Happy Halloween!

Ever since we’ve added the Park City cemetery to our daily walking itinerary, we have become experts in this entire place. We know the marmots, ground squirrels and magpies that inhabit the place and what goes on inside on a seasonal basis. 

This obviously includes all the flowers and decorations that adorn each grave for Memorial Day weekend and a few noteworthy efforts that are also made for Halloween. American cemeteries come in sharp contrast to French ones that are only decorated and visited once a year on November 1st, also known as All Saints Day. 

The most original and cleverly decorated grave in the entire space is that of Rich Martinez, Park City’s last silver miner who passed away in 2017 at age 82. His grave is marked by an old ore cart and is seasonally decorated by his family. The practice of decorating tombs for Halloween finds its origins in Celtic traditions. 

The Celts believed that on the night of Samhain, the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was thin, and that spirits could cross over into our world. To protect themselves from these spirits, the Celts would build bonfires, dress up in scary costumes, and leave food and drink offerings at their homes and in cemeteries. 

Beyond this origin, cemeteries are seen as places of mystery and intrigue, their dark and somber atmosphere lending itself well to the Halloween celebration. Sure, not everyone agrees with the practice of decorating cemeteries for Halloween. 

Some believe that it is disrespectful to the dead, while others find it to be in poor taste, as for us, we just like it that way and enjoy to seeing people’s creativity at work to remember and honor their dead.

Time to blow snow!

This past Friday, as the temperatures dropped drastically, Park City Mountain began blowing snow on one of the resort main ski runs. 

Here we tip again into another ski season, our 39th here in Utah, where I’ve done 83% of my entire skiing, if I count in terms of my total accumulated vertical drop. Well, according to our largest ski resort in town, the plan is to open it up for skiing on November 17, so that’s coming pretty fast!

This said, I’m writing this totally ignorant of how that season will turn out; will there be enough snow, will it come early on and will my ski legs still be able to carry me like they have for the past 39 years? 

As many questions for which I have no answer and simply need to patiently wait for the ski season to begin and see how it unfolds. 

At this point, I remain fully confident that it will be another good one, yet, I have no hurry to begin the ski season on man-made snow only!

New paint job for Park City police cars!

It took Park City quite a long time to acknowledge its community was primarily “buried in snow” when it came to its livelihood. 

That’s right, buried deep into the ski business. It’s now reflected on the new paint job visible on our patrol cars. 

I hope that will add some solid grip to the performance of the SUV so it won’t slide in all directions as it perform its work!

Bizarre credit card manners

During our last trip in France and Switzerland, I made a daily note of all the transactions incurred each time I paid with my credit card in order to see how it was translated from Euros or Swiss Francs to Dollar. 

That way, when I'd reconcile my monthly statement, it would make my job super easy. This said, the first time we filled up our rental car in France, we noticed an extra charge of some $160 in addition to my gasoline purchase. 

That night, I was alarmed when I saw it and contacted my credit card to dispute the charge. In the process, the Visa card in question was instantly canceled (a very bad knee-jerk idea) and I had to use my wife’s instead where merchants didn’t take my American Express card. 

As this kept on recurring, I assumed it was a systematic policy service stations used to cover themselves. When I got home, I did some research that confirmed my assumption: The additional charge I was seeing on my daily credit card statement at gas stations was a "preauthorization" or "authorization hold." 

In fact a common practice in the payment industry, particularly at gas stations, hotels, and other places when I had in the past noticed a temporary token $1.00 charge. The purpose of such preauthorization, 

I learned, was to ensure that you have sufficient funds available to cover any potential costs that may arise during a transaction. Gas stations usually preauthorize an amount higher than the actual cost of the fuel you purchased, as they don't know. 

I don’t know if it’s the same in the United States since I don’t use a car with ICE engine anymore...

Environment, nice statements, lack of action

I love skiing and because of it, I’m also very interested in following alpine ski racing. While not totally passionate about it, there are things I love about it and also things that sometimes make me cringe. For instance, I’ve never been a fan of the October Sölden races and even less now of the planned November downhill event on Zermatt’s Gran Becca race course.

