Learning to Ski

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Al

Part of this ski vacation I’ve spent with Cody’s girlfriend, Angela, as she gets used to skis and the slopes. She was a complete novice at the start of this ski season, and has been skiing as often as she can since arrival.

In January, 3-4 weeks ago, she was still doing laps on our local beginner runs, Scooper and Dawdler. That week, I took her to Max Park, which leaves from the TOP of Sam’s Knob (she’d been limited to the mid-station of the front side chair lift), and then quickly up to the top of the Burn on Sneaky’s. So she stepped up one plateau, to low intermediate status.

When I came back two weeks later, she was chomping at the bit to go down The Edge, which is a black diamond (advanced) run off the High Alpine lift. This one is usually groomed, and starts out easy, getting steeper and steeper. That first day, though, we discovered that Upper Green Cabin, which also leaves from High Alpine, was open for the first time this season, groomed and ready to roll. Although it is a blue (intermediate) run, it is nearly as steep as Edge, and would serve as a good stepping stone to black diamonds. Besides, the view from the top of that run is stellar, looking out into the Cirque bowl, up at the Headwall, and over to AMF and the cliffs running down to Rock Island.

Naturally, she loved it. She’s a fearless skier on groomed slopes, sometimes going faster than I want to, and very stable with a wide stance appropriate to the new “rocker” skis (don’t ask me what that means, other than they turn easy and require feet to be separated, not locked together.)

So she was all pumped after that, and we went after all the groomed black runs at Snowmass, Slot, Campground, Edge, and she handled them all with aplomb. It was time to start thinking about transferring her to variable terrain and snow conditions: moguls (bumps), and half-skied powder. I began to think about just how to introduce the physical concepts needed to successfully make that transition.

I feel there are several issues involved. First, what feelings, kinesthetic feedback, are you trying to get from your body. Second, what specific actions of your body are you trying to focus on. And third, what should your conscious mind be doing to help the situation.

The later is a critical element. Many adults, when trying to learn a new sport or physical activity, approach it from a rational, mental frame of reference. In other, they are told, or read, that their body and body parts should be in specific positions, or make specific motions, and they spend most of their mental energy consciously trying to make those motions. This is the path to mediocrity. The connection between a conscious thought and a body movement is way too slow to be effective for most sports. It will work OK for yoga, Tai Chi, and similar slow (or no) movement activities, but when trying to do a fluid action such as skiing at speed over variable terrain, or perfect a golf or tennis stroke, thinking just gets in the way, gums up the works, slows down the process.

The trick is to have a few ideas in the feeling part of your brain, and try to use the mind for what it was designed for: planning and preparation.

So, for skiing, here’s how it works. Skiing is mostly about balance – keeping the center of gravity over the center of the ski’s turning point, and moving that gravity center up and down, forward and back, and side to side as needed to allow for adjustment to the terrain, speed control, and changing direction. At all times, one want to feel “balanced”, and one knows instantly, without thinking about it, whether he is in balance or not. So one major focus of the brain should be on trying to remain balanced.

There are a few tricks that feeling ingrained. Here are some of the “tricks” that work. Try to keep the upper body and head stable, facing downhill no matter which direction the ski are going, and absorbing the terrain variability with up and down motions of the legs (“bend zee knees, five dollars, please”). Reach out (and down) with the downhill ski pole tip to touch the snow just before trying to change direction. Change direction by a combination of using the terrain (a bump in the snow) and/or an upward motion of the body. While doing that, keep the sense of balance, confident that your body will learn what feels “good” and “bad” (or right and wrong) very well on it’s own. Your body will want to stay balanced, and you’ll know when you’re doing it right, and your body will ingrain the proper motions if you just focus on that feeling of balance.

So what should the conscious mind be doing? To keep it occupied and out of the way of the education process for the body’s sense of balance, use the mind for what it is designed – planning. Consciously plan every single change of direction (turn). Look ahead, and pick out a spot in their snow where the turn will take place. Do that EVERY SINGLE TURN. Don’t think about anything else. But don’t ignore internal feelings either. Learning to focus on the internal feelings of balance, where that center is at all times and how body movements and terrain affect it, is where the real learning comes in skiing (or any other new physical activity.)

The key to success in learning some new sport thus boils down to three things. A good instructor will be able to impart these ideas. First, figure out what the mind should be doing to both help the process and keep out of the way of the physical learning. Second, understand how to communicate what the body/brain should be FEELING when we are successfully perform the activity. And, third, know the proper progression of actions and difficulty to help the student practice without feeling threatened, but still learn quickly enough to become confident in developing increasing skill.

Here are a couple of videos, first of Angela bombing down Upper Green Cabin, and then learning how to go through the trees and maneuver around bumps on the Big Burn.

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Money: Politics’ Performing Enhancing Drug?

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Al

Three news stories caught my eye this morning:

• Three-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador has been banned from racing for two years. Sport’s Supreme Court (the Court for Arbitration in Sport) overturned the ruling of the Spanish cycling federation, which had previously overturned a one year ban on Contador, basically ruling that the lithe Spanish climber and time trialist supreme had used an illegal substance (Clenbuterol, a synthetic male steroid) and had possibly received a blood transfusion during the 2010 Tour, which he won. His ban will commence as of August 5, 2010, meaning he is eligible to race again this August 6. But all of his results since July, 2010, including the Tour win, will be nullified. He claims the Clenbuterol came from meat purchased in Spain tainted by the substance, which is used as a growth hormone (illegally, in Europe) in cattle. Given the incredibly small amount of steroid found in his urine, there may be truth in his claim. Nonetheless, any presence of the substance is illegal in sports adhering to the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) rules, so out he goes, according to the CAS. And Andy Schleck is declared the winner of that Tour; he’ll presumably have a better chance of winning this year, having one less time trial specialist to contend with (Andy’s basically a climber.)

