On me, songs and music I love, hold a very strong evocative power.
A few nights ago, I heard the Eagle’s number one hit that also happen to be among my favorite songs. That’s when I remember hearing “Hotel California” blasting off a tourist bus radio, near Nevers, France where Look ski-bindings were headquartered.
I must have heard the song released in 1976 many times before, but in that instance, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
The year was 1977 and I was part of the US sales contingent that had been invited to tour the ski-binding factory and later on that day, we were invited to a reception at the Château de Beaumont, located 22 miles south, near Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier.
This imposing castle was Look’s General Manager modest abode. Philippe Blime and his wife hosted us in grand style inside their impressive residence, and to me and my imaginative mind, this was the perfect physical location for a song like “Hotel California”!
To many folks France is Paris more than anything else, because of the domineering role its capital, Paris has upon the entire country.
Unlike Germany influenced by its main cities like Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich, the United States’ Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, or Italy’s Milan and Rome, France is under the ironclad control of its Paris capital, which means that all other regions and cities can only feel like second-class citizens because all happen first in Paris and Paris always control everything from careers, to business or culture.
This is not a popular subject and it’s in fact never discussed as it should in France. Most of its citizens accept the situation as an immovable fact of life and live with its constraint the very best they can.
Yet, I believe that France would be a more successful and affluent country if had let other cities and population centers develop to their own greatness by reducing the blinding power of its capital city.
At the same time, Parisians believe and are convinced of their superiority in all respects and over all sectors of the nation’s activity and tend to look at the rest of their non-Parisian peers as inferior or underdeveloped. This, at least, is my impression. What is yours?
The views depend on which side of pond on is located. In the Alps, most people are thinking that skiing is on its way out and will soon be a thing of the past, as global warming progresses and there’s a groundswell of interest for developing alternative forms of recreation outside of skiing or snowboarding. In the US, there seems to be little, openly expressed concern about global warming and its dire consequences.
Next to my home, Mayflower, a new ski resort, adjacent to Deer Valley is in the process of being built, its ski runs have just been cut and it calls for 4,300 skiable acres served by 15 lifts at a fairly low altitude that will require, according to its preliminary projections, some 320 million gallons of water per season for snow-making, which is not what you’d call sustainable!
Then there’s Wasatch Peaks Ranch, a private ski club and ski area, located 35 minutes north from Salt Lake City, 45 from Park City and 15from Snowbasin Resort. This project is built on 12,740 acres, of which 3,000 will be skiable with 3,500 feet of vertical.
A private community of up to 750 housing units will begin a multi-phase, 10-15 year build-out, according to reports. Access to the mountain will be restricted to investors and homeowners, who are expected to be among the "one percent of the richest one percent."
The base of that exclusive resort will also be located at less than 6,000 feet of altitude, which will require much snow-making.
So you have it, the Europeans are having “cold feet” about skiing while
their North American counterparts are moving full-steam ahead.
Should
there be a middle way? You bet there should, and also a clear and
present concern for temperatures to keep on rising, unless Putin is
planning a nuclear winter for the northern hemisphere. So just tighten
your seat belts and watch!
The hubcap, as we used to know it, originated in the early 1930s and served several purposes, one of which to prevent debris from entering and interfering with the inner workings of the wheel.
Eventually, some car manufacturers wondered if there could be an advantage to expanding the center cap to cover more of the wheel, which is exactly what the Cord Automobile and Hudson Motor Car Company did.
When pressed steel wheels became commonplace, these were be painted to match the car body and hubcaps were expanded to hide the lug nuts that attached the wheels to the car, including some optional chrome rings and even fake wire spoke wheels. Unfortunately, my first car, a Citroën 2cv, had none!
These adjuncts would be displaced in recent year by aluminum wheels in all kind of appearance and finish. The hubcap was dead except for some cheap, entry-level plastic versions, that represented some fake aluminum alloy wheels.
Then came the Tesla 3 and the electric car maker focused on increasing the driving range of its new, more affordable car, with smaller batteries than its predecessors Model S and X, and in the process, re-invented the hubcap.
Tesla Model 3 and Y both come with aluminum wheels equipped with Aero covers.
Car and Driver tested a Model 3 to determine how much savings in energy consumption and increase in range its aero covers provided. Their tests revealed that Model 3's efficiency was more than expected. It averaged an increase of 3.4% in consumption efficiency and added about 10 miles of range.