I'm a strong believer that natural snow and regular seasons as we know them should frame the FIS calendar and we shouldn’t tinker too much with our dying glaciers. Just my personal opinion. In the midst of all this, FIS claims to be climate-positive by means of using climate offsets, a practice Greenpeace has long criticized. 

This brings me to the point that when it comes to environmental issues, why are they more righteous statements and than effective actions taken? Are industry, NGOs and institutions excessively using “greenwashing” to shelter themselves from critics? It appear easier for them to make meaningless statements that sound good rather than to take tangible actions are capable of bringing results, even if they are hard to accept and live with, in the short term? 

As most of us know, greenwashing is the practice of making misleading or exaggerated claims about the environmental benefits of a product, program, service, or company. It’s often crafted to create a positive public image and avoid criticism for environmental damage. There are so many companies claiming that their products are "carbon neutral" or "eco-friendly", even though they’re still produced using fossil fuels and other harmful practices. Or, even worse, some NGOs don’t think twice before exaggerating the impact of their work in order to raise more money. 

Obviously, these meaningless statements are much easier to pronounce than to take tangible actions that bring results, even if they hurt in the short term. Taking real and lasting action on environmental issues is often difficult and expensive. It may require businesses to change their production processes, governments to implement new policies, and individuals to make changes to their lifestyles. In contrast, making pious statements about environmental issues is relatively easy. 

It doesn't require any real commitment or investment. And it can actually work well for business, as consumers are increasingly drawn to companies that appear to be environmentally friendly. In the end, it’s up to us to hold industry, NGOs, and institutions accountable for their greenwashing claims. 

At the same time, we must continue to educate the public about the severity of environmental problems, the need for action that works and also pressure our governments to address environmental issues, even if it means making tough decisions. Let’s remember that words are cheap. Actions are what matter. 

We need to demand that those who make pious and righteous statements about environmental issues begin backing up their words with action. We should all begin by asking the FIS to change its disastrous ways and get the hell out of our vanishing glaciers...

Customer support in the Philippines?

As I was trying to get some refunds related to some of the airline-caused incidents we experienced during our trip, I was transported to a Filipino service center that Air France – KLM seems to have chosen for handling their customer relations. 

On Wednesday I spent 2 hours, spread in 3 calls, to get through! This European airline is not the only one to rely upon call centers in the Philippines to handle that work. Over the years, I have experienced “support” in Asia, like India and more commonly, the Philippines with HP, my mobile phone provider, and Vail Resorts among others. 

These decisions are obviously made to save huge amounts of money at the expense of pleasant and effective customer experience. What typically happens is that the hourly wage of customer service or customer support personnel hired in the Philippines by western companies varies depending on a number of factors, including the employee's experience, skills, and the company's budget. 

However, in general, the hourly wage in Philippine Peso ranges from ₱61 to ₱259 per hour ($1 to $4.50) that breaks-down as follow with experience: Entry-level: ₱61-₱99 ($1.00 to $1.75), Mid-level: ₱100-₱159 ($1.75 - $2.80) and Senior-level: ₱160-₱259 ($2.80 - $4.50). As we all know there are other factors like command of English, diction, adaptability, IQ and EQ that affect the performance. 

So, in the worst possible case, if an entry-level employee’s performance is terrible, and takes ten times the time to solve a problem, the cost per hour is still only $10 per hour. In all cases however, one needs to add the call center’s margin. Since productivity is generally bad, it contributes to customers’ huge wait time. 

Despite their (alleged) fluency in English, some Filipino call center agents have difficulty understanding and making themselves understood which further irritates an often dissatisfied caller that to make things worse has waited in queue forever. Further, cultural differences between the United States and the Philippines often lead to misunderstandings or miscommunications. I’m not even mentioning security concerns about information (credit cards, financial information) that could add to the pitfalls.

In summary, we ought to stay away from companies that save money on the backs of their customers that ultimately pay for the corporate cost-saving in terms of poor service and horrible amounts of time wasted!

A tale of two countries

Debriefing our recent France visit wouldn’t be complete without some comparisons about how we see the world compared to that country’s population, focusing of course on what we’ve learned as we were among friends, family and other folks we’ve ran into. 