• Federal prosecutors in the Justice Department announced on Friday they will not be seeking to press charges against Lance Armstrong for alleged conspiracy to defraud the government. The logic was: Armstrong used performing enhancing drugs during the time he was sponsored by the US Postal Service, despite representing himself and his team as being drug-free. In the eyes of the prosecutors, this amounted to fraud, taking money from a government funded agency under false pretenses. The case depended not on any proven drug use via urine or blood testing, but on the testimony of fellow riders and others close to the team. The prosecutors did not specify why they dropped the case. Some observers have theorized that Armstrong’s high profile fight against cancer thru his Livestrong Foundation weighed on their minds; there was more value in having him continue to be seen as a valuable leader in this arena than in having him dragged through a trial that might result in as muddled a decision as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have received.

• President Obama’s re-election campaign is due to announce tomorrow (February 7, 2012) that donors should feel free to contribute (unlimited amounts of) money to the “Super-PAC”, Priorities USA. This is somewhat of a turn-around for the Obama campaign, which in 2008 refused funding and support both from the federal campaign fund (the income tax check-off) and any outside non-affiliated groups. They nonetheless managed to accrue a substantial lead in contributions over John McCain, raising a reported $750,000,000. Their thinking seems to be, it’s disappointing, but these are the rules. “We’re not going to go into this fight with one hand tied behind our backs,” said the campaign manager. In a sense, it’s not unlike the challenge presented by an aggressive nation which insists on attacking its neighbors, such as Germany and Japan in the ’30s, and Iraq in Kuwait. Reluctantly, it seems, the only prudent response is greater force.

Both sports and politics have “rules” about their PEDs. In cycling, one has to identify his location at all times, make himself available for unannounced urine testing, and submit to testing after a race. It’s certainly possible within those rules for someone to still use performing enhancing drugs, Either through careful dosing, or by using something which is undetectable, such as donating blood to himself for future use during an arduous multi-day race, or a new drug which is not yet able to be detected in the lab.

Money is clearly viewed as a potent force in politics, able to alter outcomes of elections. Presumably, the more money a campaign has access to, the more it can communicate to the voting public via advertising, massive rallies, and even self-produced books and movies. While money cannot actually buy votes, it can buy exposure and quality propagandists. If it didn’t work, politicians would not seek it out so ardently.

And like PEDs in sports, it’s not clear where the moral line should actually be drawn. In our country, Congress and the Supreme Court have final say over whether and what rules should apply to the use of money in politics. It seems to me this would be like having the athletes write the rules and conduct the tests on themselves.

No matter who writes the rules, they are always purely arbitrary. One day, caffeine is legal; the next day it might not be. One day, there are limits on how much individuals can contribute to a campaign; the next, Super PACs are created, found to be legal, and allowed unfettered access to donations and forums of communication. Competitors, if they expect to have a chance to win, must be willing to use all the avenues available to them to achieve their desired outcome. For now, it appears, our political process is addicted to money, and the rule makers are unwilling to perform an intervention.

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Super Bowl Ads

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Al

Is it just me, or did several of the Super Bowl XLVI ads seem to be surreptitious Obama reelection ads? Chrysler and GE featured emotion laden pitches touting the comeback of American industry. Clint Eastwood’s stealth appearance at half time perfectly captured the tenor of the President’s re-election strategy. Phrases like “We’re in this together … People in Michigan know a little bit about coming back … It’s going to get better, because that’s who we are.”

The sub-text of course was that the auto industry was dealt a mortal blow, but the country would not let it die. The President took a lot of heat for supporting the bail out of GM and Chrysler, and for seeing a future with a strong and growing set of US car manufacturers.

Now that things have turned up for the car companies, and the economy is showing some forward thrust, crowing about that success is the best bet for Obama to gain the votes in states he needs like Michigan. To have the gristly-voiced Eastwood, a known Republican, making that case for him is a note of high irony. It’s hard to argue with Dirty Harry.

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These Are A Few of My Favorite Runs

Posted on February 4, 2012 by Al

Today, I finally realised what it is about both skiing and triathlon racing that attracts me so. People who know me probably already figured this out, but I’d always treated the two activities as quite separate, having nothing really in common, except that they both require gobs of cash and burdensome amounts of equipment to schlepp to out-of-the-way venues.

No, I’m talking about internal sensations. I’d been looking at triathlon as an aerobic, endurance sport, like XC skiing, and downhill skiing as a strength event, more like mountain biking. Just not the same kind of physical effort at all.

But what IS the same is the internal sensation I get.

My family abandoned me today to my own devices on the slopes. Cheryl grabbed her snowshoes, heading uphill for a 50 minutes trek to the top of Burlingame. Cody and Angela were prostrate back at their apartment, bedeviled by a particularly nasty rhinovirus which leaves one literally speechless. Leigh and Craig never get out before 11 AM, especially after driving 900 miles the day before to get here.

