The Last Patch

It's now the last week in May and, as is the case every year, we may be pardoned for confusing granite for snow as we look up at Okemo. This morning, however, after a cold night and with the forecast showing sun-filled warm days ahead, I thought what I saw up the mountain might really be the last of the snows of the winter just passed. It's illustrative of how great a season it was here in Vermont that there still is any snow at all. For me personally, it's an apt metaphor for the small respite of warm weather I have between winters. I head back to New Zealand in two weeks where the season officially opens on June 30th, and it's already been snowing at Treble Cone.

I frequently am asked how will I survive an entire cycle of the seasons with no summer, and my excitement upon seeing the TC webcams this week seems to indicate that I'll be just fine.

http://www.treblecone.com/MountainInfo/web-cams.asp

Rolling Through the Changing Seasons

I am not a professional cyclist. What I am, however, is very devoted to road biking. I love it. I may not count calories or kilojoules, I don’t calculate mets or wats, and I don’t use a Powermeter or a heart rate monitor. I do, however, put a lot of miles on my road bike, and I follow the sport in all its boundless glory and recent shame. I believe Lance rode clean, I desperately want to believe Floyd, and I think there’s nothing wrong with getting kissed by the podium girls when you win. I want to compete in the Giro d’Italia in my next life.

This year has been an interesting one for me on the bike. In a wonderful turn of fate, cycling is a terrific way to rehabilitate from ACL reconstruction. My surgeon didn’t have to tell me more than once to get on the bike. I spent a fair amount of time riding this winter with my beloved Orbea on a trainer in my dining room (which seemed somehow like heresy to me), and but for a hiccup in my recovery in March I’d have come out of the winter fitter for cycling than I have been in a long time. I’m working hard out there on the roads and my fitness is coming along, but I’ve got a long way to go. As in the case of my skiing, my continuing recovery has forced me to change my approach to cycling, so it’s good for my development as an athlete and coach.

Speaking of which, ski season and cycling season complement each other in some ways that one might not expect. Diet is one of them. As I’ve said, I’m definitely not a calorie counter and I don’t obsess about my weight – it comes and goes a bit depending on a lot of factors. In winter in Vermont, however, body fat is a good thing and you’ve got to keep your blood sugar up when the temperature drops. So I eat, eat some more, and enjoy the whole process. By March, however, with the sun out for longer, warmer days, I suddenly start to feel a bit sluggish and my thoughts turn to different kinds of food. OK, I’ll admit that it’s partly an overt attempt to get back in cycling shape and also partly the realization that once I hit the roads it feels as though I’m towing a U-Haul containing every buffalo chicken sandwich I’ve eaten at The Loft over the prior five months, but there is a natural, seasonal ebb and flow at work.

I caught myself feeling a little self-conscious about this while food shopping here in Ludlow last week. For the uninitiated, the one grocery store in Ludlow is not exactly on par with the Whole Foods in the Time Warner Center, and our town is not comprised of the fittest, healthiest people in America. Consequently, the contents of my basket may have been grounds for harassment. Consider these ingredients and you’ll understand what I mean: baby spinach (for The Big Salad), broccoli, soy milk (nothing worse than rumblings asunder while on the bike), whole grain English muffins, all natural peanut butter, Maine blueberry jam (which, when combined with peanut butter on an English, is the ultimate pre-ride power meal), Gatorade mix, eggs, onions, black beans, chipotle Tabasco sauce (note the ingredients for huevos rancheros and insert Homer Simpson noises here), two kinds of high fiber cereal, and three avocados. The only thing missing is coffee, but I get a decent roast at the Shell station for a buck with my own mug in the morning. No, I’m not on a diet. Yes, I eat a lot. And in cycling season, two of my three daily meals are designed specifically to make my life on the bike easier and better. My excuse for not including dinner in that regimen is that it’s essential to my recovery (everyone needs at least one good rationalization a day, right?).

One other tidbit about the relationship between cycling season and ski season is a very visceral response to the weather and how we dress for it. Each year I have the same reaction, invariably: in spring I spend a day skiing while aware that I’m wearing lighter clothing than the last time I rode outdoors, and in fall I spend a day cycling aware that I’m wearing heavier, warmer clothing than I wore to ski during the prior spring. I make a mental note of each of these experiences as a sign of the changing seasons, not just in terms of how the world around me is changing but in terms of how I choose to move through the world at different times of year. It’s as though I experience a diet, clothing and equipment equinox, vernal and autumnal. I wouldn’t trade either of them.