This is mostly a reflection spanning the four years we’ve not been in Europe, including of course the Covid years. In truth, the pandemic has been the sole huge subject of concern for my countrymen, while in the United States we were not just confronted to it, but also to Trump’s wannabe dictatorship that culminated in his January 6 attempted Coup. 

This trauma still carries on as the fascist candidate hopes to get back into the White House instead of spending some quality time behind bars as he fully deserves. Interestingly, many French people don’t believe that Donald Trump will ever be jailed and are unaware that Biden will run again for a second term. 

There also seems to be a widespread ignorance about how “fake news” are seeping through society and how little attention is paid to the source of news consumed by the French public leading to all kinds of weird beliefs and conspiracy theories.

Overall I would say that one outstanding difference between our two nations is that the United States is a YOUNG country with presidents that are way too OLD, while France is an OLD nation with a president that is a bit too YOUNG! Does this make any sense?

An unfair and biased comparison

Now that we are finally caught up and settled at home, we can reflect on our trip and measure what we observe, learned and experience during that French trips. 

Let’s start first with the unpleasant stuff to conclude by the sunny side of things. 

What we didn’t like: 

• Europe is too far away and we should work at bringing the tectonic plates back together (I’ll tell Elon Musk that one!) 
• Europe is too crowded and too tight and I don’t have any solution to offer against that quandary. 
• French people are driving too fast on roads that are too narrow! 
• I only drove 1,000 miles (1638 km) and got one nasty traffic ticket. This adds to the insane cost of gasoline and the prohibitive tolls on superhighways. 
• Wifi in most hotels or “maisons d’hôtes” is woefully not working or anemic. Where is the fiber? 
• The Bordeaux airport employees don’t seem to know where their paycheck comes from 

What we loved: 

• Except for Bordeaux, all the people we met or came in contact with, were extremely nice to us. 
• The one-euro baguette 
• Plenty of inexpensive, good wine 
• Still the best food on the planet 
• Fabulous landscapes (but please, stop building like crazy on them!) 

Hopefully, you got the whole picture. Yes, France is still very, very special and fun to visit!

Doing too much in a limited time-space

Like most humans, instead of regretting some of my actions or admitting certain failures, I’d rather win all the time! 

This cool feat is rarely possible though, and sometimes, I must realize that there are limits to what I can achieve. It’s not just that I’m older, but if a few problems begin cropping up, my anticipated success is not quite what I anticipated it to be. 

My problem is that I’m far too much time conscious and I always want to pack an excessive amount of tasks into a limited time-space that has no wiggle room, hoping that everything will run totally smoothly the first time. 

I count too much on my experiences, my secret tricks, the wonders of technology and lady luck. But I never leave much space for breakdowns, unforeseen issues and lady luck being sick, moody or absent when I expect it least!

When software fails

For editing my photos and other graphic work, I use Gimp, an open source software that’s is both free and very good. 

Yesterday, as I was working on some statements when suddenly I must have hit the wrong key and I could no longer modify a picture the was I was used to. 

I tried everything, moved heaven and earth, all for naught. I spent at least four hours trying to solve a problem that was beyond my understanding. 

 

Uninstalled, reinstalled, tinkered some more with the program until I gave up, not before contacting a pair of user’s groups, and finally went to bed, deeply unhappy. 

The next morning, I had received more suggestions from the user group than I could handle. I tried a few and through luck or serendipity, I stumbled on a solution. I had overcome!

Israelis vs. Palestinians

Too many people choose to ignore or have never been taught about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a long-standing dispute over land and sovereignty in the Middle East, began in the late 19th century when Zionists sought to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in Ottoman-controlled Palestine. 

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by the British government, endorsed the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which led to an influx of Jewish immigrants into the region without asking its inhabitants if they liked the idea or not. In 1947, the United Nations went ahead the Partition Plan, dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. 

On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was created, sparking the first Arab-Israeli War. Palestinians were forced off their lands or fled, marking the first large-scale exodus in what would become a decades-long battle over land ownership. Since then, there have been numerous conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians over issues such as borders, settlements, and security.

 The conflict has resulted in thousands of deaths and has been a major source of instability in the region and Israel’s steady actions of apartheid are what gave birth to Hamas, the Hezbollah and other bad actors. 

