Bad skiing moves and muscle memory

After watching enough Alpine World Cup ski races, I can see that a great many top athletes forget that turning on the inside ski doesn’t work too well. 

This is the typical element that not just the Olympians fail to remember, but also the rest of us. It shows how hard it is to sear into muscle memory moves that are counter-intuitive. 

Just like pivoting the pelvic bones into a turn, we must constantly make a conscious effort to remind ourselves of these key to functionality and not fall into the lazy, hurry or desperate ways of simply leaning inside to produce a turn. 

This is why, even into my 70th season of skiing, I need to always remember that my moves are technically sound and well prepare, so don’t despair, between the Croatian racer pictured here, you and me, we better keep that in mind in order to stay away form this sneaky skiing epidemic!

That black box called Regrets

Regrets are a feeling that happens in real time and that is based on elements we know. Yet, no situation can ever be the same, especially if circumstances happen to be different. In fact, regret is this powerful negative emotion that makes us believe if we changed our past actions or behaviors, we would have achieved a better outcome. 

Occasionally I question myself and so does my wife about the wisdom about having moved to the United States 46 years ago. I’ve always been a bit split and unclear on that issue. Yet, choosing to stay in France or immigrating to America came with its own set of environmental conditions and interaction, meaning issues like employment, lifestyle, family life, children, interaction with each culture and other people plus a host of unknowns involving, as always, a significant share of good fortune and bad luck. 

What would those elements have been, had we not move to the USA? Very, very hard to say or predict based all the fluctuating conditions I just listed. In fact, such a parallel projection is impossible to make accurately. Our lives could have been much worse, much better or about the same and we might be already gone and unable to tell about it…

All this to say that a choice can’t be regretted because none of the multiple elements surrounding it are constant or can be counted on. Further, regrets are not just useless, they’re also potentially totally meaningless, which behooves us to be constructive in fixing whatever we don’t like about them. 

So next time a choice between two paths anguishes you, take the one that is most pleasant or best fit your fancy and just seize it without ever turning back!

A new flag for Utah

It was not the case that the current flag of the State of Utah was old and decrepit, but let’s be frank, it wasn’t exciting. So our Governor is expected to sign a new flag design into law and replace the old with something new. 

The new design is allegedly the result of a lengthy design process that involved a special committee, the public and several iterations of the design. It features a prominent gold hexagon containing a beehive and a five-pointed star representing Utah’s five traditional indigenous tribes. 

It’s fair to wonder how the beehive design is so iconic to Utah. According to Mormon history, the Bible refers to the Promised Land’ as “land of milk and honey”. Christians and Freemasons also used the bee and beehive as symbols of cooperative work. Many of America’s founding fathers were Masons, and the new country a promised land. 

Further, many early Mormons were also Masons, including Joseph Smith who invented the religion. According to Mormonism, the Jaredites, a tribe from the Tower of Babel’s time, made a 344-day magic voyage across the ocean to North America, bringing with them the “Deseret” which means “Honey bee” in the Book of Mormon’s jargon.

The new flag's fields of blue and white create the outline of five mountain peaks. A red field at the bottom represents Southern Utah's famed red rock. But the old flag isn’t quite dead yet, both flags will be flown together on state holidays and during the legislative session and other special occasions.

According to the bill, citizens may also use the historic flag upon any occasion deemed appropriate. Do I like the new design? Not really. I find it a little simplistic and a repository of everything the designer thought of putting into. Perhaps its a result of involving a “special committee” with its design. 

What about you; do you like it? 

On the plus side, I find it more colorful and can live with it since it’s unlikely to change my life!

 

Precious times, half a century ago!

This picture was taken at the “Pas du Lac” restaurant in March 1973 with some of my best buddies. Just fifty years ago, this was the place where we’d get a boosting morning espresso before our class lessons would start. 

An alternative place would have been the “Café de la Gare”, but we weren’t too eager to give our hard-earned Franc to that establishment! 

We would shoot the breeze, catch up with the latest news, and share our plans for the futures that didn’t go much further than the end of the week. At that moment, I wasn’t sure I’d return to Australia the following summer as I was consumed by the major crisis that was splitting our ski school in two.

From left to right: Jean-Claude, Denys, Blandine, me and Francois. Well we were young, still carefree and life felt good.

Skiing “Eights” at Park City Canyons

It took all the snow we’ve got this year for the Canyons section of Park City Mountain to open up new runs that I had never seen made accessible to skiers. 

I had a chance to sample them early February as they were briefly opened and all the snow we recently received reopened “Eights” (red line), a 45% chute that is just narrow enough to hold a figure eight, hence its name that’s harking back to the times snow was plentiful and that section of the mountain was still named “Park West”. 

A run that means full commitment as soon as you point your skis or your board into it... Consistently super steep, that chute crosses two cat-tracks, adding to the challenge, and end up at the bottom of Spider Monkey for a total vertical drop of 520 feet. 

In addition, skiing “Eights” gives access to “Rock Chute – Roll Chute” (doted line), on skier’s left, slightly less steep, much wider and far less challenging, but still fun. 

If you’re looking to stretch the envelope, look no further than “Eigths!”

Keeping my skiing in focus

This past Friday was another snow day, so after blowing and shoveling my driveway, I went skiing in the afternoon. 

At first, I thought the visibility was terrible, flat light and the like, so while skiing, there was delayed feedback from the terrain, something not pleasant and not so good for my old frame. 

Yet, beyond these poor light conditions, I also couldn’t see skiers very well in the far distance but I thought that my goggles were probably less than crystal clean and left the situation at that. 

So, I skied and skied in 10 to 12 inches of fresh, light powder, into steep couloirs, and in cool spots I’d never skied before, just made possible by of our generous snow cover. At the end of the afternoon the skies cleared up and the experience became just out of this world. I skied aggressively and fast while conveniently forgetting that my vision was far from perfect. 

So I drove back home at the end of a great powder day and it’s only in the evening that, while watching TV, I wondered if I was seeing as sharply as I should. 

I went to the bathroom and there, realized by glancing at the counter that I forgot to put on the contact lens I use for seeing in the distance. 

This speaks volumes about the power of motivation and passion over physical limitations!

Why does Consumer Reports hates Teslas?

I just got the last Consumer Reports (CR) magazine to which we’ve been loyal subscribers for the past 40 years or even more. I looked at the new offering for 2023 and found – once again – Tesla was at, or near the bottom of its ranking, mostly on the account of lack of reliability. 

Conversely, its owners satisfaction is better than average, so something doesn’t seem to add up there. After the Twitter incidents, I no longer like Elon Musk, but I have to admit that I admire what Tesla and SpaceX are doing. 

I’ve owned and driven a Tesla model Y for almost nine month now, including in one of the harshest winter we’ve experienced in recent year and had no problem whatsoever and I still love my car. 

CR doesn’t like the minimalist display that presents a significant learning curve, but do what is needed and more, plus gets updated every now and then. In fact just like a smart phone or tablet it takes a bit of getting used to, but it seems obvious that CR testers are above that kind of effort! 

Finally, for those who don't like the screen there is the voice command option which covers almost all the controls on the screen and works perfectly well. Who needs thousands of dials, switches and indicators crammed into a small car cockpit? 

What I don’t like is that somehow, its aerodynamics make its white body dirty, very fast. Do I need to add that car never went for service or repairs of any kinds during that time period, except for fixing a flat tire I got the very day I bought the car? 

I think, if anything, it’s CR that has a bad case of reliability problem in the way they test their cars!