Sunday my family got out on Ajax for the final day of lift serviced skiing. It was crazy--so much so that my daughter freaked out and demanded to go home. Seems the adult slip in slide, 3 hot tubs and guys launching flips while holding beers in their hands was just too much for her.
It was just right by me. The lifties built a huge jump next to the Ajax express lift and some of the big air moves being pulled were right out of Warren Miller movies. Super cool. And if you can do a 720 without spilling your beer all the more impressive. The final run down the ridge of bell included some slushy moguls big enough to hide my kids behind. Great fun.
A quick review of the year:
Total ski days made possible by Ski Co 151
My total ski days 50
number of closing days I skied 3
number of opening days I skied 0
number of days I skied Buttermilk 0
Most frequently skied mountain Snowmass by a long shot--proximity
Least frequently skied mountain Highlands---hard to get to
Favorite mountain highlands
Fresh Tracks? Yes--first down the Gulch on a bluebird pow day
Worst Tracks Boomerang Woods--all ice death cookies
Naked skier Yes --pond skimmer at closing day of highlands
Naked female skier No
Best early season quote Son--jeez this terrain makes Mt Chestnut (420' vert) seem epic
Best late season quote daughter--isn't there anything tougher than Cirque or hanging valley
number of days the kids skied about 25 each
number of times my kids complained about skiing every time they skied with me
number of out of CO skiers eating edibles on lift too many to count
Number of Aud and Brazil skiers in January too many to count
number of times I ate lunch on the mountain 3 ---too expensive to count
number of full days I skied (over 4 hours) 1
number of days it was so hot I wore only boxers 10
number of days I side slipped over 40 mph 5
number of slippers I saw dragged of course 2
number of orthopedic surgeons I saw poop their pants 2 (at world cup course conditions)
number of times I hikked up to ski 0 --but if it keeps snowing that might change
Great ski year. Can't wait to do it again next year.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Sunday, April 23, 2017
and on a lighter note--rockin the shoulder season
our plans for today--the last official ski day of the year (151 for those of you counting)
My daughter plays soccer from 11-12:30. My wife is going to yoga from 10:45-11:45. My son and wife are going to interactive physics discussion-class from noon till ski time. Figure whole family heads out for final day of skiing from 1 pm ish to 5 pm ish. Daddy and daughter go to sushi for dinner before they close daughter's fav sushi place for shoulder season. Wife and son go to Holocaust memorial event from 5:30-???? I take daughter to hockey practice from 6:30-7:30 then we head home and make sure everything is ready for outdoor ed trip (daughter camping in Fruta, son rafting near Moab).
Hope you day is equally excellent.
PS all this with one car cause the other car is stilllllllll in the body shop.
PPS rumor has it they have set up 3 hot tubs and a huge slip and slide at the top of Ajax.
If I could just find my speedo I would be all set (a dad's job is to embarrass their kids right?)
My daughter plays soccer from 11-12:30. My wife is going to yoga from 10:45-11:45. My son and wife are going to interactive physics discussion-class from noon till ski time. Figure whole family heads out for final day of skiing from 1 pm ish to 5 pm ish. Daddy and daughter go to sushi for dinner before they close daughter's fav sushi place for shoulder season. Wife and son go to Holocaust memorial event from 5:30-???? I take daughter to hockey practice from 6:30-7:30 then we head home and make sure everything is ready for outdoor ed trip (daughter camping in Fruta, son rafting near Moab).
Hope you day is equally excellent.
PS all this with one car cause the other car is stilllllllll in the body shop.
PPS rumor has it they have set up 3 hot tubs and a huge slip and slide at the top of Ajax.
If I could just find my speedo I would be all set (a dad's job is to embarrass their kids right?)
