Can flying ever be the same?

Just before the pandemic, flying was starting to get a black eyes, here and there, as it was seen as overly polluting and creating a huge carbon footprint per passenger mile. In addition a drastic reduction in vehicular traffic is restoring clean air everywhere.

Today, with passenger air traffic 95% down in America alone, it will take a long time to bring back fliers to sit inside a narrow tube, especially for many long hours, and folks will definitely prefer road trips at first as a mode of evasion.

What’s certain is that international travel that’s likely to be subject to delayed governmental authorizations, will take a very long time before it gains critical mass again.

What will this means to mountain destination resorts like Park City? A tepid summer may be still be followed by a disappointing winter in which a vast majority of visitors may be locals or skiers driving from the nearby Pacific Coast.

What made Park City so hot, just like what made my hometown valley of Morzine, France so busy, was the fly-in market that landed in the nearby airports of Salt Lake City or Geneva, Switzerland, and this way of recreating will take a long time to recover.

To add insult to injury, once back in the air and after “priming the pump” with cheap fares and low jet fuel cost, airlines may have to raise their rates to accommodate less than full loads while discount carriers like Easyjet, might simply disappear.

Finally, companies will discover that video conferencing is going to cut deep into corporate meetings and traveling. Would this usher new technology like small electric airplanes that operate more like taxis or limousines? This is quite possible, but it might take some time.

At any rate, the pre-Covid-19 carefree and profligate air travel might never reappear as we knew it, opening some room to rail, high-speed trains, or better yet, Hyper-loop transportation.

Australia’s turn to lead…

Except for the Portillo World Ski Championships back in 1966, the Southern Hemisphere ski industry has never led the way, but now it might again, in a huge way, as its gears up for its “Covid-19, 2020” winter season when it’s supposed to open some of its slopes on June 6.

While South America will do what it can, one might look to Australia for leadership in that matter. I recently read a press release from the ASAA, its industry association: “The Australian ski season will begin its 2020 ski season only with the blessing of governments and health authorities, and within their guidelines, the industry will not in any way pre-empt what the decisions of government and the health authorities may be.” 

This said, they don’t seem to have a plan, or have thought of one yet, that could be submitted to their governmental authorities.

I doubt that they’ve been consulting either with NSAA, their American counterpart on the matter, and while Vail Resorts owns Perisher in New South Wales, ASAA might begin by using some of the U.S. guidelines, but who knows? Time will tell us pretty soon!

Winners vs. Losers…

That “Winner vs. Loser” subject has been exacerbated by Trump and was very much in vogue in the mid-seventies when I immigrated to the United States.

It made quite an impression on me and became a key element of my business education and understanding of Corporate America.

During this pandemic, I received this business-minded message that extolled the virtues of being a “Winner” as opposed to a “Loser”.

Today, while I still agree that this particular approach served me well when I followed it the best I could, I don't see it now as neatly as I used to, and see it as a bit contrived, lacking empathy and being a bit exploitative.

In other terms, you must be a winner to be worth anything, and being any bit less than that, pigeon-holes you into a totally undesirable human category. How do you feel about it?

The quest for beneficial simplicity

I’ve never been a fan of complexity, but rather a stunned, admirer of simplicity.

Let’s face it; the purest inventions, the stunning designs and best ideas always are the simplest ones. The kind of which makes us say, or enviously consider: “I should have thought of it...”

Up until now and whenever I could, I always pondered if my way was the simplest one. That was before I became horrified by both the invading and paralyzing forces of complexity.

Now, my first consideration will always be: “Have I well thought, researched, tested and verified enough times, that my solution is absolutely the simplest, possible one?”

The end of a great ski season

My first ski season as an instructor at Avoriaz, France, ended fifty years ago, also on a Sunday, May 3.

It ended with at least 5 meters of snow accumulated by the top tram station (not shown on the picture; suffice to say that as skiers were disembarking from the tram, they had simply no stair to climb down!)

That spring and early summer, the snow would take forever to melt.

With plenty of regrets, while I was just beginning to have fun, I had to put aside the boards and take a job as assistant surveyor in St. Gervais, another ski and mountain resort, at the foot of Mt. Blanc.

I wanted to see if that job could lead to a career that could dovetail with my addiction with skiing.

More about this later…

Days of plenty

Even though I’m retired and, to a degree, locked down, all my days are an avalanche of terrific moments to which I’m looking forward to.

Nothing is repulsive, uninteresting or just dull. Every little piece of the day brings a chuck-full of good things.

Consider this:

From my early morning meditation to listening to the news on NPR radio, appreciating a different breakfast everyday, a tonic 4 mile walk, some work and browsing on my computer. This is followed by a nice lunch, an afternoon project, seasonal and different.

Then it's time for another 2,5 mile walk, the five o’clock drink, a good dinner, some TV and some good reading before turning in, all in the wonderful company of my wife.

My only sin is that I don’t even take the time to reflect and congratulate myself on a wonderful day, that I’m already anticipating the next one before I close my eyes.

What a life!

Don’t demonize China, replace it!

There isn’t a day that passes when I don’t hear that Trump is demonizing China, either for the virus it sent us or for some unfair trade practices.

Likewise, I keep getting emails inferring that Covid-19 is a Chinese conspiracy, that the country is overtly malevolent, or that we ought to boycott China altogether.

My take on this is slightly different in that I feel that if we don’t like the Chinese as our top manufacturer and supplier or even competitor we should replace them with someone else.

This could be the Vietnamese, the Indians, the Indonesians or their Malaysian neighbors, unless we’re a bit more gutsy, imaginative and inventive, to harness Artificial Intelligence (AI), or find enough robots to make labor costs a non-issue in the whole process.

AI and robots are likely to be at the center of our near future and why not mobilize the nation to harness these resources in order to gain independence from the Chinese if we can’t stand their way of doing business and their perceived belligerence?

When all is said and done, all is fair in love, and war, as well as in business, of course!