Utah's Exceptionalism

America makes a big deal about its exceptionalism, but so should my home state of Utah.

It's a wonderful and very special spot, not just from a picturesque standpoint going from Red Rock to Alpine country, but culturally it's also the Mormon's promised land and the playground of heathens that are increasingly tipping the population balance away from this bizarre set of beliefs. 

That's not all; Utah, and particularly Park City, also enjoys a wonderful climate with 250 sunny days compared with 250 rainy or snowy days in Chamonix, France. As for the humidity, we're dryer than the Sahara desert with an average yearly humidity of 35% compared to 70% in Chamonix.

This sets the stage for the “Greatest Snow on Earth”. Still, we're scarcely populated with only 14 people per square kilometer compared to about 86 in the USA or 150 in Europe, so there's plenty of free space to recreate.

But enough talked about this; in fact, Utah is so cool that I feel the urge to go out and ride my bike!

Setting the focus on happiness

Everyday as I wake up, I think, plan, and act as if I wanted to be happy with my reality of the moment.

Happiness is my driver and this is probably why, my life is so good to me.

Don't start your day in “Reverse”.

Place the lever on “Drive” from the time you wake up!

The $130 (new) printer

My six-year old printer just died on me. I only paid $150 for the machine, so it's cost ended up being a measly $25 per year, not counting, of course, the expensive ink-jet cartridges it had gobbled up in the meantime.

I immediately bought a replacement one, still made by HP, with even more bells and whistles for even less, just $130, but it took me a total of six hours to make it work between the time I tried to figure out by myself how to set the wireless up and print some ordinary envelopes.

Between my time, that of the retailer service tech and the HP support person, I bet that we burned through $350 to $400 on brain power that could have been totally avoided if the printer had been engineered and documented the right way in the first place!

From Road to Mountain-bike

Yesterday was my first ride on fat tires after familiarizing myself – again – with a road bike, and, as always, I enjoyed thoroughly the outing.

After a few days on my new road bike, I felt strong and ready to climb, yet at the same time, I had not lost any of my special mountain biking skills and savored its fun factor.

Even though the two activities have very little in common, except for the use of bicycle, they seem very compatible and even complementary. I can and plan to live with both!

A good night sleep

Three month ago, we decided to give up late evening TV watching and substituted it for reading.

This was a very good move as we had learned before making that change that watching TV or reading a tablet just before bed was not good for the quality of our sleep.

There were lots of scientific sounding reasons for that and I don't care to remember them, but the bottom line is that we now sleep like angels.

I guess, before that change, we must have slept like... devils?

Let's make America Metric!

While the Olympics are forcing America into metricity for a couple of weeks with weird numbers like 100 or 200 meters, "Letting America be Metric" could be a bearable spin-off on Trump's campaign slogan.

As an overdue item on changing America for the best, I'd love to see us revisiting everything metric. With Burma and Liberia, we're the three stragglers on earth still clinging to a medieval measurement system that I had to learn and still don't master after about four decade of American life.

The cost of not going metric is estimated to some 1.5 trillion per year, but no one seems to care as everyone is focused on the cost of switching that would be a tiny fraction of this, not mentioning the fact that most industries are already using a dual system.

Even NASA broke the mold in 2007 and went metric after losing a probe as a result of getting mixed up with its units! I wonder what each campaign (Clinton and Trump) are thinking about this issue, and if they're yet alone aware of our backward stance in that domain?

After Park City, Whistler... What's next?

Today, Vail Resorts continued its shopping spree and threw Whistler-Blackcomb, the largest ski hill in North America, into the cart. At the register the item rang a paltry $1.1 billion, but as said Rob Katz, the CEO, “it's well worth it”. I'm sure these guys have plenty of money left so the question now has become which resort will be next. I'd say Deer Valley, but here again, I'm a tad biased...