Zoot, Buddy Rich and the Connecticut Woodlands

Now that it’s spring, again, for the third time in 18 months, last week I spent some time reclining in a lounge chair on the patio of my parents’ house, looking out at the mountains and basking in some glorious sunshine and warm weather. Some moments like those lead to deep thinking, contemplation of life and the universe, etc. Yesterday I considered The Muppet Show. Bear with me and I’ll explain.

I think it’s safe to assume that any American in my demographic group learned a lot about the cultural icons of our country and the world from The Muppet Show. [Sidebar: Anyone is free to consider how many people comprise my demographic group. It consists of 30-something, liberal, Jewish, occasional attorneys and full-time, year-round ski professionals with New England liberal arts educations. We’re having a meeting next week.] Beverly Sills, Dizzy Gillespie, Isaac Stern, Elton John, and an incredibly long list of similar luminaries from the performing arts cavorted with Miss Piggy, jammed with Zoot, and caught abuse from Stadler and Waldorf in the balcony seats. It’s really pretty amazing when you think about it. Anyway, yesterday, of all people, I was remembering the great jazz drummer Buddy Rich and his appearance with the Muppets, playing alongside that other great jazz drummer, Animal (pronounced “Ahh-neee-malll”).

Having grown up in a house flooded with classic mid-20th century jazz run by two parents who were very serious about it, Buddy Rich did not really make the short-list of artists our family would trek to New York City to see and hear. Keith Jarret, Sonny Rollins, yes. Buddy Rich, no. I distinctly remember seeing Rich on The Muppet Show and wondering why that was. Why did this incredible showman, this dazzling talent, not rate? I was probably 8 years old at the time, and the performance that transfixed me, that left such an indelible mark on my childhood mind, was his ‘playing the theatre’ act. The band would start up on stage (or in the pit of the Muppet Theatre) with an empty drum set in the middle of the stage. Out struts Buddy Rich, holding two garden variety drumsticks, and hammering out complex rhythms by playing everything in sight except the drums. The stage, the walls, the lights, the Muppets themselves, everything was fair game. It was awesome, and he did it all with a huge grin on his face, obviously having a ball.

What I remember best about the sounds that Rich rendered from the Muppet Theatre itself was the way each surface that met with his sticks seemed to sound as though it had been meant to be played. They all sounded quite different from each other, but in his hands they literally made for sweet music in a way wholly unanticipated by my childhood ears. Yes, I do have a point I’m making here and no, it’s not about puppets, showmanship, or the human condition. It’s about the woods.

The patio at my parents’ house where I was reclining last week sits at the edge of their gardens, a large meadow, and some dense woods. There’s a large variety of trees in the woods – they are bordered by enormous and legitimately ancient oaks and also contain birch, maple, beech, spruce, some cedar and several other varieties. Most importantly at this time of year, the woodpeckers have returned and are doing their best Buddy Rich imitation. They hammer out rhythms on the trees of various sizes and species, each with a unique percussive sound. Especially in the mornings, there can be as many as eight or more woodpeckers all pounding their heads into the tree trunks but, amazingly, never at the same time. They never seem to play over each other. So, the different sounds, different tones of each tree and the always similar and often identical patterns and tempo of pecking really is unlike any auditory experience I’m aware of, and it’s unique to the Eastern woodlands of the United States.

The clip below includes audio, so turn up the volume and you’ll hear what I mean. If Buddy Rich had stepped out into the woods and listened, he’d have been proud. The background noise is Washinee Creek filled with spring runoff from the mountains and, if you listen carefully, you also will also hear the sound of hungry young red-tailed hawks.

March Winds

I'm not sure of the origin of the expression "March winds bring April showers ...", but the author clearly didn't live in Vermont. A little over a week ago, on March 30th, the temperature in the parking lot of the Learning Center locker room at 7:30 AM was a crisp 13 degrees Fahrenheit. By 4:30 PM on that same day the temperature was 46 degrees Fahrenheit. I took the photo of my house on the left that afternoon - please note the height of the snow banks. For those of you who don't spend a lot of time in the mountains of the Northeastern USA, 46 degrees with the sun up on a cloudless afternoon in March leaves us feeling as though we've been furloughed from prison. We get giddy and, both literally and figuratively, the sap starts flowing.

We've had such a phenomenal season here at Okemo that one week later on Sunday April 6th, the last day on which we were providing lessons for our guests, Okemo still had a trail count of 115. Of the two trails not open, one was a double diamond glade trails (which is more granite than snow even in the best of conditions) and the other was a minuscule "trail" alongside a short magic carpet used to teach children in our MiniStars program. The latter was closed simply because our lift department decided not to spare the staff to operate the carpet. The mountain has extended the season and we'll be skiing and riding through April 20th. Bear in mind that it is now six months since anyone saw their front lawns here in Ludlow.

