Life most young folk I knew in the 90s, I was pretty excited when The Simpsons made a special episode about my small, culturally insignificant nation. I still chuckle a bit about "knifey-spoony" to this day. However, my enthusiasm for that episode was tempered by my confusion about the whole "which way the water in the toilet spins when you flush it" argument that leads to the eventual Simpson family trip to Australia. For the uninitiated, the toilet flushing mechanism is quite different in Australia to the normal systems in place in North America. When flushed, water tends to rush into Australian toilet bowls from all directions in a kind of whitewater cascade without any discernible pattern or rotation. Having grown up accustomed to this type of flushing system, I didn't understand the argument Bart and Lisa have in the iconic Simpsons episode about which way the water spins in the southern hemisphere. So, you can imagine the mixture of surprise, curiosity, and epiphany (with respect to the Simpsons episode - let's not get too carried away, although it had been bugging me for years) I experienced upon flushing my first North American toilet and seeing the water in the basin spin around as it drained out.
It turns out that this effect is not, as claimed in The Simpsons, due to the Coriolis effect, because the body of water in the bowl is too small to be appreciably influenced by the Earth's rotation. But I have hit upon a new way in which the Coriolis effect may be influencing my everyday life.
I have never in my life had as much belly button lint as I do here in Canada. It's frankly disturbing just how much lint my belly button is collecting. If this lint is coming from my clothes, it's a wonder I have any shirts left. People have posited a number of explanations for this phenomenon: I'm wearing woolen thermals, I'm using a tumble dryer more frequently, etc. None of these can account for the increase in lint compared to the quantities generated during my time in New Zealand, where I wore the same clothes, did pretty-much the same stuff, and used similar laundering techniques.
Indeed, it appears that the independent variables have been held about as constant between my time in New Zealand in Canada as they could reasonably be expected to be. The only thing that has changed is that I'm now north of the equator, rather than south. It seems that in some kind of cosmic coincidence, the reversed direction of the Coriolis effect in the northern hemisphere has aligned with the layout of my body hair to achieve a perfect storm of belly button lint.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Fernie, and The Dark Art of Ski Resort Profitability
Last week I went to Fernie, a pretty well known and popular ski hill a few hours east of Rossland, to catch up with Barrett, a friend and patroller from Broken River who works at Big Sky ski resort in the northern winters. Since then I've been trying for a while to think of a neat way to summarise the differences between Red Mountain and Fernie. It's not as simple as the comparison between here and Silver Star, where the feel of two ski fields and towns are about as different as they come. Today, however, during my many hours of solo chairlift time, I think I may have settled on the existential nugget at the root of our differences.
Fernie is what Red Mountain would be like if the operators of Red Mountain demonstrated even the remotest interest in making money.
Making money in the ski industry is not easy, but all the successful business plans have one common feature: They involve beginner and intermediate skiers from out of town. Why? Well, the alternative is to try to make money from locals and advanced skiers. Generally, there simply aren't enough locals near most ski hills. And once you've separated them from their money, they are broke and you have to wait twelve months before they've prepared their wallets for another ski-field-based-viking-pillage-fest. Advanced skiers, on the other hand, are mostly smelly wierd people who will own more toques (it’s Canadian for “beanies”) than socks, and whose most valuable possessions are their beards. There are a fair number of them scattered around the world, but you can rely on them to do everything within their power to avoid spending any money at the ski hill. They will soar to new heights of ingenuity and plumb new depths of indignity to avoid paying for a ski pass, let alone lunch. The only thing they will reliably spend money on is beer.
Beginners and intermediates from out of town, on the other hand, are plentiful, usually have genuine jobs that pay actual money, and are often accompanied by kids, who can be counted on to complain until money is spent on their behalf. And the best part of people from out of town is that once they've spent their money they leave, and can be replaced with fresh people from out of town with bulging wallets and a persistent sense of emptiness that only paying for things can fill.
These two markets create the central conflict that often lies at heart of a ski area. The locals, bolstered by the seasonal population of ski bums, want to maximise the radness of their ski area. But radness doesn't pay the bills, and the ski hill usually has to spend its resources accommodating visitors who usually value convenience, accessible skiing and good facilities over difficult terrain, cheap tickets, and a ski patrol who won't mind if you hurl yourself off something large and unwise.