But when someone is forced out of his home, can they be blamed in regaining their territory by any possible means?

Catching up after all that fun!

Returning home after being gone for 15 days is never fun. There’s a pile of mail waiting to be sorted, problems to be address and not enough time to do justice to that work that is added to fatigue, jetlag and semi-permanent state of slumber.

I’m confident we’ll make it but that won’t be fun and it will take a long, long time. Fortunately, I remain optimistic and will do my best to stay focused, set and keep my priorities straight and persevere the way I always do…

A distasteful return trip

This morning when we left Morzine it still was dark. The rain was intense and soon we were going down the winding road from Les Gets going to the airport in the thickest fog possible. 

Down valley, it was bumper to bumper following all the workers making a living by commuting to nearby Geneva where they could get paid between two or three times more than if they had a job on the French side of the border.

I pitied these people who has such a horrendous commute particularly under that morning’s circumstances and also during winter when roads could be icy or snowy. 

We finally made it close to the airport and somehow, I messed up my GPS and in the midst of intense, urban traffic, I struggled to find the convoluted itinerary leading to the French entrance to the Swiss airport where we had to drop our rental car. 

We somehow made it in time, just to learn that our next flight to Amsterdam was delayed indefinitely because only one out two runways there was in service. Because we couldn’t make our first flight, we were put in another one, but lost our class of service in the process. 

Finally, I made the fatal mistake of eating KLM’s food between Amsterdam and Salt Lake and had food poisoning. No more KLM from now on… Traveling in a nice 787 Dreamliner didn’t make anything better!

Why do French people drive so fast?

Even though their roads are far narrower than in the US, French drivers love to drive fast, never slowing down to pass incoming traffic, bikers and unfortunately pedestrians. 

Granted, their cars are, on the average, much smaller, but if the road sign indicated a 50 miles per hour speed limit, they will not proceed below that speed, regardless of the circumstances. If in tight urban zones, it shows an 18 mile per hour sign, drivers conveniently read it as 30 miles per hour.

Driving fast seem to be an art form that, I must admit, is quite contagious because I too, wasn’t immune from that insane mania. Walking in the street is no more pleasant (diesel fumes, noise) than it is unsafe and we could never walk as much as we do in Park City if we had to live in Morzine and its surroundings. 

Short of widening the roads and creating sidewalks wide enough to be deserving of that name (a totally impossible task, since there’s no more room for it), people should avoid walking if they value their lungs and their lives. 

Maybe a possible solution lay in creating elevated or underground roads or limit access to pedestrians and cyclists only?

Morzine, the overdeveloped…

Morzine is a small French mountain town with a huge growth problem. 

For someone who’s been totally out of this place for more than four years, it’s obvious that growth has been unbridled by allowing to build on every available square foot that a big real estate bubble is not just growing wild, but had the case always it, getting very close to bursting! 

Will this really happen like it might in my own Park City hometown? I think so. Already, locals in Morzine are clamoring about traffic, parking and soaring real estate prices, plus also the bad taste a British invasion that’s already seeping into that postcard-perfect mountain community. Right now, the pressure’s still building, but how high can it go?

 American ski towns are fortunate to have much more space to play with so the feeling of overcrowding and over-something is far less pervading, but Morzine breathing room is now very close to be suffocating and quite impossible to undo at that point of extreme development. 

Will that chase future visitors away? Probably not because all other French ski resorts are for the most part in the same predicament, but it will make everybody, visitor and locals alike, profoundly bitter, constantly unhappy and terribly unfulfilled!

Shifting feelings, age and circumstances

That one is a new “revelation” I had yesterday. My wife asks me: “Do you still miss living around Morzine?” I thought for a few seconds and then said: “Not really, I’m now too old and my circumstances have changed too much to be able to miss it”.

This was opening up a brand new concept for me that I could only miss something in the context of my specific age group and circumstances when I was in a certain spot, a given career or life stage and at a certain age. 

 

After that, that ship had sailed and gone, the toothpaste was out of the tube, with it where my terms of endearment with that beautiful and attaching valley…

Meeting a fan of this blog

That day, we visited some old, very good friends of mine that were all ski instructors at nearby Avoriaz with me, during my relatively short tenure there. Both encounters were very pleasant, positive and heartwarming. 

