My new “daily basket”

Just four days ago, I came up with the idea of a metaphorical, empty basket that I would fill-up each day with worthwhile, positive deeds, in order to use my dwindling, but precious time, the very best I can and marvel at the end of day when the treasure trove it contains reveals itself. 

This is what I hope to accomplish. I find it easy to remember, visualize and also to be a wonderful guide to doing good. It’s a tangible guide that makes me think twice before putting crap inside this magic container, at least that’s what I'm looking for. 

This is also something that dovetails perfectly with my “DSD” (Daily Self Debriefing) technique that I have begun at the end of 2020 and kept going, with surprisingly good results until now. 

So what I plan to do is build it into another positive daily habit. Let’s hope this one sticks too!

More about words used in teaching skiing…

Many teaching jobs are not learned in a school setting, but the process begins when the teacher is facing the students. At first it can be very awkward, difficult and horrible, but eventually one finds their groove and a teaching routine begins to take shape. 

I’m not saying it’s necessarily a great one, but through repetition, feedback and measurements, as crude and ineffective as it may be, a teaching style emerge. Then, depending on the degree of passion for the subject taught, huge differences in quality can develop. 

Obviously, the teacher must realize that he or she has to step into their student shoes, both physically and mentally. That dimension will vary vastly with individuals and their capacity for empathy as well as the depth and diversity of their personal experience. 

This, at the end of a teacher’s formative process will unavoidably lead to huge differences in outcome. Then there’s the routine phase, where teaching quality may get enhanced (through “aha moments”, student or supervisory feedback) or deteriorate as time goes on (laziness, lack of motivation and passion for the work). 

This obviously begs for frequent assessment and evaluations that are both time consuming as well as costly and rarely happen in ideal conditions if at all. In the end, the result is a crap-shoot, with a select few outstanding teachers, many fair to mediocre and about the same many that are unhelpful or terrible. 

Good luck in picking the right one!

The words we use to teach skiing…

On August 16, 2022, Bernard “Dadou” Mayer, the other Taos ski legend, passed away at age 82. He was preceded in his death by his other brother Jean aged 85, on October 16, 2020. Both were iconic characters at Taos Ski Valley, known as the New Mexico ski resort’s legendary instructors and innkeepers.

As I was searching about them, I stumbled upon a couple of videos featuring the brothers and highlighting their teaching technique. This is when I realized that what we say as we teach skiing isn’t always as clear as it should be and, worse, can’t often be understood by those who are taught how to ski. Teaching skiing isn’t like sharing a simple kitchen recipe. 

It’s mostly intangible and it deals with intensity, speed, pressure and feelings that often are uncommon, very difficult to precisely translate into words, and even more to be understood by the recipient. If the teacher doesn’t put him or herself inside their students ski boots, and won’t experiment with analogies, metaphors or other forms of simple, easy-to-relate examples, the instruction simply won’t go through. 

The big challenge is that ski teaching technique is written and transmitted in cryptic, technical jargon that sounds often meaningless to the instructor and even more so to the student. 

At the same time, the person learning how to ski has to deal with fear, a sensation of total lack of control and of finding themselves in a harsh, unfriendly environment, where it’s cold, other skiers are zooming from all directions, sometime looking as they will collide into them, while they’re prisoner of clumsy, hard to maneuver and heavy gear. 

I would also suggest that ski instructors get their entire “spiel” or curriculum video-recorded, then sit down with potential students, communication experts and highly experienced instructors that can differentiate poor communication from excellent and develop a communication protocol from there that’s comfortable for the teacher to use. 

What’s your take on using words that work for skiing? 

Getting to be… 75!

Recently, my French buddies from my hometown that are my age got together for a good lunch near a picturesque alpine lake and seemingly had a fabulous time. I got to see the pictures and wish I was there with them to celebrate!

Sure, most of them don’t like exactly the same way they did when we were in our twenties, but they’re still there enjoying their silver years and capable of having fun together. This brings me to the subject of being able to enjoy life to its fullest no matter how far along we are, even as we get dangerously closer to the precipice that will unavoidably “drop” us to the “other side”. 

I think about an empty basket that wait for me, empty at the dawn of each, waiting to be filled. If it has to filled, I might as well put good things, well very, very good things inside it, right? So that become my daily plan, to find good things to place delicately inside my basket, so when the day come to an end I can marvel at its content and let people who are near me share in my amazement. 

I find that approach super simple, always changing, forcing me to think more creatively and so rewarding that I really believe I’ve locked into something really good!

Am I a Park City "long-timer"?…

Yesterday marked our 37th year in Park City. Since I’m (still) 74 now, I have spend half of my lifetime in this town, which in spite of its explosive growth, is a spot that I continue to enjoy and yes, love! 

Where do I go from there? Well if a monster like Trump isn’t re-elected as I hope he won’t, and stand very little chance to return in absolute power, I have no intent to leave the place.