As for me, I'm far more interested in figuring out when the snow banks will disappear and I can get on with my plan of furiously enjoying warm weather in advance of my return to New Zealand and Treble Cone. I'm very excited to head back for another Southern Winter, but my flip flops need some exercise out of the house and my road bike desperately wants to actually move somewhere other than the dining room. I'll get my chance soon enough, and I aim to make the most of it.

Geezers

One of the more curious aspects of my experience last summer in New Zealand was the incredible lack of old people in Wanaka. There simply weren’t any. On the snow school staff at Treble Cone, there were precisely two people older than me, and they included my friend Dave who is a whopping eighteen months older than me. Many of the young staff there took an approach to skiing (and to me, at first) that seemed based on the presumption that they had invented skiing the week before and knew it all. After a few runs with me, the lay of the land became clearer to my young colleagues and all was well, but I couldn’t help but think back to all the older people with whom I have the privilege of working at Okemo. Having them around is a real blessing and, from a technical ski teaching point of view, really helps me maintain a healthy perspective on my own goals and on the goals of our guests.

At Okemo, we have many instructors who are well into their ‘70’s, who are terrific instructors, a lot of fun to work with, and who continue to ski and ride at a very high level. Most of them are retirees or second career ski pros, but a few of them have been dedicated to the craft of ski teaching for a very long time. Some can legitimately be considered as major contributors to the development of the sports of skiing and snowboarding in America and the world. As a group they’re very unassuming, and more often than not, the guests have no idea of the vast amount of ski teaching experience staring out at them from under graying eyebrows. It seems to me that my friends prefer to keep it that way, though I often tell the guests the full story when this particular group of instructors is out of ear shot. Learning that their instructor is 77 years-old, has been a full-cert for more than fifty years and was on the training staff at Stowe in the 1950’s has quite an impact on someone skiing for the first time.

The stories our older instructors share about skiing and ski teaching really are amazing, and frequently their skiing will stop our younger staff in their tracks. Imagine a 70-plus year old instructor, with one eye and an artificial hip, having survived a quadruple bypass and demonstrating to the young park and pipe rippers the ballet moves he used to teach in the 1960’s. You try doing a worm turn or a tip roll with a glass eye, a titanium hip and a grin as wide as your goggles!

There are many little funny and heart-warming anecdotes I could relay here, but I’ll resist the urge to do so. Suffice it to say that I hope anyone who considers themselves devoted to skiing has the opportunity to ski with someone like these friends of mine. They have so much to offer, so little concern for the latest and greatest (they’ve seen it all before), and yet, as teachers, continue to learn, evolve and guide their own experiences on skis so as to create a better experience for all of those with whom they share their sport. The ripples emanating from the work of my more senior colleagues at Okemo touch the lives of many, and have a long lasting, happy and healthy impact on the lives of a lot of people, guests and staff alike. Thank God for the geezers.

Gemütlichkeit

The literal translation of the German word “gemütlich” is “warm and congenial, pleasant or friendly”. The literal translation of “gemütlichkeit” is “warm friendliness, amicability” (both according to the American Heritage Dictionary). These translations don’t quite convey the real meaning of the words, however. In substance, they connote a certain kind of social acceptance or ease, an atmosphere of cheerfulness, of communal or shared, easy activity at a relaxed pace. A great old ski lodge and a warm pub filled with friends and neighbors both may be described as gemütlich places, or as being filled with gemütlichkeit.

I had a particularly fun morning skiing with a couple of friends today. It reminded me that the actual act of skiing itself is only one small part of what I enjoy about skiing generally.

After several runs – which continue to get better and stronger, incidentally - on my third day back, my friends and I took a break inside the summit lodge at Okemo. The lodge was busy for a weekday morning, but it was a particularly merry crowd of mostly locals taking refuge from the wind and cold.

Making my way from the cafeteria, hot chocolate in hand, to the seats we had scoped out took some time. This wasn’t because it was crowded, but because there were so many people I knew in there, all surprised and happy to see me up on top of the mountain. I can’t articulate just how good it made me feel to be greeted in that way, to be encouraged by so many people, some of whom are friends but many of whom are merely acquaintances but generally glad to see me in ski boots. We sat, my friends and I, chatted with those around us, swapped stories, and generally did what normal people enjoying a day of skiing do when taking a break. In a winter season that has been anything but normal, it finally felt to me like I was back, among my people, where I feel that I belong. Gemütlichkeit, even in our brightly lit, not particularly cozy summit lodge here at Okemo. It’s the people that make a community and an atmosphere, and it was a joy to be welcomed and to share in it this morning.

Siren Call

Your chariot awaits.