet speeds would be much faster if they ditch Wi-Fi for their desktops and hooked them with yesteryear's cable.
This is it, if you are looking for the fastest possible connection, a hard connection is the way to go. I know, I know, it's a lot less convenient, but if you have a desktop PC close enough to your router, and an Ethernet cable still lying around your house, go for it!
If you can't connect your router by Ethernet wire, but you have a laptop and need to download or upload huge files, connect your router and computer with one cable!
As far as I'm concerned, the results are almost unbelievable; recently, I took this test at 3:40 PM, which is a time of high demand and probably slow traffic speeds and I got download speeds of 183.68 and 19.99 Megabits / second on Ethernet respectively, while plugging into Wi-Fi the speed dropped to 12.19 and 0.22 Megabits / second respectively.
This may be due to some technical issues simmering inside my desktop computer, but these are still turtle speeds and you can see why, in that case, I got back in a hurry to the Ethernet cable!
In the early Sunday morning hours, before sunrise, it felt just unbelievably cold. We were simply desperate and began to worry.
No lift in sight and even though the thin week-end traffic, was picking up some, no one would stop.
Finally at about 10 am, a small VW minibus, after slowing down and hesitating, stopped ahead of us. We ran towards it as fast as we could. Inside, the driver was the sole occupant headed up to Sydney, and moving all of his possessions.
Space was so tight that we had to lay on top of a mattress inside the small vehicle with just enough head-room to move around. It was all but comfortable, but we finally had a lift all the way to Adelaide, distant more than 1,340 miles away!
JP had also spent the night alone, on the side of the road, but as the afternoon came, he began to realize that he might never make the ship when he’d get to Adelaide, if he ever made it all the way there.
So he walked to the bus station and with whatever money he still had in his pockets, managed to purchase a ticket to get to Adelaide, with the regular scheduled coach service.
I have known Matt Alvarez during my ski business days, and especially when him and his wife Helen were still running the Timberhaus ski shop in Vail, Colorado, after closing their Park City location.
Later on, we use to see each others on occasions, like the Arts Festival, the Fourth of July, and the Farmer’s Market. For a few seasons, we used to ski with him; Matt was a consummate story teller and we had lots of fun in his company.
Born in September of 1935, Matt passed away on July 1st, at the age of 85. Originally from Oak Creek, Colorado, close to Steamboat, on the way to Vail, he graduated from the University of Utah with a mechanical engineering degree and worked for companies like Hercules and Morton Thiokol during the Space Race.
In 1965, Matt and his family moved to Park City and opened the Timberhaus ski shop in Old Town Park City. They also opened stores in Snowbird and Vail. He was also the founder, in the late 1960s, of the Park City Ski Team.
Altogether, Matt and Helen lived 40 years in Old Town Park City, before retiring in Oakley, a short drive away. We’ll miss our friend Matt an awful lot!
During the previous evening, JP and I had vaguely envision hitchhiking on land from Perth to Adelaide, while leaving our personal belongings and the team’s ski equipment on the ship.
We figured that with the continuing strike, the ship wouldn't leave Adelaide, our next stop, till July 16, and looking at some map we found on board, we thought that we might rejoin the Galileo-Galilei on time and board it well before it would depart for Melbourne, our final destination.
While it never came to our mind that leaving all of our gear onboard and chancing a trip hitchhiking was not really a responsible thing to do, we also underestimated our land itinerary. We would travel the one section of Australia's Highway 1, that cuts across the famous Nullarbor Plain from Western Australia into South Australia.
In 1971, this road wasn’t fully paved either and among other peculiarities, it included the longest straight stretch of highway in the world, namely 91.1 miles without any single bend or turn between Caiguna and Balladonia. In total, we were looking at covering 2,046 miles in less than six days.
We had no clue if that was possible, if we could get enough rides to take us there, but we thought that by traveling as two separate parties, JP and Gisele, me and Helen, we should have no problem getting rides. We went to collect our per-diem allowance (AUS$15 per day) to have a few more dollars handy and were now ready to hit the road.
At the last minute, however, JP’s girlfriend, had a change of heart and decided to stay on the ship instead of taking a chance hitchhiking. Mine stuck with me. We immediately walked out to the port area, and thirty minutes later, we got a ride on a big Australian truck that was headed east on Route 94.
Everything was going as planned, our driver was a happy-go-lucky chap and about 7 hours later he dropped us at Coolgardie, a small, old mining ghost town, some 360 miles from Perth. It was about 6 pm and night was falling fast in that early winter season.
Quite rapidly it became cold and we didn’t have enough warm clothing with us to stay comfortable. This was typical desert climate, with cool nights that turned even colder during winter. Traffic quickly slowed down to a trickle and no vehicle was picking us up.
We grew quite worried. Hours passed as the air became more frigid and to make a long story short, we sad alongside the highway all night long.
By himself, Jean-Pierre was able to get to Norseman, another small town, about 100 miles farther from where we were, in several rides, but at night, just like us, his luck ran out..