So I was left to plot my own route on the mountain. I’d actually put it together the night before, while going to sleep. I’d just coast along on all my favorite runs, smoothly shifting from one section of the mountain to another. I even planned which side of some of the runs I would take – some parts have become an ingrained habit for me, and I retreat back to that side whenever I stray.

First up – to the top of Sam’e Knob. This is the original part of the Snowmass ski area, the nubbin rising 2200’ above the village, and now served by a high speed six person lift. From there, the pure north-facing slope is carved up with the runs basically getting tougher as one winds around from east to west: Max Park, which is the beginner’s route, down in the valley between the Knob and the Big Burn; Banzai Ridge, a straight shot down to Coney Glade, from which the east side runs drop to skier’s left – Coney Glade, Moonshine, Ute Chute (these three are groomed regularly), Fast Draw, Promenade (so named because under the lift). Then, the west side runs drop from the Knob itself: Zugspitze; Slot, groomed to an unskiable ice rink; Wildcat, Campground, Bearclaw; and, finally, starting down the Knob at the top of Max Park, but going in the opposite direction, Powderhorn.

I had chosen for my “warm-up”, Promenade to the bottom of Zugspitze. The bumps and snow on Promenade are very mellow right now, probably because fewer people will ski this steep slope under the lift. Fluffy powder at the bottom, early morning light. I took the exact some route down these runs I’ve been doing all week – always seeking the best snow, which was hiding first under the lift, then in a line leading to and from a little grove of pines half way down, over the cat track to Zugs with a meander from their through the right-side woods on the edge of the run.

Back up the Sam’s Knob lift, the most efficient uphill transport on the mountain. 1400 vertical feet in four minutes; it takes longer than that to ski back down on these black diamonds. This time, a few turns on Campground, then slide straight into the old Campground lift line (the chair was taken out a few years back), and onto the left side of Wildcat. This was a variation on my usual route; I’d discovered the bumps and snow on the right side were craggy and full of gravel. The left side proved MUCH better, just as I’d assumed. Again, the bottom featured mellow softly skied snow all the way to the lift.

Back up the Knob lift to Powderhorn. This is a nasty 2400’ drop which is never groomed, and not often skied, so the snow, at least on the top two thirds, is often soft and comforting, despite the wildly variable terrain of gullies, sharp drops and turns, ridges and dips – nothing normal about any part of this baby. Yesterday, I had turned the notch up a bit on the speed of my turns over on the right side (where I ALWAYS ski Powderhorn), leading to my Epiphany.

The reason I had chose all these runs was the feeling of Power I get when navigating them in the fall line, through chopped up fresh powder and careening around curling mogul barricades. The exact same feeling of power I get when running fast and not letting up. Except, the ski runs are 1-2 minutes bursts of effort, not the 1-2 hours I’ll spend running.

I was quite tired at the bottom, which features a loooong run-out to the lift, requiring either a full-on tuck for over a minute, or five minutes of skate skiing. So I was grateful for the chance to spread out on the slow double chair, and take in the scenery

The view from the Campground lift (which now only goes half way up, to the base of the Knob lift) is reason enough to ski there. Ten miles up Snowmass Creek, all wilderness area, smack into the imposing pyramidal wall of Mt. Daly, with his brother Capitol off to the left.

Next, an easy trip down Sunnyside to the Sheer Bliss lift, then on to the Cirque Poma. Now, here I had to make an alteration from my desired route. The Cirque headwall, leading into the Dikes, is still closed, so I had to enter the area from the other side, lower down, via AMF Gully. The snow there was blasted junk, filled with grey speckles of gunpowder from charges the Patrol had tossed in to stabilize the avalanche prone slope. I inched my way down, and at the base, shot into KT gully and its powder fields off to the right. The Gully narrows into an hourglass one mogul wide, then drops off a cliff into a roly poly section not unlike a Cascade creek. Filled with off-kilter bumps and piles of still fresh powder, I pinballed down, and aimed for Skateboard (also know as Pinball) alley, and on to the creek bed dumping into the run-up to the Sheer Bliss lift.

I bypassed that, heading down to the Alpine Springs area for a trip on Reidar’s, first the mellow bumps/powder on top, then into the woods on the left. I had intended to try the left side all the way down – I ALWAYS do the right – but the snow was basically untracked over on my favorite side (that must be the reason I usually go there?), so I went over to my usual stomping grounds.

And it was awesome. Even at 11:30, there were still fresh tracks to be had. In the woods – which are dense and steep – my new BBR’s from Salomon let me maneuver without fear in the tightest spots.

Back up High Alpine, and the climb to Roberto’s into the Hanging Valley Wall. It was tough – a long version of AMF – but, again, the snow in the bottom half was heavenly.

It’s not expected to snow again while I’m here, but I did accomplish today what i strive for every day on the slopes: enjoy yourself as if this were the last day you will get to ski.

Here’s a video from my helmet cam on the top third of Powderhorn this morning.

Powderhorn

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It Just Sorta Happened

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Al

It just kind of happened; we didn’t mean to ride all the lifts at Snowmass today. But once we’d done Coney Glade, and realised we already had been up Sam’s Knob and Campground, then, it seemed a waste not to hit them all.

Snowmass has 12 main lifts, and a few short beginner rides. Here’s how our day went.

