Closing too early costs a lot

Whether some of us like it or not, Park City, first and foremost, is a ski town. Many of its inhabitants depends on the ski industry for their living. Yet, our two ski areas don't seem to care much about this reality. They run their business as they see fit.

This spring, both decided to shut down operations on April 7. At the same time, ski areas that are comparable in notoriety and volume (Vail-Beaver Creek and Whistler-Blackcomb,) exceeding the 2 million mark in skier-days, just like Park City Mountain and Deer Valley combined, respectively closed on April 21 and 23.

I call this “normal” closing date a win-win for the locals. A win-win for those who still wanted to enjoy some spring skiing, some extra revenue for those businesses that could have tapped into some extra Easter business activity and some more taxes collected for both the City and the County.

That wasn't the case for Park City, which ski areas closure date fell smack into the beginning of the local kids school spring break. Nice! The perfect win-lose scheme that doesn't buy brownie points for our two resorts.

One might object “these closing dates where known since sometime in the summer, why do you complain about?” Well, we simply were too trusting and complacent. This might change when next year's dates are announced.

So far, only Deer Valley has set its closing date, on Easter Sunday, April 12. Do I hope that Vail Resorts will pick April 19 or 26 for Park City? I just wish, I guess...

Let's also admit that the Park City Municipal Corporation, Summit County, Utah, the Park City School System and the whole Chamber Bureau were not paying attention that time. Instead, they should have been watching and have vociferously raised the issue because of the dollar-and-cent consequences of a premature closing date.

Now, this early closure date goes beyond the above-mentioned reasons. It paints Park City as being a “lesser” resort than its Vail or Whistler “siblings” by attaching to it a shorter season.

Once more, as the ski runs still look perfectly skiable from my house at the tail end of April, I just wanted to vent my frustration at two ski resorts that don't seem to care much about Park City.

Going from 20 to 1

Twenty Democrat candidates is a lot to sort out, yet alone, digest. This said, it's better to have too much choice than not enough.

With such a huge number, though, I can see how hard it might be to select the right person through the series of upcoming overcrowded debates and I propose a guide for doing this just right.

First and foremost, the main challenge and the highest priority are to find the right candidate who is best equipped to slay the Trump dragon. That's the key. Nothing else, not even the cleverest of programs will come close to that selection criteria.

To get there, the best candidates will have to establish themselves outside of the planned debates, through “in your face” media presence and creative communication that will show what they have “under the hood”. This won't suffice, however.

We, the voters, will need to do our share of research and analysis, by tracking what each candidate says through their website and the media in general, and not be shy about broadcasting what we've concluded and why we reached our conclusion.

At the present time, plain notoriety is buoying certain candidates like Biden and Sanders (I can't picture “Slow Joe” not being laminated under Trump's mockeries, something Sanders would be much better at), but thank God, this won't last, and through a right approach from the rest of the field and a discerning electorate, the right man or woman who is best equipped to annihilating Trump will emerge.

At least, that's what I hope!

Can skiing travel well?

In fact, the real question should be: Are skiers willing to travel far?

I still remember when I first skied at Park City, they were trail signs in Japanese to translate the existing signs in English.

At the time, the entire Japan was crazy about skiing and was a few years away from falling into the financial abyss that knocked the country out in the late 80s. All Nippon Airways was planning to bring skiers to Utah, to expose them to the joys of the Greatest Snow on Earth.

When I still was in France, its brand-new ski resorts from the 70s were betting that American living on the East Coast wouldn't hesitate much to jump on a plane and patronize their new places.

It sort of happened for a few years, but didn't develop. Instead, long distance skiers found that between jet-lag, change in altitude, not to mention a different culture they were too many “moving parts” negatively adding to the logistic challenge that skiing already is.

Later, American skiers started to shorten their stays and continent-hoping, just to ski, became a thing of the past. Well today, Aussies continue to ski in America (they generally stay 2 weeks), Japan and even Europe during their summer, while some Americans and Chinese come over to Japan, but these actions by a few are not making a huge difference in terms of skier-visits.

It simply is to demanding to travel overseas in order to ski. This only seems to compute in the minds of some imaginative marketing executives.

Right, everyone is crying for simplification when it comes to skiing and these observations make me doubt that the resort-hoping promoted by Vail Resorts and Alterra are going in that direction and, as a result, are with us to stay...

The American view of Europe

For years, American pundits have looked at the European Union with skepticism and have never ceased to speculate about its future and coming demise.

Call it a contrarian view if you want, but I see this mindset more as petty envy coming from a country utterly convinced it's the world's best. You might call this an expected outcome of “American Exceptionalism”, I guess.

The same holds true of course for the fate of the Euro that never could have survived as a prime currency, and yet it still stands strong on the eve of its twentieth birthday!

More dramatic yet is Brexit and its unintended consequences that are demonstrating that “breaking up is hard to do” and indirectly, that the value of a Union that's much more resilient and essential to the entire Continent than Steve Bannon's would like us to believe.

I'm not even mentioning the recurrent Airbus - Boeing feud and all the ugly disagreements that were generated by the ill-conceived Iraq war. Perhaps it's time for America to grow up a bit and reassess it's new, real place in today's world!

Notre Dame conspiracy theories

While Notre Dame's was still smoldering, there were already hundreds of conspiracy theories circulating about what really caused the blaze.

Yesterday, my Republican neighbor sent me one of these "fishy" messages that was clearly one of these made up stories the American extreme right loves to circulate.

I studied the origin of the news and found that it was from PJ Media (aka Pajamas Media), an American conservative opinion and commentary blog, founded in 2004. It's owned by Aubrey Chernick a billionaire entrepreneur and investor.

I told my friend that if the article came from a credible publication like the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, I would take it more seriously, but PJ Media wasn't what I'd call unbiased, and neither is Breitbart that happened to be quoted as a source for this article.

I also checked the Figaro, a center-right French newspaper that cataloged all the the "conspiracy theories" that have flourished following the fire at the Cathedral and none appears credible. At this point, the French authorities seem to lean towards an accidental cause.

Of course, what will be critical is knowing the outcome of the investigation that is far from being over as it continues gathering facts. Hopefully, the investigators will find the real cause of the blaze, and then it will finally be time to free the weirdest and latest conspiracy stories...

How many ski passes do I need?

This past season, I had the Epic Pass, which is required to ski Park City Mountain and I also tried its Ikon, not quite “equivalent”.

So far, I've used the Ikon 15 times against 96 for the Epic. I get a much better value for my money from the later and I am now weighing the merits of renewing my “Ikon Base.”

The problem with that pass is that after using it 5 times at Deer Valley (which I consider "next door"), I need to drive, and even when it's just to our neighboring resorts, it means about two-hour behind the wheel each time!

Just thinking about it makes me feel tired. At this point I still don't know what to do and must make my mind up today.

Help me!

What are these folks having in common?

The obvious answer is that they're old.

In case you've forgotten, old is the opposite of new. I personally prefer new over old, whether it's yogurts, automobiles, planes and clothes.

Humanly speaking, one could say that Trump, Mugabe, Biden, Bouteflika, Queen Elizabeth, Sanders and al-Bashir among others, are of the resilient types that enjoy leading regardless of their age and abilities.

They absolutely don't want to let go and leave their jobs to younger, more talented people. They believe they're the best and ought to be in charge.

I respectfully disagree and am in a very good spot to attest that, after 70, one should be retired and perhaps, at best, advising, but not leading.

The French, in spite of their mixed opinions about their 41 years old Emmanuel Macron, don't know how lucky they are!