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.

Don't Mess with Mamma

Here's a photo of something that happens regularly in air above the woods and which never fails to amaze me. I was able to capture a photograph of a crow chasing a hawk that had been, well, doing what hawks do. When this confrontation occurs, the hawks typically continue climbing higher, using the convection currents and other breezes available to them until they've reached an altitude uncomfortable for the crows, who are much more nimble fliers. The shrieking from both birds are really quite extraordinary sounds. So much for the calm and quiet of the mountains.

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.