Instead, I pledge to sparing no effort in making this place better everyday each time the opportunity presents itself for the most minute improvement. 

I’ve learned how to be more patient and to how to respond better to needs that must be fulfilled in a continuous effort keep the universe beating at the right pace and headed towards the right direction. 

It feels so good to live in Park City and to be part of the fabric of this complex, imperfect, but so fascinating community!

Let’s meet the mayor !

I didn’t vote for our current Park City mayor. I didn’t fully understand her platform and program, so I stayed with the known entity our previous mayor represented and didn’t want to take a chance. 

Still, she won the popular vote and I had to accept her as our new leader. As part of her promise to reach out to her constituents, our new mayor recently invited Park City residents and business owners to join her for one-on-one conversations to share thoughts, community concerns, or just to catch up for 20 minutes. 

I didn’t want to let that opportunity go by without giving her a piece of my mind and on Wednesday, we met. Before that, her assistant had asked what subject I wished to discuss, and I said I wanted to focus on transit and transportation issues around town. 

She didn’t know who I was as evidently had not been prepared as to who she’d meet, which would have been a cool idea. So, I proceeded to introduce myself and said that I wanted to talk about traffic issues, but at the macro level, since at 5 pm later that day, a Public Open House was scheduled about the upcoming winter Park City Transit service, and I said I would attend it. 

Surprisingly, our Mayor didn’t know about that event, which was another surprise to me. I then embarked to share my vision of boring a tunnel trough the Wasatch mountains, trying to use a potential second Olympics and a chance for Elon Musk to showcase his boring company. 

When I was done, I was comforted in my vote from last November, and had no illusion about my ability to inspiring our mayor!

Dealing (better) with the unexpected

I’m not talking here about being told that I’ve won $2 million at the lottery, but instead about all the bad surprises that fall on us at the very last minute, when we expect them the least, and are generally an unpleasant, bad surprise. 

I generally don’t take these events as well as I should and based on that disheartening reality, I’ve decided to do something about it. First, I need to remember that I must learn to accept a bad reality. It’s part of life and is unavoidable. 

I must also remember that change is the fabric of life. It’s in these moment that my positive attitude becomes a rocket booster. Sometime one bad thing could be a blessing in disguise and trigger some happy consequences.

It’s also a good lesson for learning to systematically always making an alternate plan, in case the main one fails. I must also control my emotions, wait long enough before blurting out and I must take time to examine what happened and put it into perspective. 

That’s the moment to ask myself if the bad outcome is irreversible or if can be fixed and if so, how, then think constructively where I’m going from there. I also need to be less rigid in my life and make room for changes no matter how small they are so they becomes a lifelong habit. 

I should also always focus on the present moment, instead of thinking about what I’ve lost, about the past, or dwelling on how bad the situation is, even if that require more emotional detachment than I’m capable of. 

All this and my daily meditation should help me clear the bump that looked like a mountain and panicked me. If someone can do it, I should!

The time it takes to mourn...

I’m not religious, but according to Ecclesiates, one of the books of the Old Testament there’s a time to mourn and a time to dance and this is probably true. 

Two years ago, I lost my brother and two very good friends and it’s only now that my mourning is about over. Yet it took all that time to get over it and expunge all the sadness and the loss I fet about them. 

 True, time is always a great healer…

Getting in gear for Burning Man 2022?

Burning Man has never been on my bucket list, but it’s well attended by a number of Parkites who get a kick out of spending a week in the dust of the Nevada desert to attend that event focused on community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance. 

They'll have to get tot Black Rock City in northwestern Nevada, a temporary city erected in the Black Rock Desert about 100 miles (160 km) north-northeast of Reno, or 472 miles (760 km) from Park City. 

The event started in 1986 around San Francisco, has been relocated to Nevada in 1991. The name of the event comes from its culminating ceremony, the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy, referred to as the Man, that occurs two nights before Labor Day, that is falling, this year, on September 4. Because of the pandemic this is the first official festival after 2019 that attracted close to 80,000 people.

Since it slated to start on August 28, local participants are gearing up for the road trip loading bikes, cooler and provisions for that week long event. Will we ever go there? Maybe next year, our lungs don’t like it, but I guess we can always breathe more dust while walking or cycling naked around this iconic festival!

What’s still appropriate for my age?

This may sound like a crazy question, but it’s one worth asking as we’re getting older and would still love to do a bunch of things, but aren’t quite sure if we can still afford to get involved into them without hurting ourselves, doing lasting damage to what’s left of our body or just looking stupid in attempting to do and failing at succeeding at such things. 

So, for starters, I’d say forget about that last reason, because we shouldn’t care about what others think of us. We’ve traveled far enough not to receive approvals or boos from the gallery. What we do, well or poorly, only concerns ourselves. 