Red Mountain and Fernie started out in much the same way. Red was a club ski field that built their first chairlift in the 40s, Fernie a small commercial field that started in the 60s. Both catered to the locals and provided rad skiing as affordably as possible. Both got bought out in the 90s (well, Red was 1989, but close enough), and that's where their stories diverge. Red was bought by a group of locals who kept the basic character of the ski hill the same. It still provided hard skiing, good snow, and a laid back vibe. Fernie, on the other hand, got bought by a massive resort consortium that started major developments including new lifts, more on-mountain accommodation, more groomed runs, and a baffling assortment of uniforms for their staff.
The result is that Fernie is like the skiing equivalent of milk that has just started to go off. Mostly, it's milk: Clean wholesome goodness that almost everyone will enjoy, ensuring a steady supply of beginners and intermediates from out of town to keep the hill’s finances healthy. But underneath that there’s the sour hint of something more potent – bits and pieces of good steep terrain, a few crusty lifts, the occasional patroller with food in their beard, and some locals who ski hard.
Compared to this, Red Mountain is like sour cream. It’s delicious if you like that kind of thing, is closely connected with tacos, and is not the kind of product you can get rich selling. Despite being recently bought out again by an investor from San Diego, Red Mountain still shows a breathtaking disregard for the concept of commercial viability. As an example, the current fashion that attracts people to your hill is fast lifts. Getting from the bottom of the hill back to the top is now a priority that people will pay for. Red’s lifts (which are mostly if not all second hand) are slow. How slow? About as slow as their website. Sure, there are some beginner and intermediate groomed runs here, and some condos near the resort, but all of this seems to be just a token effort to make it look like they’re trying to make money. This hill is great, and I’m super glad I came here, but I would not recommend it to new skiers or families looking for a fun and easy vacation. When I arrived, the hill was way too hard for me to take full advantage of, and after a few months of skiing here I’m still regularly schooled by the terrain. There are big chunks of this hill which I certainly won’t ski this season, and maybe never will.
So, Fernie was fun, and it was good to see Barrett again (even if he has shaved off his voluptuous beard). I could spend a season in Fernie and have a good time, and I wouldn’t even have to do that much laundry, but after skiing here I’d feel like I was missing something.
Oh, and I didn’t find my childhood pal Parri Gregory.
The Slow Bitter End Of An American Icon
So, a long time ago I wrote an entry about the van I'd bought, and how it didn't really inspire me with confidence. I've been meaning to write something about that ever since but, being me, I hadn't. So now let me take the opportunity to explain what's wrong with my van, in chronological order.
There were some reasonably obvious problems with the vehicle when I first bought it. The windscreen is riddled with cracks, there's a fairly substantial piece missing from the front bumper, one of the brake rotors needed machining, so it shook when you tried to slow down. But it was large, it was maroon, it made me feel like a big man, and best of all, it was a GMC Safari van. What better way to travel North America than in a genuine American Van made by a Genuine American Van Manufacturer? Behind the wheel I was like some kind of cloned love child of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan.
The boost this van gave to my ego was well worth a few superficial flaws. However, it wasn't long before, like a cloned love child of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, the van started to demonstrate some slightly alarming defects. First, the demister stopped working. In Australia, a demister (the thing that blows hot air onto the windscreen to stop it from fogging up) is a handy accessory to have in your car. In Canada in winter it's a way of life. When you have to scrape the ice off the outside AND the inside of your windscreen, you have problems. But at least you can reach the inside of your windscreen while driving. When the windscreen wipers started to die shortly afterwards, the van became even more dangerous to drive.
Then the power steering pump died. It turns out that Safari vans have a common problem where if the steering wheel is turned to full lock and you accelerate sharply then brake, the shaft of the power steering pump breaks. Incidentally, those are pretty much the exact instructions for getting out of snowed-in parking spot, so it wasn't long before that fairly critical piece of hardware broke. To compound matters, the power steering pump also runs the ABS brakes, so not only did I lose power steering, I also lost power assisted brakes and had to perform a one-legged leg press to bring the vehicle to a halt.