When we finally arrived to Freemantle, Perth’s harbor, on that Friday, July 9, we had made it to Australia, but as the crow flies, we were still 1700 miles away, but now just 8 days away from Mt. Buller!
I remember seeing folks recreating on the Swan River and the place looked really enticing and fun. In 1971, Perth was a bit smaller than Durban with a population of 700,000. Today there are more than 2 million people living in that city!
At that point, we really were tired. Tired of the ship, of its food, its lame entertainment and eager to move and start doing something after that long, partly unexpected and unscheduled vacation.
We got through immigration, got our visa to Australia stamped and were eager to walk on the pier to discover that country that we had heard a lot about, but were still fully ignorant of.
After struggling to learn English for so many years at school, teaching skiing for two full season and spending more than a month on the ship speaking it most of the time, my command of the language was now much better and, at least for me, was no longer a concern.
Now, all of sudden, I could no longer wait to get there, step into my skis and teach. I know, there was time during the Durban to Freemantle leg that JP and I, half-seriously, talked about selling the skis that were entrusted to us in order to generate some badly needed pocket money, but things were getting much better as hope was now within reach!
The man who successively had almost been my mentor before becoming - at times - my tormentor, just passed away today.
He was the brother of Penny Pitou, the winner of two silver medals at the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley.
Kip began as a ski instructor (pictured here at age 23) at his sister’s ski school, at what is now Gunstock ski area, in New Hampshire.
Shortly thereafter, he began working for Beconta in New York City, which happened to distribute Look ski bindings.
When I joined that company in France, he suggested that I move over to work at its new US subsidiary and I jumped on the opportunity.
Later on, when I still was with Lange ski boots, and had moved to Utah he had suggested that I take over Koflach ski and mountaineering boot national distribution, which I single-highhandedly and successfully did.
Following these, I had other opportunities to working with Kip while he was in Utah, that didn't quite meet my expectations, but so are relationships and so is life.
At the Park City cemetery, there are the Stanley family tombstones that tell a long and painful story about the prevalence of infant mortality in the late 19th century.
Annie and Berten Stanley had three kids that died at the ages of 8, 6 and a few months, all of ailments that could have been protected by a simple shot.
Can you even begin to imagine the heartbreak, pains and suffering of that couple upon helplessly losing three of their kids?
If you are anti-vaccination today, what would you have said to these people? Just imagine all this and think for a few minute.
I assume that the Stanleys would have loved to be able to protect their kids against what eventually killed them, but there was no vaccine then.
Conspiracy theories may sound good, cool or intriguing, but at the end, they are as idiotic as they are heartless...
I fell on that intriguing proposition, early one morning, as I was turning on my desktop computer. It was allegedly something the famous British entrepreneur Richard Branson held as a principle, and the most important pair of questions everyone should ask themselves, especially is one isn’t so sure about what to do with their own life.
This is someone that happens to many of us, including yours truly. This pair of questions is deceivingly simple:
1. What do I love?
Love involves passion and passion is the ideal fuel to achieve anything. In my case, my passion was skiing and I built my life and my livelihood around it. Today, I’m happy to testify that it worked wonderfully well and brought me, not just material success, but an unending source of joy.
2. What do I dislike?
This other question might seem counter-intuitive, but is in part filled with opportunities. This is how great inventions have seen the light of day, as antidotes to irritating, or seemingly insurmountable problems and challenges.
It is also an important indicator of the lifestyle or a bunch other things we don’t like and want to stay away from. It could have to do with the place we live, the housing we prefer or the very type of work we perform or the leisure we choose.
Of course the above directions have to be tried and tested first, in order to make sure we aren’t getting into something we’re bound to regret later. As the article was saying in conclusion: “The 80,000 hours one’s will spend working in their career are way, way too many to waste...”
That celebratory weekend, America’s birthday was broken into multiple pieces this year, with a parade on Friday, a fly-over by the Air Force’s F-35 on Saturday, a total absence of fireworks on Sunday (because of the drought and of the high risk of fire), plus in Mormon’s theocratic land, no celebration of any sort, and finally an “observation” of the National Holiday by banks and post-office on Monday.
Confusing isn’t it?
So it never really felt like a patriotic celebration at all, not that we are staunch patriots as we are more globalists than anything else, but this broken-up approach didn’t help in fostering a patriotic bond.
Trump’s demagoguery had thrown that concept under the bus for four years and already badly damaged it.
Next year, our National Holiday will fall on a Monday and we might see a more united approach to that summer celebration...
From the bottom of Bourke Street, at the base of our Blue chairlift, one couldn’t miss the Arlberg, which stood proud on the ridgeline. It was much farther and harder to get to, than to slide into Kooroora as we had to climb, Bourke Street, our main ski run, to get there. 
The place was far more civilized, cleaner and quieter than Kooroora, that was just seedy, to say the least, but wasn’t altogether a bore. 
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