As for the two first concerns, we should always be careful about what we’re getting into. We shouldn’t get hurt, because repair time is now much longer than when we were younger and with a limited amount of time left, we shouldn’t have to be stopped for healing or for overdoing certain activities.

We should also make it a priority to maintain what we have and so we can still enjoy it to the end, whether it’s physical or mental. 

In a nutshell, we should continue to dream and plan for the future, but leave enough room for personal discipline, for required maintenance too, and never forget to think thoroughly before we undertake anything original, daring or projects out of the ordinary. 

Instead, and while wasting no time, we should carry on at at our own comfortable pace and continue to execute anything we undertake the very best we can, so we can take some well-deserved pride out of the process!

Meditation and feelings of guilt

After more than two and a half year of daily meditation, I’ve noticed that the practice seems to have, a positive effect on any guilt I might still harbor in me, by letting it go, which to me is pretty amazing. 

I was pretty sure it was the case as after observing it a first few times, but now it has become pretty evident and undeniable to me. At first, I thought “Great, I finally got rid of that old crap that has hindered me all these years!” 

Yet, I just read that there might be an unanticipated downside to my mindfulness meditation practices, according to new research led by the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In it, Andrew Hafenbrack, the author says: “Meditating can reduce feelings of guilt, thus limiting reactions like generosity that are important to human relationships.”

What originally initiated the study was a desire to know how mindfulness meditation could reduce negative emotions, like anger and guilt. “Negative emotions may not be pleasant, but they can help us navigate social situations and maintain relationships, if someone gets really angry and they yell at their boss, or something, and they get fired or make people feel unsafe, then you know that’s a bad thing,” Hafenbrack said. “but not all negative emotions are the same in terms of the kinds of behaviors that they queue up, though.” 

Apparently when people feel guilty, it tends to make them focus outward, on other people, which can promote corrective actions. To me, what has caused most of my guilt were events generally totally unjustified and meditation helps me prevent offending other without having to make repairs, so this warning sounds a bit like a stretch and isn’t likely at least for now to put a dent in my meditative practice. 

If I do or have done something wrong, I won’t let it sit and simmer forever, but will resolve it as soon as possible. Frankly, I’d rather say goodbye for good to the poison that guilt is, than keep it around to keep me socially well balanced! 

What would you do if, like me, you were hooked on meditation?

A trapper’s patience

A little over a year ago, tired of having all of my strawberries and lettuces eaten by visiting deer and rabbits, I first focused on sanctioning the smallest of the creatures by studying existing rabbit traps and then, when I found a design that appealed to me, built a copy myself. 

Since that time, the wooden trap has stood guard in one corner of our garden, but until this summer had fail to attract any small critters that could fit inside its narrow volume. When the tell-tell sign that its long stick stood vertically, it indicated that I had trapped someone, but in a huge majority of cases it was only a false-alert caused by the wind, a smart animal that didn’t get fully in, or some unsolved mystery. 

In July, though, we caught a squirrel like the many that roam around the house and don’t eat my lettuces. So that first prisoner was forgiven and liberated on the spot. Then two weeks ago, I finally caught a rabbit that, on account of his small size, was released on the spot at my wife categorical demand. 

Again, two days ago, it was rabbit number two, a bit larger, but still eligible for parole, so my merciful wife freed it as shown on the video below… We’re now seriously become both serious but compassionate trappers! 

End of an era at Park City Mountain!

As we were expecting it with fear and loathing, Park City Mountain will begin charging for parking at its Park City base, or “Mountain Village”, for the 2022/23 winter season. 

This really sucks big times! If there are less than 4 people in a car, the resort will charge $25 per automobile, and to make the process even worse, it will also require reservations in order to get a spot there. 

This is Armageddon for a place that used to offer such a convenient access and it makes me wonder about the wisdom to continue skiing with the bunch of creeps that the Vail Resorts people are. 

Fortunately after 1 pm, the fee and the need for reservation will be waived. Sure, I’ll be able to park at nearby Canyons, but finding a spot isn’t going to be easy, unless I get up at 6 am and patiently wait.

Yet, in appreciation for Vail Resorts dislike for its patrons, there might be better solutions to park free at their paying lot, like buying three animated crash dummies, dress them in skiers and sit them in my car. 

I can always remove one of them when my wife, my daughter and my grand-son ski with me. I’m sure more ideas will come to me as we get closer to the ski season, so please, stay tuned!

Mega house in the making

Just above our home was a residence purchased a decade ago and that has been kept unused until last month when was taken down to make place for a construction twice its original size, that will literaly swallow the half-an-acre lot it sits on.

Last night, as we were walking by it, we were stunned by the huge mountain of dirt that had accumulated next to the road to make room for its huge McMansion foundations. 

There we met its young owner, in awe, looking at the massive undertaking. He appeared to be a very nice guy. He and his wife, with no kids, will telecommute from this place when it’s completed in the Fall of 2023. 