I drove the van for several weeks in this condition before taking it to a mechanic, partly because I was using it and didn't want it out of commission at the mechanic's workshop, partly because I didn't want to spend money getting it fixed, and partly because I'd just agreed to go climbing in July and figured that wrestling the van into parking spots constituted valuable upper body strength training. The mechanic fairly generously assumed that I had brought the van to him because it was undrivable (which, in a safety-conscious manner of speaking, it was) but in the end it was so expensive to get just some of the many problems it faced fixed that I opted not to have any work done.
Then it began to have problems starting up. These were especially devious, because it would start just fine when it was cold, but then stall shortly after starting when it was warm. This made driving to Silver Star quite scary, because when I stopped to clean the windscreen, the van didn't want to start up again. After a few moments of panic, I got it running and made it through that journey unscathed.
So you'll appreciate my relief to have made it safely to Silver Star, some 400-odd kms away, and back. And you'll appreciate my trepidation when setting out to Fernie to visit my friend Barrett last Monday night. I managed to make it into town safely, and even drove around town just fine until it was time to head home on Thursday afternoon. Then it died halfway down the highway that runs through town. Awkward.
And then a police car pulled up behind me about 30 seconds later. Awkward.
Then I didn't have my British Columbia driver's license with me. Awkward.
Anyway, the police officer was very reasonable. I figured that it might have just run out of fuel, since I knew it was pretty low, and maybe the petrol gauge had just broken, so he waited for me to get a jerry can from a nearby gas station and try to get the van started. It still wouldn't go (awkward), so realising that I didn't really want to pay for a tow truck, he kindly offered to push my van down the road with his car until I could turn off on a nearby street. He seemed slightly concerned about damaging my rear bumper, but I quickly laughed off his concerns. Rad, but awkward.
So that's how I ended up getting gently bumped down the main street of Fernie by a police officer. And, to increase the awesomeness of this moment, I managed to roll start the van. The coolest on-duty police officer I've ever seen drove off without any further concerns and I breathed an enormous sigh of relief that he never looked at the front of the van and the many non-roadworthy features it contained.
I assumed that perhaps the van really had run out of fuel, filled it up and managed to make it home (with Barrett driving behind me as an escort until his turn off back to the States). But I assumed wrong, and now it's sitting in a nearby carpark and won't budge an inch. However, it's downhill to Trail where I can get it scrapped, and if I make a few bucks I can spend them on hair gel. So, for the rest of this trip I guess I'm going to hitch. Hope I don't get molested!
There were some reasonably obvious problems with the vehicle when I first bought it. The windscreen is riddled with cracks, there's a fairly substantial piece missing from the front bumper, one of the brake rotors needed machining, so it shook when you tried to slow down. But it was large, it was maroon, it made me feel like a big man, and best of all, it was a GMC Safari van. What better way to travel North America than in a genuine American Van made by a Genuine American Van Manufacturer? Behind the wheel I was like some kind of cloned love child of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan.
The boost this van gave to my ego was well worth a few superficial flaws. However, it wasn't long before, like a cloned love child of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, the van started to demonstrate some slightly alarming defects. First, the demister stopped working. In Australia, a demister (the thing that blows hot air onto the windscreen to stop it from fogging up) is a handy accessory to have in your car. In Canada in winter it's a way of life. When you have to scrape the ice off the outside AND the inside of your windscreen, you have problems. But at least you can reach the inside of your windscreen while driving. When the windscreen wipers started to die shortly afterwards, the van became even more dangerous to drive.
Then the power steering pump died. It turns out that Safari vans have a common problem where if the steering wheel is turned to full lock and you accelerate sharply then brake, the shaft of the power steering pump breaks. Incidentally, those are pretty much the exact instructions for getting out of snowed-in parking spot, so it wasn't long before that fairly critical piece of hardware broke. To compound matters, the power steering pump also runs the ABS brakes, so not only did I lose power steering, I also lost power assisted brakes and had to perform a one-legged leg press to bring the vehicle to a halt.
