Spinning Wheels

Tomorrow, June 30th, was originally scheduled to be the opening day for Treble Cone's 2008 season. Unfortunately, after furiously preparing the facilities, training the staff, planning programs, and generally keeping busy while working to keep our excitement in check, our opening has been delayed due to a lack of snow and snowmaking temperatures. We're still keeping our fingers crossed for a Tuesday opening, but Wednesday is more likely.

On the upside, it's been an interesting week-and-a-half of training. I arrived early to get up to speed on the supervisory side of the Snow School and have had an opportunity to get to know our new staff first on paper, and then in person. It's always an interesting process getting to know a new staff and that is particularly so here given the number of countries represented. Other than returning staff, in order to get hired to teach at Treble Cone one must ISIA qualified, which is basically the equivalent of a PSIA Level III - commonly referred to as "full-cert". On our staff this year we have full-certs from France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, New Zealand, England, Scotland, Canada and the US. It really is a remarkable collection of people and, as was the case last season, it is a very young, very enthusiastic, and very impressive group.

This year my role is very different at Treble Cone. While last year I was a line instructor, this year I am supervising all adult lessons for both ski and snowboard and I am coordinating all of the special programs we conduct throughout the season (ski weeks, women's programs, masters, etc.). Combine that with the fact that, together with our director, I'm coordinating the alpine training program for our staff, and I'll have a fundamentally different perspective on who we are, what we do and how.

I'll look forward to writing about the season here on the blog, sharing it once again with friends and family. In the meantime, I'll need everyone's help doing the snow dance (boots, hat, goggles, pajamas, in the living room). It will snow, we will slide around on it at Treble Cone and I'm not worried. I am, however, anxious to get started and I am definitely excited for another winter season.

Why Treble Cone?

There are many reasons I've chosen to work at Treble Cone for the Southern winter, many directly related to the skiing and many for which skiing is merely the conduit. Over the last two days I've been fortunate to have had to work up at the resort, about half an hour from town, before it opens to the public and before it becomes snowy. I was there as the sun came up over Lake Wanaka and as the kia came back to their perches in the parking lot in front of the resort complex (such as it is - we're not talking about a big place). We open for business on the 30th and begin on-snow training for the Snow Sports staff a few days before then, so everyone is anxiously watching the weather. In the meantime, I'll settle for the views. Enjoy the photos, as with any luck it'll be substantially snowier over the next several days.

Even the kia are waiting for the snowmaking to start!

Recalibration

After a long but relatively easy journey involving a car ride, three planes, a van, and a walk through town towing some extraordinarily cumbersome luggage, I arrived back in Wanaka on Saturday afternoon. Despite my best efforts to force my body to behave appropriately for the time zone, it's been proving somewhat stubborn, which though frustrating is not all bad.

Sunday morning, I awoke quite early and had the great fortune to watch the sun rise over Lake Wanaka from a perch above town. There are some places whose beauty simply defies both description and, oddly, our own recollection. I recall having gone to the Grand Canyon with a couple of buddies after college and being a little overwhelmed and quite surprised by my reaction. All of the exposure to the Grand Canyon in film, on television and in the press over the course of our lives really didn't adequately prepare us for the vastness and true beauty of the place. Similarly, over the past year I've described this area to many people in glowing terms which I'm sure sometimes sound a bit overly enthusiastic. I was pleased to find on Sunday morning that my reaction to the landscape here had not dulled at all. It is more beautiful than one can imagine and definitely effects the mid-set of all who spend their time here.

Of course, there are little things that make the transition to being here entertaining. I do think that at this point I can look in the correct direction at traffic in order to cross the street without getting creamed. It has not taken me long to be able to catch up to and understand the incredibly fast speech of the Kiwis, though it does occasionally leave me feeling like a hick. Notably, however, while making dinner last night I turned on the oven to heat up some garlic bread and set it at 250 degrees. That would have been perfect at home, except that this particular oven is calibrated in Celsius. Let's just leave it at the fact that it was, err, crunchier than I intended. Not an impressive start to a season of cooking big family dinners for myself and my housemates, but entertaining nonetheless. I think I'll adjust.

Well, the weather outside is frightful ...

It's been almost eight weeks since the ski and snowboard season officially ended in Ludlow, Vermont. It's been a wonderful spring, generally speaking, but for the last several days we've been absolutely roasting. Temperatures last weekend and through Tuesday were definitely "Africa hot", culminating in two straight hours of some serious lightning on Tuesday night and then a nearly 24 hour power outage here in my home town, followed by perfect weather for just about anything you may want to do outdoors. It may not be the perfect time to leave New England according to the Chamber of Commerce, but I've hung up the bike, made all the tough decisions regarding what to bring, packed my bags, taken in some last fresh air before the long journey, and I am just about on my way to New Zealand and another winter. Finally. Enough already with this summer thing.