At night, as we were starting eating, or rather picnicking inside our rental place when someone knocked on the door. I opened it up and enters a radiating woman who said her name was Jeanne-Marie, believe it or not, a devout reader of this blog. 

She said she’d been a bit worried that it seemed to be no longer published and couldn’t comprehend why. She seemed genuinely delighted to see me as one would, after finally seeing again one long-lost love. 

Actually, that afternoon, we ran into Odette, a 90 year old lady, originally from Normandy who had married Raymond, the late “soda man” in Morzine (featured in 2012 in this blog), and that happened to be his uncle. 

We then had a long conversation with her and she told us the story of her life in response to ours. She connected with us, when earlier in the day (after we spoke to Odette), her husband Daniel, relayed what he’d learned from Odette that he also met. 

She asked Daniel who I was and he knew me very well and that’s how Jeanne-Maire came  knocking on our door to see me in person the blogger of her life and we all had a wonderful time, as a result of an almost miraculous cascade of uncanny encounters and coincidences!

Fun family day

That day saw plenty of time seating around a table, eating and talking, first with my sister and her husband that are older than me, are still very active and in fairly good health and love to work in their huge veggie garden which leave little time for my brother in law to do what he loves most: picking up wild mushrooms! 

Later we returned for the evening near Geneva where we were invited to dinner by my niece, her two kids and everyone’s spouse. 

Even though the later dinner and the ensuing conversations made us miss our bedtime by a long shot and demanded a one hour drive back, getting together was absolutely worth it and both meals were totally priceless. In both instances a great moment of love, appreciation, laughter and a stream of positive energy left us with a huge dose of positive impression.

Here comes the rainy day

Up until now, our trip has been basking in more than perfect weather, at least for a month of October in France. Temperatures were much warmer than seasonal ones and all was super dry, that was until this morning when rain began pounding on the roof over our bedroom up on the mountain in the Saint Roch area that overlooks the town of Sallanches, gateway to the Mont-Blanc region. 

I had picked the place because of the incredible view of Mont Blanc at the expense of ease of access and our lackluster accommodations. Today, there was not the tiniest portion of Mont-Blanc to be seen and rain stayed with us for the entire day. Near Annemasse (a French suburb of Geneva) we had lunch with Marcel a former colleague of mine who was teaching skiing in Australia (we hadn’t seen each other for close to 50 years!) 

We caught up with today news, realized that we had all grown old beyond our wildest dreams and envisioned the necessary next steps, both seriously and humorously. Too bad our other friend Gẻrard couldn’t make it, but circumstances are always difficult to always manage successfully…

Mid afternoon, the rain had stopped and we finally made it to what used to be my hometown, my neck of the woods and the skies cleared again as a way to say “Welcome back!” 

As always, a long road trip

I love to drive and I’m bad at planning short trips. I never miss a chance to fit more stops and places to visit into an already bulging time line regardless of my passenger tolerance for extra hours spent inside an automobile. 

This morning was spend in large part driving to the Alps, mostly on the lightly traveled French super-highway, that aren’t cheap but, like the rest of the highway we traveled on, are very well designed and maintained. 

We went to visit our cousins, not far from the shores of Geneva Lake and had a wonderful time. Our get together actually went so overboard time-wise that it messed up our next appointment with a former schoolmate eager to meet us in Sallanches at the bottom of Mont-Blanc (the town where Dynastar skis are made!)

The mountain was still standing there in its imposing, formidable mass, albeit much grayer than usual. The place we stayed was in Saint-Roch accessible through a narrow, steep, winding road. This was the last day of good weather we had enjoyed so far. Tomorrow rain would be in the forecast.

More about volcanoes

In the morning we stopped to visit the amusement park of Vulcania near Clermont-Ferrand that allows visitors to discover this area’s natural heritage and introduces them to volcanology. 

Some of the displays were good, but many were of little interest and mostly targeted towards small kids. In addition, we found the park extremely hard to navigate and except for a few shows and exhibit, including the largest planetarium in France, we felt that we had wasted too much time, energy and money for very little.