I was reflecting, what is that guy thinking on the dawn of what should be the age of frugality? Isn’t a house like that one totally unsustainable, making a waste of too many scarce resources? 

That’s when I remembered that I probably was his age with I build what my wife and I came to call the “big stupid house” for exactly the same reasons of placing a tangible marker in the ground to show the rest of the world that we “had arrived.” 

Isn’t it stupid how history keeps on repeating itself?

Park City’s urban forest

Five years ago, I was beginning to realize that Park City was invaded by trees getting uncontrollably too big. 

This situation has kept on getting worse, to the extent that arborists are now the new kings of the mountain, and as a profession are as ubiquitous as landscapers, painters and plumbers or HVAC tradesmen. 

In reality the problem of too many tall trees spreading and growing exponentially just like global warming, and soon we’ll become true forest dwellers.

Many trees that surround our house are now reaching 40 to 50 foot and for most homes are totally masking the mountain views. 

Blame both the landscapers and the home owners who lacked the basic imagination of seeing that 2 foot tree, placed far too close to their home would eventually explode into a giant! 

We’ll never be able to tame all these trees, many of which still keep growing and we’ll have to learn to become Tarzans which a my age, would be a stretch and very bad pun because nothing in my body wants to do this!

Believing without proof

Most of us know the value of critical thinking and understand that believing something without any proof is credulity, pure and simple. In fact, credulity is our willingness or ability to believe that a statement is true, especially on minimal or marginal evidence. 

While it’s not necessarily a belief in something that may be false as the subject of the belief may even be correct, it simply is that a credulous person will believe it without satisfactory evidence. Until recently, I had never heard of William Kingdon Clifford. 

In ‘The Ethics of Belief’ (1877), this Briton who died at the young age of 33, gives some arguments as to why we have a moral obligation to believe responsibly, namely to believe only what we have sufficient evidence for, and what we have diligently investigated. 

This suggests that what we believe is of tremendously practical importance. Reality is different, though as we naturally think that what be believe in is inconsequential for society and our fellow humans. 

This is especially true in a world in which just about everyone’s beliefs can be shared instantly, at no cost, to the entire planet, and if you consider how influential the ramblings pouring through your social media feeds have intruded into your very own daily behavior. 

In the digital global village that we now inhabit, false beliefs cast a huge social net, hence Clifford’s argument as never been so true as it is today. This is how careless believing turns us into easy prey for fake-news peddlers, conspiracy theorists and charlatans. 

Paying attention to truth is a much more precious virtue today than it ever was. It goes even farther than this; even without being a regular on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, more and more of what we do in the real world is being recorded and digitized, and from there, algorithms are created that can easily infer what we believe before we even express a view. 

In turn, this enormous pool of stored belief is used by algorithms that are created to make decisions for and about us. So if there was ever a time when critical thinking was a moral imperative, and credulity a calamitous sin, it might be just now.

Another house bites the dust!

Demolishing older houses to build brand new ones has become common place in Park City, where empty building lots have become all, but unavailable. 

This is not a pleasant sight as it suggest wastefulness and a total disregard for the significant resources need for new construction instead of just remodeling and existing space.

What remains of a house pictured above was a two-story, 4 bedroom, 3 bath residence sold on June of 2021 for about $2 million. It was owned by two well-known parkites, Candace and Bruce Eriksen that passed away ten years apart in 2011 and 2021 at age 56 and 68. 

The house living area square footage was 2,405. If you look a the picture on the left you can see that it still looks like a decent home even though it might have been built in the early 80’s. 

This is just to say that similar building lots that sold for $150 to $200,000 in 2010 are now worth ten times more, if one is lucky to find a cheap enough home that can be easily demolished. 

While prices of existing homes are down some 25% from their peak this late winter, the cost of building lots have no apparent limits, especially if the location has some good appeal. 

This for sure is still not a good time to build real estate as prices are still dropping and no one knows when they’ll hit rock bottom.

Should Trump flee the US?

These days things aren’t looking too good for Trump and if I were in his shoes, I might look for some form of “exit strategy”. 

Yes, literally. As weeks go on, it looks more likely that Trump will get indicted, eventually found guilty of a bunch of things and have to spend some serious time in jail. 

Again, he if were as smart as some folks give him credit for, he’d be well advised to plan to leave the country before some judge find him a “flight risk” and confiscates his passport. 

Just an appropriate thought and a timely advice. 

As for places to go, I don’t think he’d stands a chance to hiding in New Zealand, but might look to go into places like the Caribbeans, Brazil, North Korea or... Russia, of course!

Exploring the “legendary laws” of Karma…

As you read yesterday, I don’t really believe that there are any proof behind Karma and its laws. It’s more like a series of proverbs or rules derived from human observations, over time, building a philosophy of its own. 