Starting around 10:15, Cody, Angela and I struck out for the Sam’s Knob area on the Village Express. The plan was for Angela to wind around the east side of the Knob, aiming for the Lower Slot, which had been groomed last night. While she went down Moonshine, Cody and I trooped down Zugspitze. Stiff snow and growing moguls, with a few patches of softer stuff near the bottom. Onto the Slot, I led Angela astray on a little side patch which is NEVER groomed, but was this time. Unfortunately, it has a sudden right hand turn while the fall line goes left and down. Angela didn’t know this, and plowed into the wall of powder the groomers had left. at the curve. Sort of like the hay bales on Straw Pile, on the Aspen downhill course.

We rolled over the dog tracks (normally called “Cat Tracks”, for the snow cats which use them for transport, this lane is the preserve of the Krabloonik dog sleds, and two of them trotted by while we went rolling down.

Back to the top on the Campground lift, Angela’s first time up this slow double chair with startling views up Snowmass Creek valley to 14‘ers Daly and Capitol. Then over to the Sam’s Knob lift, and down Max Park to the Sheer Bliss lift.

Now, here we cheated a bit. Sheer Bliss and the Burn lifts run in parallel. Usually, both are only open on weekends, with only the Sheer Bliss open during the week. Noticing that Whispering Jesse was the Noon Groom, and the time was about 11:15, we determined to take a run down Mick’s Gully, then back up Sheer Bliss (in lieu of the Burn lift) a second time, and on up to the Cirque Poma to Snowmass’ high point, “Rocky Mountain High”. Notably, this was another first for her (yesterday she went on her first fixed chair lift), and she fell off within the first ten feet. But we made it all the way up, from where there was only one way down – the Cirque and the High Traverse are still closed due to the anemic and treacherous snow pack.

Since we like long runs, we went almost all of the way down: Coyote Hollow, Burn, Whispering Jesse, Monkshood, Banzai, finishing at the Coney Glade lift. I filmed the whole run, and it took 12 minutes.

We were treated to a few jumpers in the terrain park; apparently, there was some sort of competition happening there, and a helicopter circled overhead filming the whole ordeal. From there, we took Lunchline to Banzai again, this time going all the way to the Gondola at the bottom. I got as chance to eat lunch, and we decided, having done the toughest ones to bag – Coney Glade and Campground – we had to go all in, and ht the remaining five lifts, even if it meant going down Cascade. But first, up the the warming hut on Elk Camp, to finish lunch and snag some hot chocolate. Then it was the bumps under the lift, and circle around to Cascade/Creekside and the endless flats at the bottom leading to the Two Creeks lift. Contrary to our fears, the snow was nice on the steeps under the lift at top, and then it was well groomed and lightly skied the rest of the way.

This left just Alpine Springs and High Alpine, for an Edge/Naked Lady escapade (I took the Showcase bump option.) We could have called it quits then, but talked ourselves into a repeat engagement on Alpine Springs, with Granite for the young ‘uns, and the old lift line (not lift there now) for me.

This was a first for me, as far as I know, but I’m sure there may have been a high powder day somewhere in the past when I got all the lifts in, I just never acknowledged it before. And, except for the extra Alpine SPgs ride at the end, we only rode each lift once.

Now, I just have to figure out how to ski UNDER each lift, and ride each one once. THat might take some planning.

Here’s a bonus video of Cody in the trees at the top of the Burn, on our first run down there today.

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2012 Goals and Plan

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Al

“Finish healing, then have fun on Hawaii”

That’s what my sig line says at the Endurance Nation forum, succinctly summarizing my goals for 2012.

Last year, my goals were: “Finish IM CDA, then race to win at IM AZ”. Mission accomplished, I’d say. But there was a cost to getting back in the saddle, and then racing at the highest level. The whole year, I never really was able to get my body re-built after my accident (9-18-10). First, I lost 15+ pounds in two weeks in the ICU. Then, laryngeal and pharyngeal trauma prevented me from eating at all for six weeks. Following that, I barely managed to re-gain most of my lost weight, only to plunge back down after my first of two oral surgeries to re-build my mandible and prepare it for dental implants to replace the 9 teeth I lost. It wasn’t until mid-August that I was able to eat all the things I wanted (nuts, granola, bread crust – hard crunchy things), and I still had to eat sandwiches with a knife and fork. Five weeks in Colorado helped me get some long-distance biking fitness, but at the cost of more weight.

The whole year, I kept struggling just to keep my weight in the 143-144 range, when 147-9 would be ideal for training, and 146 for racing. And with the frequent interruptions to recover from surgeries, and the weakened legs from lost muscle mass, I started to get niggling pains in my right foot, then ankle, then knee. This culminated in mid-October with a sudden severe crippling plantar fasciitis, and I stopped running for a week. I really should have taken 6-10 weeks off to fully heal, but with only 40 days until IM AZ, I was not ready to give up on my second goal.

So I raced, ran, and felt fine, but two weeks of running in early December brought the pains back again. I shut down all biking and running, just swam, lifted weights, and watched my weight creep up a pound a week.

After two months of serious downtime, I am now back at my pre-accident winter weight of 148 +/-, and lifting weights with the same or better strength as 2010. But my swimming, biking and running, as well as cardiac fitness is down at baseline levels.

So what’s my plan for getting back to prime form by October 13th?

First, I will be skiing for two weeks the start of February, with family and friends in Snowmass/Aspen. The snow will be good and I will be strong, so the year starts off on a high as I watch my son Cody carry on the mantle of top dog in the family. Here’s his text to me this morning, after 7” new snow on the mountain:

“Got first (skilled) tracks down Showcase. Hit the steeper part in perfect form under the watchful eyes of 30 filled chairs in a row. Got some whoops. Then to Reidar’s on the right for a fresh track, then the Edge woods and Cookies. Stopping for some cocoa before hiking Longshot.”

