February 19, 2012

Visitor season has arrived.  My sister and her boyfriend were here this past week.  We had three excellent days of skiing with them.

It is fun skiing with other people for a change.  It was a fun reminder of the past struggles in skiing.  It is strange to remember when I, too, preferred to ski groomed runs.  The groomed surface is firm and provides limited abilities to quickly arrest speed.  The minor variability in firmness provides an uneven control for the slower turns.  It is strange that an intermediate skier can be excited by the amount of control they can find on such runs while an expert can be a little disturbed by the amount of control.  My perception of control is perhaps clouded, but my ability to do exactly what I want with my skis on steep ungroomed terrain does seem to contrast with the sloppiness of imprecise sliding turns on intermediate groomed runs.  Control, I think, is really found in soft snow, but intermediates haven't yet found the skills for that.

Our focus on groomed snow wasn't without fun.  Often there was an ungroomed edge that allowed us all to ski the same run within our individual preferences.  Sometimes we simply said that we would meet them at the lift.  On those runs, Kris and I even found some deep powder.  Other times, though, Kris and I found ways of enjoying the groomed snow like quick, edgy turns or high speed carving.  Even the sloppy skidded turns can be fun to try to shape in interesting ways.  Ultimately, though, the social aspect more than made up for any displeasure that we found in the groomed runs.  We have skied ungroomed snow to our hearts' content over the last few seasons, but skiing with friends has been a bit rare; a treat is something that you don't have every day.

We took them to Loveland, A-Basin, and Breckenridge in the three days they were here.  Our A-Basin season pass is good for a total of five days at a few other resorts including Breckenridge.  It was nice to be reminded of the competitive nature of season passes in this part of Colorado.  We are treated a bit better here than anywhere else we have had season passes.  We were able to get our guests decent discounts on their lift tickets and we finally took advantage of our discount on food.  Since we usually either pack a lunch or don't ski long enough to need to stop for lunch, we haven't really taken advantage of that much before.

Breckenridge was stressful.  Our luck appeared to be conspiring against us even getting to the slopes that morning, so arriving to a resort atmosphere was the furthest thing from a stress relieving welcome for me.  The parking wasn't well marked and I missed several turns.  When we finally settled on a parking lot, I was disturbed to find that it was going to cost me money.  I pulled up to the booth to pay the five dollars, but was at least relieved of that by their five dollar discount for car pooling with at least four people in the car.  By the time we rode the gondola up to the base area, it was already approaching noon.  With a twenty dollar discount for half day tickets, our guests waited a few minutes to buy their passes while Kris and I took a couple of quick runs on ours.  We had no problem skiing to exhaustion so it really wasn't a big deal arriving so late. 

Breckenridge is huge, basically impossible to explore in a single day.  While that might seem like an advantage, our experience of skiing full seasons at much smaller places makes me question the value of so much space.  It almost adds stress because it seems like you could choose the wrong part of the mountain and end up spending so much time trying to find the right part for the day's conditions.  I kept looking up at the vast expert terrain up high as we skied with our guests and was struck by how many people it must have taken to ski up so much terrain.  I am sure that it wasn't as severely bumped as parts of our smaller areas this year, but there clearly wasn't any untracked snow available in the vast area. 

The existence of even short lift lines on a weekday combined with the building skier traffic as the slopes funneled down to the lifts.  I was feeling stressed by the crowd, even though the place can withstand much larger crowds.  It was another reminder of our preference for uncrowded weekday skiing at less popular places.  Breckenridge really isn't a bad place, but it really isn't my kind of place.  I had lots of fun there, but had lots of stress as well.  

Our guests arrived on Monday evening.  The drive down out of the mountains and across Denver wasn't too bad, but the dirty wet roads can virtually obscure the headlights in only a few short miles.  Limited visibility makes the highway driving a little stressful.  I did clean my headlights at the airport so they seemed a bit brighter on the way home, but maybe I just got used to not being able to see where I was going.  The airport isn't a bad drive, a little over an hour.  There is close, easy parking for picking up guests, but it is annoying that there isn't any free parking.  Anchorage didn't have the best parking for picking up guests, but at least it was free.

We went out for dinner for probably the first time on a Valentine's Day in a very long time, a day that Kris and I usually avoid.  We stopped at the little Italian place in town and were surprised that they didn't have any tables.  Luckily, there are several restaurants in town so we tried another place that wasn't crowded.  We seem to be treated well by the local businesses, especially when they find out we are living here in town.  We also hit the eastern European restaurant in town on our guests' last night.  It is fun to be living in such a small isolated town, but still be able to walk to a few nice restaurants.

As a group, we seemed to have picked up where we left off in Paris.  We have developed an ongoing conversation on the nature of art that intrigues me.  The issues of commissioning and marketing seem to be negatives, but at the same time, they are somewhat unavoidable.  And even the most commercial of artists isn't devoid of talent.  The issue of who determines what constitutes art spills over into political concepts.  Perhaps the old days of powerful radio stations provided simply an elitist society, where art flowed to the people through a network of reasonably qualified filters.  Perhaps museum curators provide an equivalent service.  In music, it seems to me that democratization has actually resulted in chaos, where there isn't any clarity or consensus like the old days.  I don't know which is better, but all artists have a desire to be heard and each provides the individual with different, but equally insurmountable obstacles to achieving that goal.  It is a subject that fascinates me when I consider the artistic pursuits of myself and my friends.