This said, and as unproven as it may be, I kind of like that philosophy, so I want to study its “laws” a little bit better to understand their promises and what people expect when they follow them. In Sanskrit, karma literally means “action.” But the true definition of Karma can vary depending on who you ask. Some people adhere to its Eastern religions meaning, while others interpret it from a Western point of view of good and bad. Again, at its origin, 

Karma is the Hindu view of causality in which good thoughts, deeds, and words, may lead to beneficial effects, while bad thoughts, deeds, and words, do just the opposite. Modern and western experts say that it is those situations or interactions that help us navigate our path toward our higher purpose, or better yet, it’s about undoing what is not us and becoming who we really are. 

Similarly, others say that Karma is a philosophy of how to live our lives so we can truly become the best version of ourselves and live the most fulfilling life we desire, not unlike our Golden Rule, which sounds pretty good to me. 

There are 12 laws of Karma. Why 12? Because it looks like a magic number and on paper appears better than 4,5,6,8 or 11, you get my rift... So consider many of them as just “fillers” while rule #1 remains the essential one. Looking at what each one constitutes an interesting excursion into the complete “Karma thing”. 

1. The law or the law of cause and effect 

It says that whatever thoughts or energy we put out, we get back — good or bad. In order to get what we want, we have to embody and be worthy of those things. It’s the concept that we reap what we sow, or “garbage in, garbage out”. 

2. The law of creation 

This one is also based on common sense; in order to make things happen in our lives, we need to take action, instead of waiting for something to magically come our way or do the job for us. 

3. The law of humility 

It is based on the principle that we must be humble enough to accept that our current reality is the result of our past actions. In other words, quit blaming others or circumstances all the time! 

4. The law of growth 

Real change or personal growth begins with what we have control over, which is ourselves, not others. That one seems reasonable too, except we aren’t all dealt the same good cards at birth. 

5. The law of responsibility 

What happens to us is because of us. This eliminates the opportunity for us to look outward and blame third-party elements to find the cause of our problems. Same thing here, even though we aren’t created equal, we only can shut up! 

6. The law of connection 

We are what we are today is the result of your previous actions. I’m not totally sold on that one either, especially if it implies the concept of previous existence. 

7. The law of focus 

The law of focus tells us to concentrate on one thing at a time. I woefully agree, multi-tasking is a lousy practice and this is my excuse for not following most of these laws anyway! 

8. The law of giving and hospitality 

We must give to help the people, cause and things we believe in. 

9. The law of here and now 

To experience peace of mind, we must embrace the present and quit delving on the past of fleeing into the future. I can buy that. 

10. The law of change 

According to that principle, history will continue to repeat itself until we learn from experience and take steps to do something different to stop the cycle. That one is a stretch and only partly true, in my view, as it implies ideas of re-incarnation which is totally unproven. 

11. The law of patience and reward

We need be consistent in our goals, and they will come to fruition. 

12. The law of significance and inspiration

Every contribution we make will affect the world. We’ve been born with a specific gift, mission, and purpose that only we can bring into the world with our uniqueness for the good of everyone. Maybe. 

To me, and for a large number of them, the laws of Karma sound like good common sense rules and even though they can scientifically be proven, I think they constitute a good road map to follow through our lives. I’ll hope for the best outcome and hope they work for me most of the time...

Can we believe in Karma?

I’ve read somewhere that if we believe in something for something to work, then that thing is not real. It’s make-believe. If the laws of Karma were real, if they actually regularly and consistently affected people’s lives the way they claim to, we would have some factual measures of whether they really work or not. 

If we need to believe into something before it can affect us, then it’s not real. It’s just like believing in life after death; it’s quite soothing, but it’s just a fantasy that too many naively believe in. 

While I buy the above argument and am convinced that being a fully functional adult is the ability to tell the difference between reality and make-believe, I’m okay at considering Karma like a “feel good” philosophy, no more, no less. 

To be clear, I wish the laws of Karma were proven, while I recognize full well that they don’t and they’re just mental-candy concocted to make us, poor humans, all feel better. Tomorrow, we’ll take a deeper look into the “legend” of Karma…

Remembering a mountain guide

Just 50 years ago, on Friday, August 11, 1972, as I was teaching skiing in Australia for a second season, I received a telegram from France advising me of Dominique Mollaret’s death. 

I will always remember that on this day, a mix of rain and snow was falling on a usually foggy day at Mt. Buller. There, it was already Saturday, the day after. Still, I was stunned by the news after all we had gone through with Dominique, our short-lived Avoriaz ski school director… 

Dominique, then twenty-seven years old, originally from Grenoble but living in my hometown of Morzine, France, died while as he was soloing Mont Blanc via l’Aiguille Noire de Peuterey (aka the Super Integral de Peuterey, or Frêney trilogy). 