At night we had a wonderful dinner at a hostelry located in the middle of nowhere, one hour west from Lyon, that didn’t look the part but delivered an awful lot and was a stunning culinary experience!

Auvergne, another discovery

Today, we blasted through Auvergne, a French province that is the home of extinct volcanoes. Its mountains, called Massif Central are old, as they were formed million years ago and are home of a large number (try 450) of inactive volcanic cones spread over 60 square miles. 

We went through some of the few places that are using their mountains as ski areas and also for hiking and mountain biking during the off-season, and are also popular spa places used a lot by French patients. 

At night we stopped at Orcival a tiny village clustered around a huge and massive basilica that seemed out of place in its narrow valley setting surrounded by huge pastoral plateaus.

Two bags that spell liberation

That Tuesday would be the day that would reunite us to our beloved and so missed and desired travel bags! As a result of being so sick of waiting, we decided to shorten our stay in Sarlat to forget about the ordeal faster and more completely. 

We checked out and traveled to a place called Rocamadour (a major Catholic religious place frequented by pilgrimage and faithfuls seeking miracles. 

The place is staggered on a cliff face which represents an easy way down, but a grueling return to the top if one eschewed the elevators set up for precisely accomplishing that essential job. 

At night we landed in a wonderful B&B or “Maison d’Hôtes” are they are named in France, called “Maison d’Hôtes” complete with a warm welcome, great food and fabulous company. An unforgettable experience.

Great town with even greater food

Sarnat-la-Canéda is the world’s capital of foie gras, duck, truffles and all kinds of fine food in general. A long stay there should translate in many pounds added to one’s waistline! Restaurants are legion and all are pretty good, much better for sure than our old, crumbling accommodations. 

The story of that very old city is fascinating and transported me back to what I learned in elementary school’s history classes and of the infamous 100 year war between the Brits and the French. To add to these positive elements was a beautiful weather and good size crowds for the season that spruced up the ambiance of a normally slower, shoulder season.

Late yesterday, I was told that our bags had been received at the Bordeaux airport and that they would be forwarded to us within a couple of days. Now, on the third day without them, I didn’t quite believe what shed said. 

When I said this was unacceptable and I wanted my luggage now, the young lady that called me corrected me by saying: “Don’t use the world ‘want’, use a more polite ‘would like’ instead, or else, you might see your bags much later. 

I didn’t even try to fight it, she had full power and understood there was absolutely no room for disagreeing, even a tiny bit, with French public service employees!

Adventures in Périgord

I’m regularly the first one to be suspicious of any types of “charm” with very good reasons. This time, the charm in question could be found in a very old building sheltering a would-be modern B&B business in Sarlat, Périgord. 

The 13-14th century building was, historic, massive and absolutely impressive, but in an obvious state of disrepair, with temperamental locks and old fashion keys all different for each door, some stealthy and dangerous steps at every corner, freezing temperatures at night and in the early morning devoid of any source of heating at all, a very old-fashioned bathroom,  a quasi-unusable garage for our rental car, and a more than anemic WiFi service. 

To offset this dire reality, the man running the place along with his wife, were both charming and helpful as much as they could muster and stood as a ray of sunshine too cheer us up. It’s true these problems were revealed to us as we were still desperately waiting for our missing luggage which was rendering our stay miserable a nice euphemism to say ruining our vacation!

Delta and KLM, a marriage made in hell

We had flown KLM before and weren’t impressed (mostly the food quality that had made me sick). This time would prove to be much worse. 

When we landed at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, and transferred to our KLM flight to Bordeaux, we thought this would be an uneventful, one and a half hour flight segment. That was until our luggage failed to show up.

As luck would have it, we were missing our two suitcases. Filing a claim through a French made electronic counter was incredibly difficult, counter-intuitive, and required the constant help from a highly unpleasant assistant working, we assumed, for the Bordeaux airport instead of the airline that had lost our bags.  

We were then told that the missing pieces would be whisked to us within a short time, perhaps put on a later KLM flight to Bordeaux before day end, at worse the next morning, the way it usually works out. When it comes to lost luggage too, hope is always eternal, and we were genuinely and confidently expecting them withing hours. 