Yeah, that’s about right. Showcase is a steepish black diamond run under the slow double chair on High Alpine – a chair only good skiers can ride. It is mega bumpy, never groomed on the steep part, and the bumps get close and choppy. Reidar’s is an even steeper pitch, with better bumps, larger, rounder, but faster. The Edge is often groomed, but hitting the trees to the right is where the fun is. And Longshot is the secret top to bottom powder stash which Cody made his own last year. None of that is easy stuff, but in 6-10” of new snow, it can be just about perfect, and to do it well so the chairs applaud, well, that’s why we ski, isn’t it?

Then, after I try to follow in his tracks, I’ll come back home for ten days to start indoor bike training and run every other day, ramping up my mileage slowly. Whoosh, it’s off to the Big Island (the Island of Hawaii, hence “on” Hawaii) for six days. I’ll swim in A-Bay, ride up to Hawi and down towards Kona, and run through Waikoloa beach resort. Back home in early March, I’ll keep the efforts increasing in the triathlon disciplines, interspersing another oral surgery on the 13th.

I’ve got to get some tougher skin tissue in the area where the dental implants will be placed. I had the first of three skin grafts placed last week; the next two will come in March. A periodontist (the wife of my oral surgeon) strips some skin from my palate, then sews it across the top of the implanted bone where my teeth used to be. Unless this keratinized skin surrounds the tooth, simple things like eating and brushing teeth will erode the softer mucosal skin literally down to the bone.

So the last two weeks of March will be another round of liquid and soft diets, and some days of mouth mumbles. But at least I have my weight up now, and have figured out how to keep it there while training and recovering from these surgeries. By May, I hope to finally get some teeth back in my mouth.

So all this dental stuff and weight management is what I’m calling “Finish healing”. While it would be nice to have the chronic pains (in my left elbow, right hand and forearm) and parasthesias (on the palmar side of my index fingers it’s always tingly and numb) go away, I’m not using that as an end point. Those don’t really inhibit my swimming or work related activity too much, so my goal there is learning how to live with it. Although I have come to appreciate why some people might want to be on OxyContin round-the-clock.

In April, I’ve got ten days off around our birthdays, and maybe will take some sort of a road trip somewhere warm, followed again in early May by a trip to California to race Wildflower Half Iron with Cheryl (I’ll swim and bike, she’ll run). Mid July, off to Snowmass for the first training camp, and then start 12 weeks of Ironman training, going back to Snowmass in September.

October 1, I’m on the Big Island, the capstone of my year. My goal there is to have fun on race day. Fun means I feel strong, ride well, and don’t walk outside of the aid stations on the marathon. I’d like to see the sun set while I’m in the energy lab, then soak it all up the final 1/4 mile of Ali’i Drive under the lights, me beaming right back at them.

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Powder Day

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Al

I don’t really know how many Powder Days I’ve had skiing. Two hundred fifty seven is certainly in the ball park, though. I’m not someone who has kept track all his life of every single day I ever skied, so I don’t know how many days that is. One winter, 1978/9, I did make a shot 1-2 line note about each day when I drove daily from The Avenues in Salt Lake City to Snowbird. I recorded the weather, snow condition, new snow, and how many trams I’d ridden. Snowbird has a top to bottom tram, carrying 120 skiers at a time, covering 2900 vertical feet at a pop. A good day there would be 7 trams, +/-, which adds up to 20,300 feet, so I’ve used that number as a benchmark – hit 20K feet, the rest of the day is a bonus. And on Snowbird powder days – 40% of the 105 days I skied were thus defined – getting 4 or 5 trams of at least a set of fresh turns somewhere on the run marked a quality outing.

So what’s a Powder Day, then? If I can make a few linked turns in untracked snow during more than one of my runs (a run is defined as going from the top of a chair lift to the bottom of a chair – could be two different chairs) – that’s a powder day. Also, a day on which it snows, and I’m skiing while it’s snowing, even if the tracks aren’t fresh, that’s a powder day.

In 1976/7, the American West experienced it’s worst ski season ever. Most places, lifts didn’t open until mid-January, and the skiing wasn’t worth going out for until around President’s Day. I remember all this vividly, because I was in my third year of Ob-Gyn residency. The closest skiing was at Mammoth Mountain, a six hour drive away. I’d gone up on several weekends each of the previous years, but it was catch as catch can finding decent accommodations at a reasonable price for my budget then.

Bicentennial year, a bunch of the residents, mostly the guys in the year ahead of me, who were in their last year and thus had a bit more time available, decided to go together and rent a house for the season. I don’t remember the price, but it actually seemed reasonable if I were to go up once or twice a month from Dec-April.

And then, it didn’t snow. It didn’t snow in November. It didn’t snow in December. It really didn’t snow in January, at least not enough to cover the rocks and bushes. Finally, sometime towards the end of February, we put the boards on anyway, hang the rocks, and then had a few good days in March. But no Powder Days, not one, the whole year.

In Aspen/Snowmass, it was the same story. The lifts didn’t open until mid January, no safe skiing until the last month or so. That was the year we all learned the phrase, “El Nino.”