While no one knows for sure the cause of his death (he could have been hit by a falling rock, exhausted or victim of equipment dysfunction), while repelling the Aiguille, some believe that his abseil got stuck and he reportedly died of exhaustion trying to retrieve it. 

The so-called Super Integrale de Peutèrey, would finally premiered in 1982 by the Italian mountaineer Renato Casarotto. This tragic accident brought Dominique’s career as a guide to a brutal stop.

Is Air conditioning bad?

In France, my countrymen aren’t in love with air-conditioning, at least, their media isn’t. In America this convenience is fully accepted and no one seems to object of its use. Granted, unlike France, residential solar panels are widespread and for example, our home production of electricity widely exceeds its consumption! 

As the European continent experiences another hot summer, scientists fear that as climate warms up, more demand for energy will grow. Based on various projections, estimates suggest that by 2050, climate change should increase energy demand for air-conditioning by 11 to 27% in the event of moderate warming, and by 25 to 58% in the event of stronger warming, further disrupting the climate by increasing the emission of greenhouse gases if no alternative energies are used. 

Air conditioning is already responsible for 10% of global power consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. With very real consequences: in cities, air conditioning causes an average increase in temperature between 1 and 1.5 degrees compared to that of the surrounding countryside. However, its worldwide use is booming.

In the United States and Japan, the adoption rate for air conditioning is close to 100%. But in emerging economies like India, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil, adoption rates are on average less than 10%. With global warming, air conditioning is likely to increase in European countries, like France, Spain or Italy. 

The International Energy Agency estimated last year that the number of air conditioners in the world would increase from 1.6 billion units to 5.6 billion in 2050 and use as much power a China currently consumes, all activities combined.

 Power hungry air conditioning also warms the outside air. Like a heat pump, the cooling devices draws heat from the room and transfers it outside. Some say that the increase in street temperature is proportional to the air conditioning power. 

Researchers from France’s National Center for Meteorological Research claim that, if the heat emitted by Parisian air conditioners were to be doubled by 2030, the temperature increase would be an additional 2°C outside, in the street. 

If that’s the case, I’ll go and have a drink in nearby café!

My vision for the future?

I love to imagine what the future will be and while I have conducted this exercise over the years, I’ve never wrote down my views of what it would be, so I’m at a loss to making any comparisons. 

This huge question shouldn’t be addressed in a few sentences, but that I’ll try to formulate it the best I can in the least amount of time and words possible. 

For practical reasons the scope of that question is the entire earth, and to give people my age a chance to watch these predictions unfold, let’s aim for the state of our entire planet at the end 2035. 

Overpopulation, pollution, food supply and climate change: 

• Population will still be growing to 9.5 billion, including wars and pandemics. 
•  Pollution will keep on getting worse as governments won’t have the will to make needed changes 
• Food supply and particularly water will become scarce and very expensive 
• Raising oceans will force 2 billion of people out of their current location 

Planet’s politics, migrations:

• False information will be hard to control and contain, governments will become more autocratic. 
• War will continue unabated and migration will be a central issue fueled by economics and climate.

 Human lifestyle, education, work, leisure, quality of life: 

• Cost of living will keep on growing and simply living will be unaffordable for most.
• Technology will try to improve an increasing difficult quality of life but benefit only the richest. 
• Education will make huge progress through developing technology. 
• Work will become a privilege for most and will continue to foster economic inequality 
•  Leisure will become more tenuous and under siege by mental illness and cost of participation. 
• Quality of life will decrease significantly on a planet that has become too hot for most. 

Life sustainability, health, medicine, technology:

•  Hunger, poverty will have a decimating effect on populations as well as pandemics. 
• Health will continue to progress for some but, along with medicine, will be unaffordable for many.
• Technology will keep on accelerating and dazzle us 

That’s about it for me. Usually, I feel that I’m a fairly optimistic individual, but my account is pretty depressing. I just hope I am dead wrong. 

What’s your vision?

Do textual Bible want to destroy the earth?

Those who textually believe in the Bible are often behaving the worst with issues like overpopulation and the environment based on the account of creation found in the Bible, and particularly in Genesis 1:28, that states: 

“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” 

For some, this appeal to religious scripture may seem ridiculous but in a country like the United States where religiosity still rides very high, this admonition is still giving too many believers “carte blanche” for destroying and killing everything in sight. 

Fortunately, Pope Francis’ recent Encyclical Letter Laudato Si, addresses the charge that Genesis grants humans the right to exploit the natural world without limits. 

He says that the emphasis on keeping and caring is an important counterpoint to the notion of dominion and argues that we are sanctioned to take from the Earth what we need to subsist, but that this should be balanced with preserving the Earth for future generations. 

The problem is that American Catholics and their Evangelists counterparts don’t read Encyclical Letters like that one, but by a wide margin, prefer to listen to Fox News and other extreme-right media sources!