It is shaping up to be a very political year and I spend a lot of time yelling at the TV.  I did check out both Rick Santorum's and Mitt Romney's websites during commercials.  I had previously been ignoring Santorum as I didn't think he was a viable candidate.  His positions on the issues were unsatisfying for me.  His strong stands against abortion and gay rights were no surprise, but hardly the positions of someone who is interested in finding common or middle ground, in uniting the nation as he sometimes claims.  His treatment of the other issues seemed non-intellectual, mostly dogmatic.  While there could be sound logical arguments behind many of his positions, he certainly doesn't waste too many words on such.  I suppose he really isn't interested in my vote.

Romney's website was much better.  He explained many of his positions much more intelligently.  For example, he didn't talk about simply eliminating regulations without acknowledging the legislation behind them.  Of course his focus on changing legislation raises serious doubts about his ability to do most of the things he referenced.  He doesn't seem to be interested in being in charge of the Executive Branch, he seems more interested in being 'chief legislator'.  I suppose I hold a minority viewpoint about the separation of powers, but I expect Congress to handle legislation.  I do accept Presidential input and leadership, especially in matters of making the Executive Branch more efficient, but when a candidate runs on legislating, I am concerned about their ability to actually achieve those things while also assuring that the existing government operations continue to run smoothly according to the existing laws.

I liked that both candidates used the word replace in conjunction with Obamacare as it acknowledges that there are significant problems in our system of administering medical care that require government action. The content of their concepts of replacement seemed a bit unclear and neither acknowledged the significant issues of insurance company abusiveness that was the primary focus of the current law.  I am not convinced that the current law was the best solution to the abuses, but I am not too impressed by criticism without an alternative.  Maybe my years of management experience still has me demanding solutions, not problems. 

I was quite disturbed by the complete lack of mention of environment by either candidate.  This election is shaping up to be one significantly about the role of government and I can't think of a better example of an issue worthy of clarifying government's role.  I would find a position that says eliminate the EPA more well thought out than virtually no mention.  If a candidate is suggesting that government has simply gone too far, they need to explain their vision of the appropriate level of government.  Simply saying that we need less is an emotional appeal to a popular sentiment.  I would sure love to see a coherent explanation by any candidate of the appropriate role of government in environmental protection.  I am pretty sure that none of the viable candidates believe that the government has no role, so they are all somewhere in the middle like me.  It is pretty tough to understand what they mean by less government when they don't establish some principles or baseline.  I suppose they want me to infer their position by the specific regulations that they despise, but I am having a hard time understanding where they would draw the line.

I have been yelling at the TV quite a bit about this week's controversy over contraception and religious freedom.  Each side wants to frame the issue as one or the other, but I am not stupid enough to believe that it is not an issue of both.  Primarily Catholic organizations object to providing their employees with health insurance benefits that include contraception.  I understand their objection to paying for something they find morally unacceptable.  On the other hand, though, their employees are not entirely Catholic.  The issue of whether any employer has the right to decide what is best for their employees' health is a serious issue of freedom.  What is somewhat laughable is that many of the Catholic employees might actually choose contraceptive measures.  In a way, it seems like the Catholic Church is looking to the government to help enforce their religious tenants upon their followers by providing them this power of choice.  While the right solution is not simple when issues of freedom collide like this, any politician who doesn't acknowledge both sides is either stupid or evil in my eyes.  The bottom line for me, though, is that employers shouldn't have much influence on people's personal lives.  While choosing to work for a Catholic institution might seem like an acceptance of certain expectations, I think the reality for the laundry, cafeteria, and janitorial employees is more of a job market with limited choices that doesn't deserve any further limits.  It is an interesting issue where both sides have a point, but it angers me when neither side acknowledges the other.

I understand how politics works by advocating for points of view.  I get that for an individual legislator, they will make a choice when they vote on legislation and that they will likely explain their vote based on the principles that supported their decision and not the principles that supported the opposite vote.  What irritates me is when they feel that it is necessary to suggest that the opposing point of view was simply the inverse of the supporting principles.  If a legislator votes against a bill because they aren't convinced that the expansion of government's role is justified, I accept that they voted on the principle of keeping government small.  That doesn't mean that the legislator who voted for it did so because they want a bigger government.  It is this characterization that prevents us from coming together.  If we could recognize that there are always principles that support either decision and that many of the decisions facing our government leaders are not simple decisions, we might actually find that we all reside in the middle and that our differences are in fact very small.  Our insistence on a radical left and a radical right makes life unrealistically polar.  I suppose it makes the news more marketable and that is why we only ever hear sound bites of controversy.  I've got to stop watching so much TV.

I have continued working on my video project, although at a slower pace.  I have written a couple more episodes and captured a little bit of footage.  It is still an engaging process, although some parts are far more of a time demand than I had even envisioned.  Some of the filming will require a good deal of setup just to get a few seconds of footage.  Sound is a bit of a challenge as well, although I think I have worked out a workflow for that using the sound system in the camera.  I seem to have no problem getting through the days, even our down days like this weekend haven't seemed slow.