Road trippin'

These past couple of days, my daughter is on the road, driving almost 800 miles solo, from sunny California all the way to sunny Utah and Park City. Thinking of it made me reminisce the magic side of all the road trips I also took alone when I was a young man, a few stood out in my mind.

I particularly remembered that month of June 1973 when I drove less than 400 miles, that is half of my daughter drove in two days, from my hometown of Montriond, in the French Alps all the way to Murnau, in Bavaria. On the way, I stopped in Wolfurt, Austria, the home of Doppelmayr skilifts, where I met Walter Frois, one of the two Mount Buller ski school directors in Australia.

I eventually landed in Murnau where I found a job as waiter for a while at a local restaurant. My goal was to learn German, which I did, but this first stint didn't quite suffice as I hit the road alone two more times to Tübingen, Germany where I polished a bit more that particular linguistic skill...

Hurricane power

In spite of all of its destructive power, super-storm Sandy has given us yesterday and today the most positive days on the airwaves and the entire media, as our two presidential candidates have been literally shut-up by the raging weather.

So for a very short while we've been spared all the negativity from both campaign as well as all the lies (a Romney's specialty). This will have given us a well-deserved break from the relentless mud-throwing.

Will this surprise hurricane help Obama? Probably... Can Obama still win? Probably too, thanks the that crazy Electoral College...
 

Training for Halloween?

Yesterday, my wife read somewhere that it's not a great idea to purchase Halloween candies in advance. I responded by asking if the candies held for too long might eventually lose their taste, become rancid or just pass their expiration date for optimum freshness.

She told me that it was simply that people who see an ample supply of sugar treats laying around their house for an extended period of time can't generally resist the temptation. I should have thought of that, as I am a typical offender who can't help but help myself when I happen to stand than 10 feet away from our household candy storage area that we have strategically located next to my office.

I shrug off any suggestion that I have an addiction by countering that sampling the supplies is a proper way to make sure that the stuff we give-away is delicious and also to train myself gradually for the upcoming candy overdose. I don't usually get spooked by too much sugar, at least not around Halloween!

We've got a ski champ in town! Really?

Today, Ted Ligety, like the rest of his fellow racers was using his new "2 x 4s," and in the worst of possible conditions, he managed to triumph at the season's opening ski World Cup in Sölden with a historic 2.75 second lead. There is no question that the skier from Park City is a true champion and if you have seen his recent training videos, you can appreciate that he's got the “right stuff.”

Yet if he were to stroll down Main Street, Park City, at any time of the year most people would not recognize him. He's got no fan club and no one to cheer for him loudly at any of the World Cup venues This morning, as he had already won, I was on my way to Deer Valley to pick up some fresh croissants and I turned on the local radio, hoping to hear from that race. Nothing.

As you can see, ski racing is not popular in Park City. At least, Ted doesn't have to worry about paparazzi when he happens to be in town...

Where in the world is Yves Bocquet?

A few days ago, I called Mychel Blanc, a friend from France. After catching up on current news and events, he immediately asked me if I have heard a mutual friend, Yves, who normally lives in New York. I told him that I had not, and presumed he was touring Normandy on his Harley-Davidson, which I thought was the last I heard about him.

As Mychel sounded distraught and appeared to be insisting so much that I dropped everything I was doing to search for the “disappeared,” I obliged. After a few phone calls and one text-message, “Bill,” as we call him, re-surfaced and said not to worry as he had just returned from a six week trip touring the Alps and the Dolomites on his bike, and upon coming home, he had been super busy moving himself into a larger apartment in mid-town Manhattan.

I couldn't immediately get the hold of Mychel who, to forget about his presumed loss, had gone to Paris to see the Edward Hopper exhibit, hoping - I guess - to find our friend Bill, as we call him, miraculously captured by the famous artist into one of his pricey canvass!

How I manage my expectations

Yesterday, it snowed, boy did it snow! We got close to 9 inches at our home in Park City and this morning, it was winter-wonderland... Does that mean that I'm bullish about snow this winter? Not at all.

Over the years I have (painfully) learned how to manage my expectations. I have set two categories: Things I control (even marginally) and things I don't. Mid and long-term weather expectations happen to fall into the latter category, which means that I have no expectation whatsoever in this area.

I only can be positively surprised and this is a wonderful thing. Anything I can control a tiny bit, I will try to influence if it happens to interest me. For the rest, I take a fatalistic – not religious - attitude and I say Insha'Allah (you probably know what this one means...)

Sport, drugs and entertainment

I've never been a good and steady sport fan; instead of “watching” sport, I vastly prefer “doing” it. This said, I have followed the unraveling of the Tour de France's credibility and the fall of Lance Armstrong, its seven-time winner.

What I've come to understand is that in order to have a chance to participate, all these “top athletes” must take performance-enhancing drugs. Not just in cycling, but also, I'm told, in tennis and in a wide range of other sports; not just in endurance contests, but virtually everywhere.

Every famous sport individual's “cleanliness” can and should be questioned, including even that of famous characters like Reinhold Messner, the renowned mountain climber. So, with Lance's demise, any athlete's credibility has now become questionable.

Does that mean that I will stop watching the Tour de France? Probably not; I love the way it's filmed and I see entertainment value in it. Same thing for skiing and for a marathon race, but I will see all of it as a form of entertainment; no, a circus act.

On the other end, I'll keep on doing the few sports that I call my own. I can feel the pain when I'm doing them and I can guarantee you that, except for the beer and wine I drank the night before, I remain totally “clean.”