Being There---great movie --yes this is a political post
I wrote the following to the NYT today:
NY times reporters would do well to re-watch Being There. The 1979 movie staring Peter Sellers as a simple minded gardener whose entire understanding of the outside world is based on watching TV provides invaluable insights as to how to cover President Trump. Just as Chauncey Gardner’s pronouncements are consistently misinterpreted and given much greater weight than the simple gardening statements that they are, President Trumps comments about N Korea or bombing of Syria is nothing more than a narcissist trying to regain control of the spotlight. President Trump isn’t employing some version of Nixon’s madman strategy, or leveraging unpredictability to get better deals. He has no foreign or domestic policy. His goals are simple, consistent and obvious—self enrichment and aggrandizement. That is it, full stop. The NYT embarrasses itself and hurts its reputation as they reach to ascribe reason to Trump’s various pronouncements like sending an ‘armada’ to N Korea when in fact our President has done no such thing, and then as the truth comes out your paper struggles to ascribe some strategic rational to something that is nothing more than our narcissistic president struggling to share in the spotlight that N Korea has grabbed by rattling its saber. There is one character in Being There who sees Chance Gardner for what he is—the NYT must own the truth about Donald Trump and imbue it in your coverage—there is no policy, strategy or goals outside of getting attention and getting rich.
Who know if they will publish --but I would suggest anyone interested in a bit of context as well as pleasure in watching a great movie watch Being There. Timing is important too--set in 1979 as the world struggles with the oil crisis, economic depression, cold war tension and middle east unrest the parallels are striking. And both Trump and Chance gain all their knowledge about the world from TV. Trump's lines about making america great again and getting better deals and providing even better healthcare for less cost ring as hollow as Garner's lines about things growing in the springtime. Gardner literally stumbles into the chance to become President while Trump was born into it but our desire to ascribe intelligence to a simpleton that the movie plays upon is now our reality.
Friday, April 21, 2017
closing time ---well not quite but close
We missed closing day at buttermilk (ie bacon day) but hit highlands and snowmass. Aspen closes this weekend and from then on we will only get turns if we hike.
I'll do an end of season wrap but for now a couple of pics will have to do.
I'll do an end of season wrap but for now a couple of pics will have to do.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
I got a thing for garages
basically the bigger the better (10+ pairs of skis, two cars --maybe if I ever get the porsche back from the body shop, 8 bikes, a son who is making his own forge and has been pleading for a nail gun for x-mas for 7 years)
you just can't have a big enough garage
And you can't have a flat and straight enough approach to the garage when you get snow and ice like you do with aspen living
Especially when you have these two women drivers in your life (doing their best Thelma & Louise impersonation)
you just can't have a big enough garage
And you can't have a flat and straight enough approach to the garage when you get snow and ice like you do with aspen living
Especially when you have these two women drivers in your life (doing their best Thelma & Louise impersonation)
Aspen real estate --ARG
So remember last Friday when I had the fun ski, bike hike day. And the bike part of the day was to run over to Aspen to look at a possible rental house?
Let me update you about my attempts to rent a home in Aspen.
At the start of last week we saw 3 homes in Aspen--The first home was listed as 2,700 square feet--what they failed to mention was that included 700 square feet of garage space. I don't like my family enough to live in 2k square feet so we took a pass on that one.
The second house was ok. The third house made the Delta house from Animal House look good.
So we made an offer for the second home. There response was to take it off the market. WFT
So then on Friday we saw another home that was ok (not great but ok). They said they wanted a mid July start and $10k per month rent. We agreed to a mid July start and 9k. They countered with a mid August start because they got a short term (1 month rental) for 30k for mid July to mid August. I asked my current landlord if I could extend 1 month and he said yes if I paid him 160% of my current monthly rent for that additional month. Arg. So I went back and said ok how about a mid August move in and 9k--this would give them an effective rate of $10,600 per month for 13 months exceeding their initial asking price and front loading an additional 20k for them. They declined and countered with 13k per month and a mid August move in date. I took a pass on their new rental terms.