My next challenge was to relearn to drive with a stick-shift for the three hours that separated us from our day destination.

Is the magic of flying still there?

We had not flown to Europe since the Fall of 2019, just before the Covid pandemic, which is exactly four years ago. At the time, we flew Delta Comfort+, an economy version that offers more leg room than the basic one, perhaps better food and a good beverage selection.

No big deal, but still a nice difference, along I must say, pretty good service. This time was different. The service had grown significantly more mediocre, the dinner food barely edible, breakfast totally disgusting and a Starbucks-branded coffee that was absolutely undrinkable. 

Clearly, even at Delta, unlike its new slogan “Keep Climbing”, things are not on the ascent, but nosediving quite rapidly. Fasten your seat belt and, next time, avoid the airline.

Is Trump done for?

In my opinion, yes, the man is finished. Will he go to prison? I think most definitely. 

Then, should we believe the polls giving him in a dead it with Biden? Not really, because the demolition of the would-be-dictator has just begun. 

Let’s plan to rejoin in say, on month and you’ll see how his candidacy will be showing signs of irreparable stress.

When winter blends into Fall

It’s not unusual to see an early snow around Park City during September or October. 

The early incursion of the white stuff doesn’t last long, but is a reminder that pretty soon our little mountain world is going to become cold and freezing again and that we ought to train ourselves for that change in season and temperatures.

When snow falls just when Fall colors are at their peak, it provides us with a transitional picture of autumn blending into winter and while painting a strong and symbolic picture, it also looks beautiful and we all want to say “Great job, Nature!”

Why rich countries can’t fight climate change

Most of us live in relative comfort, get used to it and don’t want to change this. For those of us that are older, like me, we were admonished all forms of “delayed gratification”, with advice like “sacrifice now for later, etc.” 

This guidance has fell into derision as we have become addicted to instant gratification instead. We can’t wait anymore and, most importantly, don’t want to slide back into harder conditions. This is precisely what saving our planet is asking from us.

We’re also all for it, but we don’t want to do anything that might cost us. Things like living in smaller and more expensive housing (because it’s also more sustainable), driving an electric vehicle with less convenient recharging, flying less often or not at all, using more public transportation, not overusing heat or air conditioning, eating less meat and much more.

The idea is that if we don’t start giving up a few things, our world will get much worse. It’s only when it’s too late, when problems turn into catastrophe and our lives are on the line, that we finally accept to be forced into taking action, like during the pandemic. 

As we always say but still fail to follow: “No pain, no gain.”

A bucolic start of the month

Yesterday was the first day of October. When I used to live in the Alps, it was the end of summer from a pastoral standpoint, as the cows would amble down the mountain, the day before, on September 30. 

In Park City, they were just showing up as we stumble about 30 cows and their calves feeding alongside the McLeod Creek and enjoying not only the abundant grass, but a colorful afternoon as well. What a nice surprise!

The aftermath of another Covid booster

Last Thursday morning, we were in Salt Lake City, and among other errands, we had an appointment for the newly released Covid booster. Yes, so rare and so special that it was per appointment only! My wife, always brave, went first and proudly exclaimed: “It didn’t hurt me a bit!”. I was next, but admitted that I feel a nasty sting. 

The rest of the day went well and it’s only at bedtime that I felt really bad with symptoms that were those of a bad cold. I must say that out of three preceding Covid shots, I had felt bad on two occasions, also with flu-like symptoms, but that would be mild compared to what was waiting for me.

What’s strange is that a few days before that I had my flu shot along with the new respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine that’s recommended for people over 60 without feeling anything. Anyway, that night, I felt tired and achy all over my body. I slept, but my dreams were bizarre and strangely illogical (not that my dreams are totally logical, but they’re not that weird) that might have been induced by the drugs contained in the shot.

At any rate, when I tried to get up to make coffee the next morning I felt terrible. I started the coffee and had to lay down on the living room sofa, sweating profusely and feeling totally beat up. It took me the whole day to regain a sense of normalcy as my fake-flu progressively faded away. 

In the meantime, my wife said she felt a tiny bit tired, but otherwise fine. I guess some of us are weaker than the rest, and I’m not looking forward to next year’s Covid shot if there’s still such an animal...