The curse of a large ski area?

Yesterday was my first chance to experience the merged Park City and The Canyons ski areas to their full extent, appreciate in the process the work achieved during the summer and the sense of enormous size this connection was adding to what used to be a regular ski outing.

One of my findings was that it takes a lot of time to get from point A to point B, and as a result a skier like me will ski far less in a full ski day than if he stuck to one mountain, like the old Park City, Canyons or Deer Valley on his own.

It's not out of reason to say that an interconnected ski experience will cut one-third into someone's skiing, but it may double up the sense of adventure and scenery that a skier might experience otherwise. Interconnected ski mountains are more for contemplation than for sheer skiing, but the former is more likely to hit home with most visitors and that's what counts.

Stein Eriksen, 1927 - 2015

Much has been said about the iconic skier, Stein Eriksen, that passed away at age 88, in Park City, on December 27. I never knew much about him until I came to America in 1977. At that time, Norm MacLeod, from Beconta reminded me about his stunning ski achievements along with his great class, his godly looks, impeccable dress and wonderful kindness.

In the early eighties, my friend Michel Duret, from France, even produced a batch of Pure Gold luxury skis endorsed by the Champion who also remained the ideal model for Bogner ski clothing all of his life. I met Stein more closely during ski functions and also when I move to Park City in 1985.

He developed into an incredible public personality, even more so than Toni Sailer and Jean-Claude Killy ever became; in fact, he seemed to have directed all of his focus into turning his public persona into the quintessential ambassador to skiing in North America.

Rest in peace, Stein

Slow your roll!

A year or so ago, the city of Park City began to post signs intimating cyclists to slow down in specific areas of multi-user trails, and for some unknown reason I liked the expression a lot.

Then I researched it and found, in the Urban dictionary, that it had a lot more surprising meanings than met the eyes, less litteral, like a term “used to inform a homie that he's getting outta control and he might want to shut the hell up before he gets beat the hell up”.

I also found that one that went something like "Baby, you're moving so fast, you're going to overheat. You're coming at me in fifth gear; maybe bring it down to second. You know, slow your roll."

I'll stop there, you probably got the gist of the message now!

A quick overview of my opinions...

Yesterday, I started a conversation on Facebook that I didn't follow as well as I should have. I went skiing instead and had a hell of a good time.

This said, one of the person who got hooked on my challenge deserve to know what I think and I'll try to give him a general overview of my world's view (whatever this means) in just 20 points:

1. I think man has profoundly screwed up the world we live in. 
2. We are just too many on this planet that could hold – at best – 2 billion people, not 7.3 as is the case today. We should depopulate before we are screwed! 
3. Pollution, climate change are all caused by overpopulation. 
4. Overpopulation is the root cause of our planetary degradation. 
5. This planet is for every human. 
6. There should be no borders, no countries (John Lennon). 
7. There should be one single world administration kept in check by its population, not 200 inefficient governments. 
8. This said, migration should be regulated and conducted in ways that are based on assimilation (i.e. if Islam is important to a person, that person should seek living in Muslim countries, if a person is socialist... if a person is capitalist... etc. 
9. This would be a nice way to start. Migration should also be regulated in terms of needs. Computer programmers, road pavers, oil drillers, etc. 
10. War, arms, nuclear or chemical arsenal of all kinds should be abolished. 
11. Extractive industries (fossil fuels, minerals) as well as agribusiness should be strictly regulated and taxed whenever needed. 
12. We should take a new look at the administration and dispensation of heath care. Do we want to prolong life at any cost regardless of the economic burden it represents? 
13. The capitalist system based on (population) growth should evolved into a qualitative form of growth (less stuff, but better). 
14. Religion (any) is a dangerous, irrational practice that should be strictly kept private (no house of worship, no external distinctions, etc.) 
15. Brainwashing children with religious (irrational) concept is tantamount to child abuse. 
16. For thousands of years, religion has been poison. 
17. Education for all is paramount, should be free and call on the brightest possible minds to lead the charge. Money should be totally out of politics. 
18. Meritocracy is a good thing. Those who work and contribute the most should be rewarded reasonably, but not 1,000 fold. 
19. Innovation and creativity should be encouraged, made easy and placed on a pedestal. 
20. Glorify teachers, indispensable lowly people, not athletes and show business stars.

A tire blows-out; what do you do?

This recently happened to a good friend of mine while he was driving on nearby Interstate 80. He's a very good driver, a super skier and yet, when his rear tire blew out for some unknown reason, he hit the brake hard, his car jumped straight into the concrete guardrail and got totaled.

By luck, he and his dog standing on the front seat didn't get a scratch! What should have he done instead?

At a minimum, he should have stayed away from the brake pedal and allowed the drag of the failed tire to slow the vehicle to say, 30 mph or slower, before they even considering turning the steering wheel in order to pull over.

Better yet, he should have done something even more counter-intuitive: Press the gas pedal for an instant, just long enough to stabilize the vehicle. Of course, this is much easier said than done, especially in the real world when it's so easy to panic, but this remains a useful tip to remember!

The ever escalating cost of skiing

Today, I saw an old ski lift ticket from Park City Ski Area going back to the 1982/83 season. The price was already a steep $24.00!

Today, the same ticket would cost $123. So, if we consider the consumer price index between these two points in time, it has gone up 242 percent while the price of the lowly Park City day ticket has shot up 513 percent!

That's more than twice what should be the “norm.” Sure, you'll say that massive snow-making has entered into the picture, manicured grooming and fast lifts as well, but please, just give me a break, this feels a bit overboard to me...

What does the US need?

You could ask yourself what legacy are the two presumptive presidential candidates for 2016 (Trump and Clinton) likely to leave our Nation, when their presidency is over after two terms in 2024?

 This might, in of itself, be the object of one of my next blogs, but as of now, the real question could be: “what does America need that hasn't been addressed so far?”

Generally speaking, we should emulate the best OCDE practices as we aim for the following: 

• Balance the federal budget with governments cuts and tax increases 
• Begin repaying the debt 
• Reform our electoral laws and remove special interest money from them 
• Reform our education system by applying proven world best practices 
• Make our health care system competitive with the rest of the developed world 
• Continue to move aggressively on world's pollution and climate change 
• Re-frame our military purpose into a Defense-only mode 

There might be more that could be done, but I would be entirely pleased with seeing the above points addressed once and for all.