So to sum up--in a bit over a week I have seen a place listed where the garage square footage was included in the homes livable square footage (because there was a couch in the garage), a home taken off the market when the owner actually received an offer, and a home whose owner changed the start date by a month and raised the rent by 30% when we made an offer.
While I don't want to wish people ill I do hope that these type of business practices are punished not rewarded. Aspen used to have the tag line of exclusive by design---this kind of experience helps to make it exclusive although I am not sure if it's designed in the way the slogan was intended.
Let me update you about my attempts to rent a home in Aspen.
At the start of last week we saw 3 homes in Aspen--The first home was listed as 2,700 square feet--what they failed to mention was that included 700 square feet of garage space. I don't like my family enough to live in 2k square feet so we took a pass on that one.
The second house was ok. The third house made the Delta house from Animal House look good.
So we made an offer for the second home. There response was to take it off the market. WFT
So then on Friday we saw another home that was ok (not great but ok). They said they wanted a mid July start and $10k per month rent. We agreed to a mid July start and 9k. They countered with a mid August start because they got a short term (1 month rental) for 30k for mid July to mid August. I asked my current landlord if I could extend 1 month and he said yes if I paid him 160% of my current monthly rent for that additional month. Arg. So I went back and said ok how about a mid August move in and 9k--this would give them an effective rate of $10,600 per month for 13 months exceeding their initial asking price and front loading an additional 20k for them. They declined and countered with 13k per month and a mid August move in date. I took a pass on their new rental terms.
So to sum up--in a bit over a week I have seen a place listed where the garage square footage was included in the homes livable square footage (because there was a couch in the garage), a home taken off the market when the owner actually received an offer, and a home whose owner changed the start date by a month and raised the rent by 30% when we made an offer.
While I don't want to wish people ill I do hope that these type of business practices are punished not rewarded. Aspen used to have the tag line of exclusive by design---this kind of experience helps to make it exclusive although I am not sure if it's designed in the way the slogan was intended.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
thank you United---stick with it, I get to Aspen eventually
Thank you United. Over the past month you have provided my family with some great dinner table topics and even a business case study.
First let me help you out with crisis management---when you do something really wrong you can fumble the ball just like you did or you can turn lemons into lemonade. In this case here is what you should have done.
Dr. XXX (the guy dragged out of the plane)--we are so sorry. While we can in no way make up for how horribly we treated you, we would like a chance to show you we can and will do better. We would like to offer you and a companion free first class air travel for a year--anywhere you want to go as often as you want to go.
To the passengers on the plane who were witness to our poor service we offer a $500 travel voucher.
We are also going to adjust some policies--first off even though our lawyers insist that we retain the right to remove passengers in order to move necessary personnel from one city to another we have told our agents that they can offer pretty much whatever it takes to get the requisite number of passengers to volunteer to take a later flight. Finally in an effort to show we are putting our customers first our flight crews will no longer use any of the overhead storage for their bags. If checking is good enough for our customers it's good enough for us.
So United thanks for giving us a chance to talk about crisis management, how to say you're sorry, and how to step up when you screw up to improve your business and improve your reputation.
But what does any of this have to do with my blog. Before the overbooking incident there was the United leggings incident. You probably already forgot about this but it happened right as we were traveling for spring break on United and it got my family's attention.
A family was traveling with two young daughters who were wearing leggings. The gate agent told them they wouldn't be allowed to travel in what the gate agent termed inappropriate clothing. A passerby saw what was going on and tweeted about it. And from there it became front page news. What the passerby didn't know was the family included a United employee and they were flying for free, but which includes some special restrictions such as what you can wear. Just imagine on a take your kid to work day if they chose to wear a bikini, would it be wrong for your employer to say they have got to go home? I don't think so.
Which finally gets me close to my point. The passerby published very incomplete information. She got involved in something that she didn't understand and told the world a side of the story that missed a lot of what was going on. In the overbooking case, there was information that was glossed over (such as the terms of carriage we agree to when we purchase an airline ticket), but the basic facts were right from the get go and the potential impact (being forcibly removed from an airplane for no other reason than the airline wants to maximise it profits) impacts all of us.