I drove the van for several weeks in this condition before taking it to a mechanic, partly because I was using it and didn't want it out of commission at the mechanic's workshop, partly because I didn't want to spend money getting it fixed, and partly because I'd just agreed to go climbing in July and figured that wrestling the van into parking spots constituted valuable upper body strength training. The mechanic fairly generously assumed that I had brought the van to him because it was undrivable (which, in a safety-conscious manner of speaking, it was) but in the end it was so expensive to get just some of the many problems it faced fixed that I opted not to have any work done.
Then it began to have problems starting up. These were especially devious, because it would start just fine when it was cold, but then stall shortly after starting when it was warm. This made driving to Silver Star quite scary, because when I stopped to clean the windscreen, the van didn't want to start up again. After a few moments of panic, I got it running and made it through that journey unscathed.
So you'll appreciate my relief to have made it safely to Silver Star, some 400-odd kms away, and back. And you'll appreciate my trepidation when setting out to Fernie to visit my friend Barrett last Monday night. I managed to make it into town safely, and even drove around town just fine until it was time to head home on Thursday afternoon. Then it died halfway down the highway that runs through town. Awkward.
And then a police car pulled up behind me about 30 seconds later. Awkward.
Then I didn't have my British Columbia driver's license with me. Awkward.
Anyway, the police officer was very reasonable. I figured that it might have just run out of fuel, since I knew it was pretty low, and maybe the petrol gauge had just broken, so he waited for me to get a jerry can from a nearby gas station and try to get the van started. It still wouldn't go (awkward), so realising that I didn't really want to pay for a tow truck, he kindly offered to push my van down the road with his car until I could turn off on a nearby street. He seemed slightly concerned about damaging my rear bumper, but I quickly laughed off his concerns. Rad, but awkward.
So that's how I ended up getting gently bumped down the main street of Fernie by a police officer. And, to increase the awesomeness of this moment, I managed to roll start the van. The coolest on-duty police officer I've ever seen drove off without any further concerns and I breathed an enormous sigh of relief that he never looked at the front of the van and the many non-roadworthy features it contained.
I assumed that perhaps the van really had run out of fuel, filled it up and managed to make it home (with Barrett driving behind me as an escort until his turn off back to the States). But I assumed wrong, and now it's sitting in a nearby carpark and won't budge an inch. However, it's downhill to Trail where I can get it scrapped, and if I make a few bucks I can spend them on hair gel. So, for the rest of this trip I guess I'm going to hitch. Hope I don't get molested!
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Silver Star, it's cleaner than Red.
Last week I put most of the important things in my life into my van and drove to Silver Star to visit some friends from Broken River. Silver Star is a ski field near Vernon in British Columbia, about 5 hours drive from Rossland.
Before I headed to Canada, I considered spending the season at Silver Star. It's probably good that I didn't because if I had I would have spent a lot more time doing laundry and worrying about my personal hygiene.
It's a bit difficult to explain exactly what the differences are between Red Mountain/Rossland and Silver Star. The first thing is that although Silver Star is near Vernon, the 20 minute drive between the hill and town make them separate in all the ways that count. The ski hill has a pretty big village at its base, and most of the people I met while skiing were actually living in the village. Red Mountain also has a bunch of condos at the bottom of the lifts, but no one I know uses them. The condos at Red seem to be an excuse to hire unhappy cleaning staff and make their lives miserable. After all, Red is only 5 minutes drive from Rossland, so it's easier to live in town and commute to the hill.
So, does this seemingly innocuous variation mean there's any appreciable difference between Red Mountain/Rossland and Silver Star? Well, yes, because we're really comparing skiing and living at Silver Star against skiing at Red and living in Rossland. And living at Silver Star means living in a condo. That means normal, regular people who don't necessarily make more money than me live in 3 storey condos with a hot tub. I live in a house that's furnished from the thrift store and smells like weed every time our neighbour who lives in the basement apartment lights up. Of course, I've been living in dodgy share houses and cheap huts in NZ for the last few years, so I'd actually forgotten that regular people lived in places where all the items of furniture had the correct number of legs and the decor was from the 70s. In fact, it's slightly unnerving to use a kitchen without lino, or sit on a chair where there's a genuine risk that people would notice if you spilled food on it. The delicate thrill of a small risk of infecting my sleeping bag with bed-bugs is a constant companion when I fall asleep each night. It's hard to nod off without it.