The Dream I never had

Like anyone my age, I had my share of dreams, some wonderful, some mediocre, some downright awful (we call that nightmare), in all kind of settings, situations or time period. 

Many that I can recall came up to me because of excessive stress during my working life and lingered for a very long time. It’s only now that they are much milder and far less anguishing. 

Yet, in all these years and as far as I can remember, I never dreamed of being on a pair of skis, actually skiing and having the fun of my life! This, in spite of the fact that skiing has always been my number one pursuit and passion in life. 

Sure, I have had dreams about professional in ski business, at the ski shows, but the life of me, I never dreamed of having and enjoying a pleasurable ski run. 

Of course, I wonder why that situation is the way it is. It might be that my ski reality is so good and so perfect that there is absolutely no need for me to get it spoiled by a less-than-perfect dream!

Canadian geese flying back to Mexico...

I’ve noticed that Canadian geese seem to be migrating south much earlier this summer and was wondering if it was a seasonal sign, like perhaps these birds were predicting us an early winter. 

I’ve seen and heard the first returning flocks as early as the end of July and it has continued this week, all making short stopovers in Park City for rest and refueling, prior to continuing south. So the question becomes, can geese help us predict the kind of winter we’re likely to have? 

This would sound folksy and fun if they could. “Not so fast” says Jonatah Isacoff, environmental Studies Professor at Gonzaga University, “You can tell the seasons are changing, but you can't tell specifically if it's going to be a long winter or a short winter,”

Contrary to popular belief, Isacoff says, geese aren’t trying to get away from the cold when they migrate south. “The main reason is food,” adds Isacoff. “It's not as much cold. 

A lot of birds that migrate south can tolerate cold but they all need food. There’s no light in the winter, it's dark and even if there was food available any bird has to migrate south.” 

Most geese get their food from lakes and ponds. In places like Canada and Alaska, those sources of food can freeze early, leaving them no choice but to head south. Food, food, always food. 

That make me hungry and ready for breakfast!

Is the Farmer's Almanac weather forecast trustworthy?

Another summer goes by and another serving of predictions for next winter season. 

The Farmer’s Almanac, that traditional institution that began publishing in 1818 just released its weather forecast for the winter of 2022-2023. Its predictions calls for a winter season with plenty of snow, rain, and mush—as well as some record-breaking cold temperatures!

Well, that’s for the entire nation, and Utah, where all my attention is focused, is straddling a “Mild, dryer than normal” zone with one that is qualified as “Hibernation, glacial snow-filled...” It also claims that the first bite of winter should come earlier than last year’s. 

December 2022 looks stormy and cold nationwide, with an active storm pattern developing and hanging around for most of the season, over the eastern (uninteresting for me), half of the country. 

While the Almanac says it can predict weather with around 80 percent accuracy, a University of Illinois study disagreed, saying the Almanac was only 52 percent accurate—which is essentially random chance. Its mostly science-oriented detractors say the forecast is not full of white snow but “full of crap”, and there's a good chance it's right anyway as it might as good as flipping a coin. 

We’ll see how accurate or lucky it was when the snow melts next spring. In the meantime it should probably be relegated as another form of “fake news”...

Finding one’s highest and best purpose in life

This, to me is the starting point of any lifetime self-search and may help determine if we have a pleasant or a miserable life. 

It should also enable us to never “work” one single day for the remaining of our lives. So, even at my age, it’s never too late to investigate and find that secret talent that we all have but can’t seem to perceive. This is true for everything we do in life from our business to personal or leisure endeavors. The key is to find these hidden talents are skills that we never knew we had. Obviously, as adults, many of us think we know what we’re good - and not so good – at, but we may not be that good at identifying what these best talents are; in fact, they can be right in front of us, and we’ll still be unable to spot them. 

Even though this might sound a bit awkward, one of the best ways to uncover these hidden talents is to ask the people around us, like family, friends, and coworkers. They might have a better view at what make us unique by pointing out some of our strengths if can’t see them ourselves. 

For that we must pick people that are likely to provide us with honest feedback of what they think our hidden talents might be. Let’s not limit them to one talent in particular, but ask them to give us two or three things that stand out.  Obviously it should be easy to identify what our best skills already are, like things we find extremely easy to do while others may struggle or muddle their way through… 

Finally, the most important track should be to look at what we enjoy doing the most, whether it’s professionally, personally or just to have fun. If you are drawn toward it, it could too, be a hidden talent. 

In the unlikely event that all the above fails, then we only have one recourse left, that is to take a big leap into the unknown and do something outside your comfort zone. We might be surprised, at least that what I hope!

Differentiating between Goals and Objectives

I just finished reading “Illogical” by Emmanuel Acho. A best-selling self-help book targeted at the young people (like me?) trying to figure out their path in life. 