This year, there was some early snow, pre-Thanksgiving, then a couple of widely spaced storms, the last one before Christmas. By last week, people in Aspen were starting to get scared. Not because the beds weren’t full – things are actually more crowded than the past two years, which had phenomenal snow seasons – but because when it doesn’t snow, and the skis are cloudless day after day after day, the world seems out of joint. Around here, we get fluffy white clouds which build during the day. In the winter, they bring afternoon and evening snow showers; in the summer, thunderstorms. Every now and then a truly epic dump of 1-2 feet of new snow comes along, and sometimes we even get a couple of those strung together with lingering daily snow showers over a week or so. All’s right with the world, and the reason we are here – to enjoy the soft cocooning feel of snow falling around the face while floating on a crystalline cushion – gets reinforced.

Annie and I, for the past four years, have planned our ski trip around her college vacation. She’s free from the week before Christmas to MLK day. So we head up here after New Year’s and take what we get. January is usually cold and dry, but we’ve been getting enough Powder Days to make the trip seem worthwhile.

This year, I watched the Aspen/Snowmass app on my iPad with increasing apprehension and despair, as the base dropped from 37”” to 20”, and day after day, week after week, 0” appeared in the new snow column. We were looking to 7 days here of repetitive runs down increasingly cheesy roto-tiled snow, with brush and branches showing thru, maybe even some straw around the lifts.

I stopped checking the weather reports last week, and gave up on the app, so when we drove out of the Eagle, CO, rest area, two hours from Aspen, and heard the NOAA weather radio report I chanced on when I hit the “Seek” button on the Chevy Cruze I’d rented from Alamo, I was stunned. We listened to it twice thru, and heard “5-10 inches” in the mountains predicted for noon the following day thru midnight.

NOAA has earned a putrid reputation over the past two years around town, though, after the lead forecaster left, and the newbies tried to predict based on computer models, classroom knowledge, and a distinct lack of experience with what really happens when weather hits our little valley and its piled up mountains. They would routinely predict massive amounts of snow, endless Powder Days, which never happened or fell far short of the double-digit totals they’d lay out.

That lead forecaster apparently went private, though, and he’s gone into business as “aspenweather.net”. And he’s brought a measure of reliability again to local forecasts. He also said “5-10”, so we were heading out on our first day – yesterday – with a measure of confidence that the broiling clouds, foggy ceiling, and light dusting we were seeing would evolve into something real, and Save Our Vacation.

By 2 PM, the snow had picked up. Poor Annie had been fighting a cold, and jet lag, so she backed out after 12.5 K of rides. I saw the flakes get big and close, falling straight down, so I coerced Cody into coming out with me for just another run, even though it was after 3. We headed up Village Express, and found one side of Powder Heaven. The snow fell thick and fast, at least an inch an hour, and we bombed down Banzai Ridge over Ute Chute to Velvet Falls – soft footing underneath the whole way, not like the hardpack treachery we’d been on just an hour before.

So good we had to do it again, this time from the Ridge to Banzai, then over to Cabin and home. A real bonus.

But the best was yet to come. By the time we got to the car, there was at least 6 inches built up, and it kept snowing until 8 last night – far past the 5:30 that I’d expected. We had nine inches on the deck ledge. And the weathernet dude has said the next morning would dry right out into clear skies, 10-20 on the slopes. A Real Powder Day!

Well, almost. Because of the poor cover, many runs were not open, and the entire backcountry, even though listed as open, would be death to ski bottoms. Some of the best steep runs on the main ski slope were not open, and we’d be confined to the Big Burn, and Alpine Springs area.

Up at six, make sure the driveway is clear, head out before 8, zoom down to the lift at the base, wait for it to open, race off the top to the Burn lift at full speed, and get up to tree line with the first pack.

My initial run is always directly under the lift. Two reasons: first, it’s the most time efficient – it’s the direct route down, the fastest way to get back on and up again for Round Two. Second, I like to show off. I’ve got a lot of years and mileage invested in my ability to ski powder with grace and speed and reckless courage, and I figure 90+ % of the people on the lift need to see that. It helps them get juiced up for their run, and shows them what the conditions are like, and that anyone can ski them. Sets the tone for others for the day. It’s why I ski. I wear a bright red jacket, so I can’t be missed.

Besides, I like to show off.

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Marriage – Cultural, or Biological Imperative?

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Al

Sylvia came down to visit with us New Year’s eve. Cheryl and I have know her for almost40 years now, so visiting with her is sometimes like seeing a sister.

She’s worked in an STD clinic for decades. In Seattle, this means she spends a lot of her work time with men who have sex with men. So she’s learned a lot about the ins and outs of gay culture, at least as it pertains to sex and its repercussions.

“No, really, most gay couples – even men who have gotten ‘married’, have an open relationship. And that leads to a lot of bad behavior, at least what I see.”

I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted marriage to mean something, or else why would it be such an aspiration among gay activists. “I don’t know if that’s true. I mean, there must be studies about this, but maybe it’s just the case in a hip urban environment like Seattle. What about all the gay couples in the heartland, in Des Moines [Iowa, not the Des Moines in WA state] or wherever?”

“OK, you believe what you want, AAAl. I just know what I see.” Sylvia has a way of drawing out the first part of my name for a little sardonic emphasis. I don’t see how that can be done, what with only two letters in my name and all, but, she manages.

This was a new train of thought for me. I had bought the party line, that gay marriage was not a threat to the institution of marriage. I have a very idealized notion of marriage, but it’s really kind of fuzzy. I’ve been married for 33 years to the same person, and we still seem to get along, don’t see any reason to give it up or go “outside”.