At 50 miles per hour the range increased from 312 to 322 miles. At 70 miles per hour range increased from 253 to 260 miles, and at 90 miles per hour the increase of range was 4.7% totaling 199 miles.
Consumption of kWh/mile, driving at 50 miles per hour decreased by 3.1%, at 50 miles per hour it decreased by 2.5%, and at 90 miles per hour it decreased by 4.5%.
The video below features a series of road test featuring a Model Y that claim over a 7% improvement! So even if you don’t like them, the Tesla hubcaps do their job well...
Now you know that the defunct, then glorified and resurrected hubcap might be here to stay!
Courage has always been a trait that I have admired in other people and wished for myself. I also love to oversimplify, and for a long time I’ve seen in courage just the opposite of fear. No more, no less.
Over time though, I have realized that it was an incorrect notion that needed to be made right. For too long I’ve seen courage as being just the fuel for risk-taking, without making any room for fear in that equation. Yet, the defining quality of courage is not fearless action, but the willingness of taking a worthwhile risk despite being afraid of its consequences.
In fact, courage is less of an innate character strength than it is a skill; it’s indeed possible to intentionally develop courage when the right skills are in place. Nelson Mandela as said: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” Courage comes generally in three different forms: physical, psychological, and moral.
Physical courage includes a physical act, like climbing a peak or rescuing someone from drowning.
Psychological courage includes a mental risk, in which one must admit to a mistake or risk making others uncomfortable.
Moral courage is the ability to doing the right thing and standing up for personal values, even if it comes at a personal cost.
Further, there are generally four components to courage. First, an uncertain outcome is required; if we’re sure that something is going to work out, there’s no need for courage. Then there has to be the presence of fear caused by a perceived or a real risk. The fourth and final component is that the individual perceiving a risk and feeling fear for an uncertain outcome takes action through courage.
Courage isn’t a reckless leap into the unknown either. It first require assessing the risks involved, gathering information to reach a final decision, and monitoring the downside consequences. Courage is needed when one takes these above steps and still cannot fully manage or control the outcome.
So remember it this way: “Having courage is taking action when the stakes are high and the result uncertain.”
For the many summers we had a strawberry patch in our new home that was the gift that kept on giving, when the birds didn’t help themselves too much.
Then last summer the harvest fell down to nothing or almost that. I spoke to a number of amateur gardeners like us about the problem. Some said that strawberries don’t produce forever and others said that it was just one bad season and that next year should be better.
Since I preferred the latter answer and believed it, I hoped for the best in this new summer of 2022, but this was not to be.
The result was even worse than last year, double zero, which prompted me to do some more research and find out irrevocably that strawberries become less productive over time, so one has to grow more plants from runners every three to four years to ensure continuing good harvests which of course I didn’t do.
That way each new generation of strawberries should have been grown in a completely fresh bed enriched with compost to avoid the build up of disease and the kind of death that plagued my patch.
It broke my heart, but I decided to uproot all the unproductive old plants and I will start anew next summer; in the meanwhile use the space to grow more lettuce. Nothing lasts forever. I should have remembered it!
We just got some new mobile phones and this kind of event always open the door to surprises as technology is never as simple as anticipated, and can create havoc on some well-established elements we’re used to count on.
Case in point my own phone that was supposed to received the information contained in the previous one. For this, I used a special app that alerted me when the transfer was complete. As I checked to see if all my data was there, I realized that only 1,000 of my 1,300 contact names had made it to the new phone as the app only allowed for the transfer of 1,000 records.
So, I scrambled, trying to find a solution but I had a very tough time doing it. Thank god, I had by miraculous chance backed-up that particular contact info on the cloud (but forgot I had done it earlier) So, I decided to cut the 300 records that were in excess of the allowable transfer. Problem is, that in my rush, I highlighted the records I wanted out and left the check mark on the ones I wanted to leave.
I did it wrong, totally in reverse, lost all the Google data I wanted to save that doesn’t just feed my phone, but my wife’s and my computer.
Bottom line, I had lost everything and felt just like a catastrophe had befallen me. Still, I persisted, looked for other solutions, called support and after the course of the entire day restored everything, thanks for my earlier cloud back-up. If it hadn’t been for it, I’d still be crying over my misfortune...
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