Deli Aliyah

The purpose of this blog has always been to share interesting or entertaining tidbits of my life working in the mountains, skiing year-round, and I try to keep it from getting terribly personal. One aspect of my life which is a constant presence for me and is largely unbeknownst to my friends and colleagues in Vermont and New Zealand, however, is that there simply are not a lot of Jews in the snowsports business. There aren’t a lot of us around generally, and Ludlow and Wanaka are certainly a very far cry from the Upper West Side or Lower East Side of Manhattan (or Jerusalem, or Great Neck … you get the idea). I refer to this as ‘my life among the gentiles’. I often wind up behaving like Alistair Cooke, explaining the world of Judaism to gentiles who are too embarrassed to ask anyone else for fear they might seem unworldly or worse. In any event, there definitely are times when I crave a little Jewish culture and company. For that, I have my parents, and Zingerman’s.

One universal truth about Jews is that we love to eat. We’re not so different from most cultures in this respect, but the food definitely is. I suspect that every Jew born and raised in a town or city with a reasonably sized Jewish community could tell you, in great detail and with strong opinions about the best Reuben sandwich they’ve ever had. Reubens are important and, when done properly, are one of the great joys in life. Plain and simple. The delis that serve the great Reubens are legendary, and I’m not talking about Carnegie Deli, Stage Deli, or one of those “famous New York delis” that I equate to eating chowder at Legal Seafoods, to put a little New England perspective on the point. Their chowder may be pretty good, but it doesn’t count if you can buy it on the Mass Pike.

There are a few variations on the Reuben, but a couple of ingredients are absolutely essential, without which a sandwich simply is not a Reuben. First is the corned beef, served warm (insert Homer Simpson noises here). The difference between great corned beef and merely good corned beef is like the difference between a great bottle of Petrus and jug wine from the beer store. My aunt Dottie has a deli in her home town with corned beef so good that in order to digest it, one merely must place a thinly sliced piece of it on the tongue. It disappears and leaves behind only rolling eyes and moaning mouth. Words fail me. The second essential ingredient is the Russian dressing. Great Russian dressing is not simply catsup and mayonnaise – there’s so much more to it than that. It’s like heaven when schmeared liberally on fresh bread, and the creaminess of it perfectly complements the salty corned beef. As for bread, traditionalists prefer a Jewish rye while German Jews (read: West Coast-raised, never-set-foot-in-Brooklyn, eat bacon sandwiches on Yom Kippur) will use pumpernickel. Either way, the bread must be warm. Rarely is a Reuben made without cole slaw. And then there’s the cheese. Despite my needling of my brethren from L.A., I do not keep kosher and I do put Swiss cheese on my Reubens. We can debate the ethical implications of having a traditional Jewish sandwich constructed in a way that cannot be served in a kosher deli some other time. Some people choose to grill each side of the sandwich in a skillet to put a little crunch on the bread and to melt the cheese a bit, some don’t. Pastrami, turkey, roast beef, tongue, or soy in any form, have no place in a Reuben and simply render it a different sandwich altogether. The Reuben comes with a pickle, whole, un-sliced to keep the juices in after biting it. The pickle is like an aperitif to follow a Reuben.

There are numerous small delis in New York City, in the suburbs surrounding the city, and in isolated pockets around the United States which reliably serve great Reubens. In Montreal, Schwartz’s is a famous, old Jewish deli renowned for the quality of its sandwiches. There probably are a couple of Jewish delis in Los Angeles and Chicago that have good enough corned beef, but I won’t readily admit it. Zabars in Manhattan is far too fancy schmancy to serve a proper Reuben (I recognize that these are purely sociological comments and don’t result from any actual knowledge of the corned beef served in these places, but I’m sticking to them). And then there is Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In the pantheon of great sandwiches, I’m not really sure where the Zingerman’s Reuben stands; but after a long winter explaining to everyone at Okemo why I can’t work on Yom Kippur but am perfectly happy to work on Easter or Christmas, why my not eating the cafeteria food during Passover is not intended to insult the cooks, and why having kids in your ski group during Hanukah named Yitzi, Schmuli and Milky is not strange, Zingerman’s is, literally, a slice of heaven. Zingerman’s is basically a big, successful deli and bakery in Ann Arbor that has developed a mail order business that includes an extensive array of gourmet items and fresh baked goods, all described in a clever and really quite funny catalog. So what? Don’t Zabars and Barney Greengrass do mail order? Well, yes they do. But Zingerman’s will send you, via express courier only, a specifically packaged Reuben kit. It includes their outstanding corned beef, fresh baked traditional Jewish rye bread, homemade Russian dressing, cole slaw, potato salad and pickles, all with detailed instructions for how to prepare the ingredients and, for the uninitiated, how to build the sandwich that exceeds the sum of its parts and enters the realm of The Great Sandwiches. Anything that can get my New England liberal arts educated, bow tie and grosgrain watchband wearing father to fondly remember the smell of the bread his grandmother made in their shared house in Queens for the Sabbath when he was a kid must be in that special class.

I leave for New Zealand and another winter in a couple of days. I am genuinely looking forward both to the journey and to the life I’ll lead there. Nevertheless, I will once again be the only Jewish person around and the little slice (or not so little slices) of Jewishness I shared with my family last night, the olfactory and other reminders of the community to which I belong without hesitation or qualification was a most welcome parting gift. I live an expatriate’s life, from an ethnic perspective, and sometimes it is nice to come home.