Not only do people who live at Silver Star have to live in nice condos that must be kept clean and not set even a little bit on fire, they have to pay rent for those condos. Ouch.
But it's not just the standard of housing which is higher in Silver Star. Rossland is full of dirtbags. At Silver Star, people didn't even know what a dirtbag was. I went from the ski hill into Vernon to try to repair my bindings, and my host asked if I wanted to go home and get changed. Get changed? Here in Rossland I get changed to sleep. And in NZ I didn't always go that far. I don't really want to live in a world where people will judge me harshly for wearing my ski gear to the grocery store. Here, I am considered a respectable guy because I'm wearing more than just my thermals. That's how it should be.
And just about no one has a beard! In Rossland, you either have a beard, or you haven't shaved recently. Even the normal "Clean Shaven" stage of the shaving cycle seems to be absent from local life. People somehow reduce the amount of stubble they have without ever completely removing the hair from their face (I must admit - I do this using clippers, but every time I use them I feel inadequate and like less of a man). Of course, this only applies to men, but there really aren't enough women in Rossland to get a sufficient sample space to provide any statistically valid data on their facial hair grooming habits.
Silver Star must do a roaring trade in shaving razors. Beardiness in general is much less frequent, and clean-shaven faces adorn the landscape. Plus, there are quite a lot of women, and none of the ones I met had beards. Here at Red Mountain, we do a roaring trade in P-Tex*. I think that pretty much summarises what our two towns are about.
"OK," You're saying, "What about the skiing?" Well, actually you're not saying that. Most of you don't seem to care about skiing at all. But I'm going to tell you about it anyway. Hopefully those of you who aren't familiar with the graceful art of sliding on snow can gloss over the technical details and find something to LOL about.
It's important to realise that I wasn't at Silver Star for a powder day. It was warm and icy while I was there, and conditions weren't fantastic. Despite this, I had a fun time. But it was a slightly silly kind of fun. Perhaps the best summary I can give of Silver Star is that I didn't faceplant there once in three days. At Red, I faceplant every day, probably several times. Sure, the terrain is challenging enough for a mediocre skier like me and I was a long way from ripping the hill up, but at no point at Silver Star did I look at a piece of terrain and think "Holy crap, I'd better stay the hell away from that." At Red, I basically spend most of my day avoiding things (like responsibility and the inevitability of middle class working life. But also cliffs. In fact, mostly cliffs).
The style of skiing at Silver Star is also very different to the way people ski at Red. My housemates have a word for the style of skiing that's popular at Silver Star, and it's neither politically correct nor flattering. I don't really think that's fair. When you see a really good skier making smooth, precise, dynamic, short-radius turns in all kinds of conditions and terrain it's really impressive to see. Good skiers at Silver Star manage to go fast while constantly turning and sweeping their skis from side to side. Good skiers at Red go fast, turn occasionally and spend a disconcerting amount of time in the air. Good skiers at Silver Star ski fluidly around and through the bumps. Good skiers at Red just ski over the top of the bumps, with or without touching the ground. Of course, I don't do any of those things.
So, you should go to Silver Star if you like clean, friendly people, convenient facilities and good accommodation. The skiing is accessible and fun, and you can change your undies every day without ever having to worry about soiling them. If you never really know which setting you should use on your washing machine, and you like linoleum, consider Red Mountain. The skiing is difficult and occasionally scary, and you can keep wearing the same undies for as long as you like, provided you can keep them free of your own waste.
* P-Tex, for the non-snow-sliding types, is used to repair the bases of your skis or board if you hack them up on rocks or trees whatever other sharp hard stuff there might be lurking on or under the snow.
Before I headed to Canada, I considered spending the season at Silver Star. It's probably good that I didn't because if I had I would have spent a lot more time doing laundry and worrying about my personal hygiene.
It's a bit difficult to explain exactly what the differences are between Red Mountain/Rossland and Silver Star. The first thing is that although Silver Star is near Vernon, the 20 minute drive between the hill and town make them separate in all the ways that count. The ski hill has a pretty big village at its base, and most of the people I met while skiing were actually living in the village. Red Mountain also has a bunch of condos at the bottom of the lifts, but no one I know uses them. The condos at Red seem to be an excuse to hire unhappy cleaning staff and make their lives miserable. After all, Red is only 5 minutes drive from Rossland, so it's easier to live in town and commute to the hill.