On the other hand, I read a lot, and I observe the world around me, and it’s obvious that, given the chance, many men (just a tad fewer women) would not settle down or necessarily take on responsibility for kids or relationship maintenance if there weren’t a whole bunch of social, legal, and cultural norms around.

So we spent the next 45 minutes or so going all around this issue.

First, I scanned a few supposedly scholarly studies from around the world about gay relationships, and discovered that Sylvia is probably right. Sexual exclusivity does not seem to be a cultural norm among gay men; rather, the opposite may be true.

Then, I pondered the history of marriage. Anthropologists speculate that it arose to meet several needs: provide some measure of assurance to fathers that the children they were accountable for were indeed theirs; reduce the spread of potentially deadly venereal disease; support labor specialization between the genders; ally separate families, or even tribes.

As societies coalesced, proto-governments and social institutions, such as religions, both developed views about the value of marriage and created structures and rituals to support marriage as a value to human groupings.

While this package of cultural norms and pressure is certainly not perfect, without it, who knows what life would be like among the 95% plus of us who are heterosexual.

And in the absence of any state or church interest in the value of monogamous homosexual relationships, we end up with the relatively high rates of VD in the population of men who have sex with men. Which, given how our health care system works these days, ends up being expensive for all of us.

Besides, the randy behavior of gay men as a group (not all, but a larger proportion than heterosexual men) gives those inclined to have a visceral dislike of the activity a platform to stand on to hate and persecute.

That seems to be why a noted conservative lawyer and Solicitor General in the Bush II Administration, Ted. Olsen, took the side of those advocating for gay marriage in the CA state supreme court case recently. He’s the guy who famously asked a proponent of banning gay marriage, “Who would be harmed if gay marriage were legal?”, and having the supposed expert say, “Well, I can’t think of anyone.”

Here’s what he said: “We believe that a conservative value is stable relationships and stable community and loving individuals coming together and forming a basis that is a building block of our society, which includes marriage.” In other words, society should provide as much normative cultural pressure on gays to marry as it does on the rest of us. Or at least to have stable, monogamous relationships.

For individuals, there is a value in having a relationship recognized as “marriage”. Tax rates are lower, insurance coverage is provided for partners, laws recognize inheritance. In Vermont, 300 different benefits accrue to those who enter into a civil union. This is the main argument put forward to endorse gay marriage.

An equally powerful argument could be made as to the value to society when gay individuals are encourage to form stable dyads. Maybe, over time (generations, not years) such encouragement would have the same effect as it does for heterosexuals: cultural norms beginning to override biological ones. In this case, the override is not to discourage homosexual behavior outright, but to channel it into avenues which are beneficial to society, or at least not dangerous.

Posted in Family, Politics and Economics | 1 Comment

Hell on Wheels

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Al

This Sunday, cable network AMC will re-broadcast the first season of Hell on Wheels. While I don’t recommend abandoning whatever holiday adventure you have planned for spending all day on the couch, it might be worth letting the DVR do the work for you, and catching up on this series a week at a time this coming winter.

Filmed in Alberta, but set in post-Civil War Kansas, this western uses the birth pangs of the Union Pacific railroad as the backdrop for a sprawling tale encompassing a dozen major characters and a cauldron of uniquely American social issues.

Cullen Bohannon serves as the nominal focus. Tall, dark, handsome, but broken and bitter, he returns home from the Confederate army to find his farm and wife ravaged by a pack of marauding Union troops. Armed with a postcard group photo they left behind, the doggedly pursues each of the platoon members, gunning them down one by one. We pick up his quest half way through. After an efficient dispatch in a frontier town, he makes his way to the railroad camp , “Hell on Wheels”, where he sweet talks his way on a work team.

He’s assigned to lead the colored workers, who are digging out the roadbed. Chief among them is Elam, played by singer Common. Bohannon and Elam, through the story, develop a mutually beneficial working relationship as wary as one would expect considering Cullen’s former status as a slave holder.

“Meanwhile”, out on the prairie, a surveying party is overwhelmed by an angry pack of Sioux. The only survivor, the head surveyor’s wife Lily Bell, escapes after blocking an arrow with the palm of her hand, then pulling it from her shoulder and using it to stab the warrior who had killed her husband. (This despite her petite, blond, and altogether too cute for words appearance.) She gather the roll of maps her husband created, showing the best route to and through the Rockies.

The chief financier of the project, Thomas Durant (played with a melancholy deviousness by Colm Meany), is riding his own special train to ensure the first 40 miles of the line get built on time. Without real track, the government supported project will not garner sufficient capital to win the race west against other lines to the north and south. But, he needs those maps so he’ll know which way to turn at the fork of the Platte River.

His security chief, a tall Norwegian called “the Swede”, keeps order in camp mainly by his intimidating accent and dogged detective skills. When Bohannon and Elam dispatch the line foreman, who was the Captain of Bohannon’s wife’s killers, the Swede gets ready to hang Cullen. But Bohannon turns the tables, and sweet talks Durant into giving him the foreman’s old job.

Down in the traveling town, along with a brothel full of camp following women, two Irish lads are entertaining the captive crowd with a lantern show of slides from the Emerald Isle. And a preacher, on leave from his wife and daughter, has set up a tent revival, assisted by a converted native, brother to the warrior who led the band against Lilly and her husband.