Which gets me to Aspen. It's a small town. Its very easy to get you nose into everyone's business. Before going crazy blogovating on the internet, maybe take a breath, gather some information and try to figure out if its a case of employees kids in leggings or passengers being forcibly ejected from a plane. We would all be much happier if we did not worry so much about other people's business and focused more on our own.
First let me help you out with crisis management---when you do something really wrong you can fumble the ball just like you did or you can turn lemons into lemonade. In this case here is what you should have done.
Dr. XXX (the guy dragged out of the plane)--we are so sorry. While we can in no way make up for how horribly we treated you, we would like a chance to show you we can and will do better. We would like to offer you and a companion free first class air travel for a year--anywhere you want to go as often as you want to go.
To the passengers on the plane who were witness to our poor service we offer a $500 travel voucher.
We are also going to adjust some policies--first off even though our lawyers insist that we retain the right to remove passengers in order to move necessary personnel from one city to another we have told our agents that they can offer pretty much whatever it takes to get the requisite number of passengers to volunteer to take a later flight. Finally in an effort to show we are putting our customers first our flight crews will no longer use any of the overhead storage for their bags. If checking is good enough for our customers it's good enough for us.
So United thanks for giving us a chance to talk about crisis management, how to say you're sorry, and how to step up when you screw up to improve your business and improve your reputation.
But what does any of this have to do with my blog. Before the overbooking incident there was the United leggings incident. You probably already forgot about this but it happened right as we were traveling for spring break on United and it got my family's attention.
A family was traveling with two young daughters who were wearing leggings. The gate agent told them they wouldn't be allowed to travel in what the gate agent termed inappropriate clothing. A passerby saw what was going on and tweeted about it. And from there it became front page news. What the passerby didn't know was the family included a United employee and they were flying for free, but which includes some special restrictions such as what you can wear. Just imagine on a take your kid to work day if they chose to wear a bikini, would it be wrong for your employer to say they have got to go home? I don't think so.
Which finally gets me close to my point. The passerby published very incomplete information. She got involved in something that she didn't understand and told the world a side of the story that missed a lot of what was going on. In the overbooking case, there was information that was glossed over (such as the terms of carriage we agree to when we purchase an airline ticket), but the basic facts were right from the get go and the potential impact (being forcibly removed from an airplane for no other reason than the airline wants to maximise it profits) impacts all of us.
Which gets me to Aspen. It's a small town. Its very easy to get you nose into everyone's business. Before going crazy blogovating on the internet, maybe take a breath, gather some information and try to figure out if its a case of employees kids in leggings or passengers being forcibly ejected from a plane. We would all be much happier if we did not worry so much about other people's business and focused more on our own.
Saturday, April 15, 2017
ski-bike-hike
That was my Friday (plus taxes and trying to find someone to host my son in either Annapolis or Newport for the summer).
I skied some amazing corn snow and soft bumps from 11:30-1pm. Then I rode my bike from Snowmass village to east aspen to check out a possible rental for 2017-2018 (10 miles and 800 vert).
I think it's gonna work out which mean I can trying living in Aspen as opposed to Snowmass Village. That should provide more blogging inspiration.
Then I hiked for an hour with the dogs up two creeks. And I finished it off watching the blues go up 2-0 against MN.
What did you do yesterday?
I skied some amazing corn snow and soft bumps from 11:30-1pm. Then I rode my bike from Snowmass village to east aspen to check out a possible rental for 2017-2018 (10 miles and 800 vert).
I think it's gonna work out which mean I can trying living in Aspen as opposed to Snowmass Village. That should provide more blogging inspiration.
Then I hiked for an hour with the dogs up two creeks. And I finished it off watching the blues go up 2-0 against MN.
What did you do yesterday?
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