So, does this seemingly innocuous variation mean there's any appreciable difference between Red Mountain/Rossland and Silver Star? Well, yes, because we're really comparing skiing and living at Silver Star against skiing at Red and living in Rossland. And living at Silver Star means living in a condo. That means normal, regular people who don't necessarily make more money than me live in 3 storey condos with a hot tub. I live in a house that's furnished from the thrift store and smells like weed every time our neighbour who lives in the basement apartment lights up. Of course, I've been living in dodgy share houses and cheap huts in NZ for the last few years, so I'd actually forgotten that regular people lived in places where all the items of furniture had the correct number of legs and the decor was from the 70s. In fact, it's slightly unnerving to use a kitchen without lino, or sit on a chair where there's a genuine risk that people would notice if you spilled food on it. The delicate thrill of a small risk of infecting my sleeping bag with bed-bugs is a constant companion when I fall asleep each night. It's hard to nod off without it.
Not only do people who live at Silver Star have to live in nice condos that must be kept clean and not set even a little bit on fire, they have to pay rent for those condos. Ouch.
But it's not just the standard of housing which is higher in Silver Star. Rossland is full of dirtbags. At Silver Star, people didn't even know what a dirtbag was. I went from the ski hill into Vernon to try to repair my bindings, and my host asked if I wanted to go home and get changed. Get changed? Here in Rossland I get changed to sleep. And in NZ I didn't always go that far. I don't really want to live in a world where people will judge me harshly for wearing my ski gear to the grocery store. Here, I am considered a respectable guy because I'm wearing more than just my thermals. That's how it should be.
And just about no one has a beard! In Rossland, you either have a beard, or you haven't shaved recently. Even the normal "Clean Shaven" stage of the shaving cycle seems to be absent from local life. People somehow reduce the amount of stubble they have without ever completely removing the hair from their face (I must admit - I do this using clippers, but every time I use them I feel inadequate and like less of a man). Of course, this only applies to men, but there really aren't enough women in Rossland to get a sufficient sample space to provide any statistically valid data on their facial hair grooming habits.
Silver Star must do a roaring trade in shaving razors. Beardiness in general is much less frequent, and clean-shaven faces adorn the landscape. Plus, there are quite a lot of women, and none of the ones I met had beards. Here at Red Mountain, we do a roaring trade in P-Tex*. I think that pretty much summarises what our two towns are about.
"OK," You're saying, "What about the skiing?" Well, actually you're not saying that. Most of you don't seem to care about skiing at all. But I'm going to tell you about it anyway. Hopefully those of you who aren't familiar with the graceful art of sliding on snow can gloss over the technical details and find something to LOL about.
It's important to realise that I wasn't at Silver Star for a powder day. It was warm and icy while I was there, and conditions weren't fantastic. Despite this, I had a fun time. But it was a slightly silly kind of fun. Perhaps the best summary I can give of Silver Star is that I didn't faceplant there once in three days. At Red, I faceplant every day, probably several times. Sure, the terrain is challenging enough for a mediocre skier like me and I was a long way from ripping the hill up, but at no point at Silver Star did I look at a piece of terrain and think "Holy crap, I'd better stay the hell away from that." At Red, I basically spend most of my day avoiding things (like responsibility and the inevitability of middle class working life. But also cliffs. In fact, mostly cliffs).
The style of skiing at Silver Star is also very different to the way people ski at Red. My housemates have a word for the style of skiing that's popular at Silver Star, and it's neither politically correct nor flattering. I don't really think that's fair. When you see a really good skier making smooth, precise, dynamic, short-radius turns in all kinds of conditions and terrain it's really impressive to see. Good skiers at Silver Star manage to go fast while constantly turning and sweeping their skis from side to side. Good skiers at Red go fast, turn occasionally and spend a disconcerting amount of time in the air. Good skiers at Silver Star ski fluidly around and through the bumps. Good skiers at Red just ski over the top of the bumps, with or without touching the ground. Of course, I don't do any of those things.