This crew, who grow more motley the longer they are away from civilization, are fodder for a wide range of story threads, both personal and cultural. Most are obvious: the hypocrisy and difficulty of the Reconstruction, when no one realised what it would mean to begin the integration of all the “Freedmen”. The stunted opportunities for women, and how they had to be smarter than the men who ruled they world. The casual intertwining of politics and money, and the freewheeling world of unregulated, yet state supported capitalism. The pecking order of prejudice, with Irish and blacks near the bottom, and natives not even on the scorecard.

Other stories are unique to this collection of characters: Lily’s choices among potential relationships with men; Bohannon’s on-going revenge, looking for the last remaining killer; Elam’s struggle as a mulatto, not being able to live in either of his parent’s worlds.

AMC usually allows its series to take their time with structure, and Hell on Wheels is no exception. Each episode is usually a classic 24 hours long, and filled with musings and shots of mud, distant riversides, and gathering thunderheads. But each show also has its share of action and enough dilemmas to keep the viewer focused and, more important, caring about this accidental rolling city, it’s environs, and what it meant for the future of our country.

I’d give this 4/5 stars: Not Deadwood, but a far sight better than most westerns on film or TV these days.

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The Art of Fielding

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Al

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

The best book I read this year. A first novel, which thankfully tries nothing fancy. Simply a straightforward story unadorned with stylistic trimmings or experiments in narrative form. Nowadays, it seems a novel will not be recognized unless it plays  with structure, or drop kicks its time line into a meat grinder, or even ignores charaactrer and motivation for vast stretches.

But in the end, story wins out. A good plot, and honest characters, will trump novelty every day. The Art of Fielding follows the trials and triumphs of 5 denizens  of a middling midwest liberal arts college hard on the Lake Michigan shore of northeast Wisconsin, somewhere between Green Bay and Milwaukee. Westish is a safety school for preppies who can’t make it in the northeast. It’s current president, Guert Affenfelt, was a student there in the late ’60s. QB for the inept football team, he spent most of his senior year parsing a transcription of s speech given by Herman Melville on campus decades after Moby Dick, but of course years before any fame accrued to that transforming American novel.

Affenfelt’s senior thesis galvanized the campus into changing its team name to the Harpooners, and resulted in a statue of the author on a knoll overlooking the lake. Affenfelt went on to a career in literature studies, spending most of it in Cambridge at Harvard. But in his mid-fifties, after unsuccessfully trying to single-handedly raise his daughter, Pella, he was called back to Westish to lead the school into the 21st century.

Despite the grandeur of their name, the school’s teams were spectacularly inept. In baseball, they have not won a conference title in the entire 104 years of it existence. But Mike Schwartz, a hard-scrabble motherless child of Chicago’s Jewish ghetto, is determined to change that. At an American Legion tournament in Minnesota, he watches Henry Skrimshander display preternatural genius, never missing a play at shortstop, then staying after the final game to field 150 ground balls, each perfectly trapped, and cooly thrown to the same spot on the bored first basemen’s glove.

Henry is scrawny, however, and Schwartz must build into him all the other elements of baseball greatness – strength, a hitting eye, and love of the team. Henry rooms with Owen Dunne, who introduces himself as “your gay mullato roommate from California.” Owen is a skilled hitter, and an even better philosopher, so much that his teammates nicknames him “Buddha”.

The book’s quintet of lead characters, all of whom provide perspective for the story’s progression, is completed by Pella Affenfelt. Near the end of her senior year at Tellman Rose, the boarding school her father sent her to after one too many rebellions, she falls for a 30 year-old visiting architect, David. They elope to his loft in San Francisco, but after four years, she realises she has no life of her own. Dependent on Prozac, she leaves with nothing but her handbag and the clothes on her back, showing up at her dad’s on-campus apartment to once again complicate his life.

These five characters are all treated with honesty and transperancy. All except Henry. For most of the book, he remains a cipher, an icon of perfection, singlemindedly turning himself into a first round draft prospect by his junior year.

But this is not a baseball novel. Harbach does not seem to have an in-depth feel for the game, the academic’s romantic love of its nuances and endless mind games. Nor is it a novel of academic manners, although set entirely on a college campus. This book, in the end, is about these five people, their flaws and fears, their comings together and fallings apart. And in the end, it’s those stories which both transport and motivate.

While Harbach has written a true page turner, he has done it outside of any usual genre contraints. I’m sure each reader will identify more closely with one or another of the five leads. I found both Henry and Affenfelt attracting me, providing some valuable insight and lessons.

The college president is both a leader and a child of the 60′s. As we are learning, that is a hard combination to hold, and often results in dramatic tragedy (see: Clinton; Gingrich). Affenfelt, after a life of bachelor stoicism, does find love and begins rebuilding his family. But he can’t make it last.

Henry learns that the pursuit of athletic perfection is, in the end, futile. When he starts to unravel, there is no center to hold him together, and he seems to disappear completely. But he remains central to the story, and Harbach continually teases us with the possibility that a happy ending is on the horizon.

But the journey, not the resolution, is what gives this book its depth. Clever plotting, respect for his characters, their background and future, and a robust sense of place – an inland seashore – are what make this make well worth attention to all of its 520 pages. Once I got halfway through, I had to finish it as quickly as possible. And Harbach even lets us exit gently, tidies up loose ends, and brings our five friends back together in the final set piece. Then the book ends as it began, with Henry fielding grounders on a hardpack clay diamond.

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