Among a few “nuggets” contained in that otherwise “feel-good” reading, I landed on what ought to be the difference between goals and objective, but since the crux of it was neither well explained nor developed by the author, I was forced to research the subject further. 

First, I must admit that I have been using both words interchangeably without even bothering to find out if they were distinctly different, so it was a good opportunity to educate myself on their meaning. I started to get some insight from the textbook definition of the two actions: 

A goal is an achievable outcome that is generally broad and long-term while an objective defines measurable actions to achieve the overall goal. To put is simply, a series of objective can be a mean to achieving a goal. As most of us know, setting goals and objectives helps achieve some desired results. 

This is a long way from the definition I deducted from the book I was referring to, so I’m glad I checked! While both are important, goals and objectives differ when it comes to the specific actions one should take. 

To start with goals, they come in three main types: time-bound, for setting timely actions, outcome-oriented that are focused on the end result, and process-oriented to address the way we should carry them out. Sometime, when time is tight, a goal may incorporate all three types. 

Objective also come in three types, they can be strategic in nature that is purpose driven, they can also take a tactical form focused on short-term deliverables and their results, and finally, they can be operational contributing to daily, weekly or monthly goals.

That seems a bit complicated while in fact it’s fairly simple, but we have made the whole story look that way by mixing them goals and objective like tangled up twine...

Certainty vs. convictions

In October of 2011, we had a school reunion with my old buddies that were studying mechanical engineering at Cluses, France, half-way between Geneva and Chamonix. This was for me a wonderful occasion of seeing many of my old comrades and I even produced a video to mark that important get together. 

In that clip, some of my former classmates were answering questions along the lines of “What did you learn in school that helped you the most through life?” One of them, Michel Deletraz said on several occasions: “I gave up my certainty and traded them for convictions…” At the time, I didn’t think much of that comment until I dug deeper into its meaning.

Certainty is the exact nature of things. For example: we know that 2+2=4; that the earth is round, etc. Certainty is simple and ideas are often presented in a binary form as right or wrong, black or white, how something must be done, or as a fact. 

There’s no nuance, it’s just like in Bush’s speech to Congress following 9/11 “you are either with us or you are with the terrorists”. This is something that’s absolutely not open for debate. Certainty offers no room for interpretation and control over the outcome is given to someone else. 

On the other hand, Conviction is a belief, something fuzzier, not really defined as true or false, just something in which one believes. It’s coming from our own thoughts or ideas and can be debated. For example: I believe that Black Lives Matter is right, etc. 

Conviction conveys the position that “I stand for something and feel strongly about it, yet I’m open-minded to hear what you think”. For those who follow something with conviction it’s okay to question an idea, challenge an interpretation or include one’s own perspective. 

Conviction doesn’t need to be seen as fact but as a view or as a belief that has worked for the individual. Perhaps my former classmate Michel went from an early dogmatic position with his belief about certainty, to a more fluid view of things that gave him the flexibility he needed to navigate through life much more effectively. 

At least that’s my take! Oct 2, 2011 

In the head of a ski-boot guru…

Bikes, skis, and a lot of other sport equipment can be measured in all kinds of way in order to be understood, improved and further developed as products. 

While footwear can also me measured in two- and three-dimensions, ski-boots seldom are developed in a rational way, because of the subjective nature of their comfort and the limitless number of anatomy-related variables ranging from dimensional to sensitive perceptions, all the way to individual power. 

So as a ski technician has rules to follow, angles to work on and dimensions to fine-tune, its ski-boot counterpart ends up being more of a magician, or guru, as we generally call that individual, because there are no two feet the same, no sensitivity to pain or power transmission remotely similar on our ski planet. 

Today, I was reading an article by Peter Lange, in Ski Racing magazine, about Hubert Immler, an Austria who started his career as a ski test glider, working for Kästle and went on to work for Lange as a boot service technician for the Austrian Team from 1994 through 1996. 

That year, he was hired by Atomic to lead the development of the company’s Tritech boot that was quite successful, but not widely accepted. As a result, Immler developed a boot that would work for everyone, the RT, that remains the basis of the Atomic boot used today. 

In 2002 Immler went to Technica/Nordica to work on the Technica Diablo, before jumping ship in 2006 at Head, to take care of Bode Miller and Didier Cuche as he allegedly designed the Raptor model. According to the article, Immler was about to develop a new boot for 2019 when he left to work for the German ski team, and recently our boot guru has been asked to join Van Deer, Hirscher’s new ski venture. 

Even though Hubert Immler seems to have revolutionized the boot-fitting niche of the ski industry, according to the article, no where can I find an account of the tangible features or improvements he brought to the various boots he’s been working on. Is there even a documented trail left? 

I presume it must have been kept secret as it always is with such gurus, perhaps some kind of ski-vaporware or an ethereal collection of magical tricks. 

Now, will there be a ski boot to go with the Van Deer ski? Who know? Only a guru like Immler might be able to tell...