So, you should go to Silver Star if you like clean, friendly people, convenient facilities and good accommodation. The skiing is accessible and fun, and you can change your undies every day without ever having to worry about soiling them. If you never really know which setting you should use on your washing machine, and you like linoleum, consider Red Mountain. The skiing is difficult and occasionally scary, and you can keep wearing the same undies for as long as you like, provided you can keep them free of your own waste.
* P-Tex, for the non-snow-sliding types, is used to repair the bases of your skis or board if you hack them up on rocks or trees whatever other sharp hard stuff there might be lurking on or under the snow.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Adapting to the Environment
For a week or so now, one of my inner ears has stopped changing pressure to suit changes in altitude. You know what it feels like when your flight takes off and your ears need to pop? Well, my right ear feels like that all the time. It's set to a particular altitude and doesn't really want to change.
Well, to be honest, it's not like that all the time. Thankfully, my ears are set to "mountain", which means that they feel wierd when I'm in town, but everything goes back to normal when I'm skiing. I think this is a neat summary of my life at the moment.
In other news, I just sorted out my flights out of Canada. I'm leaving here in early July, hanging out in Australia between the 11th and 23rd of July, then flying on to New Zealand. Now I have to think of something worthwhile to do between the end of the ski season and meeting some folks to go climbing in mid June. Learn to unicycle?
Well, to be honest, it's not like that all the time. Thankfully, my ears are set to "mountain", which means that they feel wierd when I'm in town, but everything goes back to normal when I'm skiing. I think this is a neat summary of my life at the moment.
In other news, I just sorted out my flights out of Canada. I'm leaving here in early July, hanging out in Australia between the 11th and 23rd of July, then flying on to New Zealand. Now I have to think of something worthwhile to do between the end of the ski season and meeting some folks to go climbing in mid June. Learn to unicycle?
Monday, March 5, 2012
How To Clean Your Share House
You live in a share house, it's dirty and you want it to be clean(er).
You can't just clean it yourself, because then your housemates will get used to you cleaning up after them and you'll have to clean the house for ever more. You can't just ask your housemates to clean up, because you're anglo and you don't like asking people to do stuff. How do you get everyone to pitch in their fair share without having to resort to a roster like an undergraduate?
Step 1: Have an argument.
Start an argument. It doesn't need to involve the whole house - you don't even have to be a part of the argument once it gets going. It needs to be hostile enough that it makes the people involved in the argument (and any onlookers) uncomfortable, without being anything acrimonius enough to break down the relationships that make your house pleasant to live in. The best possible argument is to have is between to housemates who are romantically involved. These arguments are vastly more awkward for onlookers, so the argument can be much more mellow and still have the desired effect.
Step 2: Clean.
It is a scientifically certified fact that the best way to alleviate inter-housemate awkwardness is to clean. Cleaning is like apologising without even having to admit that there's anything to apologise for. It expresses solidarity with those whose feelings have been hurt, and erodes any resentment that might still linger in the air. Once one person in the house starts to clean, everyone else will want to try to make amends for the argument that just happened (even if they weren't involved) so they'll join in. Before you know it, your house is clean and everyone is talking to each other again. You can express the depth of your regret by taking on particularly unpleasant or stubborn cleaning jobs. Did you just tell your partner that "You ALWAYS blah blah blah?" in front of everyone else? That mould shower curtain is waiting for you to redeem yourself. Did your housemates just call you out for always leaving the stove on? That pile of dirty dishes is your path to salvation. Seriously folks, nothing clears the air like mopping the floor. And if you mop the floor, someone else will shovel snow off the walkway outside.
There you have it. A two step solution to your domestic woes. You can thank me later.
You can't just clean it yourself, because then your housemates will get used to you cleaning up after them and you'll have to clean the house for ever more. You can't just ask your housemates to clean up, because you're anglo and you don't like asking people to do stuff. How do you get everyone to pitch in their fair share without having to resort to a roster like an undergraduate?
Step 1: Have an argument.
Start an argument. It doesn't need to involve the whole house - you don't even have to be a part of the argument once it gets going. It needs to be hostile enough that it makes the people involved in the argument (and any onlookers) uncomfortable, without being anything acrimonius enough to break down the relationships that make your house pleasant to live in. The best possible argument is to have is between to housemates who are romantically involved. These arguments are vastly more awkward for onlookers, so the argument can be much more mellow and still have the desired effect.
Step 2: Clean.
It is a scientifically certified fact that the best way to alleviate inter-housemate awkwardness is to clean. Cleaning is like apologising without even having to admit that there's anything to apologise for. It expresses solidarity with those whose feelings have been hurt, and erodes any resentment that might still linger in the air. Once one person in the house starts to clean, everyone else will want to try to make amends for the argument that just happened (even if they weren't involved) so they'll join in. Before you know it, your house is clean and everyone is talking to each other again. You can express the depth of your regret by taking on particularly unpleasant or stubborn cleaning jobs. Did you just tell your partner that "You ALWAYS blah blah blah?" in front of everyone else? That mould shower curtain is waiting for you to redeem yourself. Did your housemates just call you out for always leaving the stove on? That pile of dirty dishes is your path to salvation. Seriously folks, nothing clears the air like mopping the floor. And if you mop the floor, someone else will shovel snow off the walkway outside.
There you have it. A two step solution to your domestic woes. You can thank me later.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Readers write
Regular blog reader Asher writes: "Can you do a post about the different types of lifties (i.e. the local pot smokers, Aussies who make the most of their accents, South Americans etc.)".
Thanks for writing in, Asher. It turns out that this is an unusually interesting question here in Rossland, because the standard stereotypes don't really apply. Red Mountain is unique among the skifields of British Columbia in that the entire workforce is still unionised. Everyone who works here is governed by a collective agreement between the hill and the United Steelworkers of America, who might do a fine job of representing steelworkers, but actually blow chunks as far as being a union for a ski hill is concerned.
All of my housemates are ski instructors, and recent upheavals in the ski school universe have meant that I, as the only member of the household to speak English as a first language, have actually read the collective agreement for the hill. Basically, in enshrines the right of management to do whatever they want to their employees, provides a few guarantees to employees that strike a careful balance between being pretty unhelpful to staff and making the ski hill costly and infuriating for management to run, and ensures that the union has its finger firmly embedded in the Red Mountain pie.
Anyway, the central concept that is enshrined in this pretty hopeless document is the idea of seniority. The ski hill is obliged to provide job security, promotion opportunities, shifts and pay increases based on how many hours each staff member has worked at the hill in previous seasons. Those seasons have to be consecutive - if you leave town for a winter or get a job poking racoons in the eye or something you drop to the bottom of the seniority ladder and have to work your way back up.
This system has some unusual results on the makeup of the workforce. There are a bunch of locals who have been working as lifties for years, and the hours they have built up over those years make them high on the seniority list. That means they get guaranteed job offers each season, lots of shifts, and the highest level of the laughable pay scales that people get for crappy jobs out here. Consequently, a surprising number of the lifties here are old guys who have lived in Rossland and swung chairs since the dawn of time. The vast bulk of the remaining lift hosts are young local lads and lasses who have either grown up in Rossland or moved here a few years ago. They work as lifties each season and in the summers they hibernate in cocoons woven from their own facial hair. As a lifty, you are strongly encouraged to snowboard. I don't think skiing is explicitly banned, but it would certainly be frowned upon by the senior staff.
Of course, most of these local lifties do smoke pot, but that hardly makes them "local pot smokers" as set out in the categories Asher suggests. Saying "local pot smokers" implies that the locals who smoke pot end up as lifties. In Rossland, the locals who smoke pot are pretty much all of the locals, so it's not really an informative category to use when describing people from here.
To my knowledge, there are two Aussies working here as lifties - one of them has been here for so long that his accent has eroded to some kind of unwanted international linguistic bastard-child, and the other has already used his accent to maximum effect.
I haven't met any South Americans anywhere in Rossland. The closest thing we have is Quebexicans. I would say that they're like a French analogy of regular Mexicans, but there are some people in Rossland who actually read this blog now, and I don't want to be beaten up, so I won't say that at all.
The system of seniority does have some practical applications in town aside from simply making it more difficult to run a successful skifield. I am currently campaigning for a system of seniority to apply to the single men of Rossland, as a way of dealing with the oversupply of single men with respect to single women in town. Under my proposal, men would be ranked according to how long they had been in Rossland and single . Spending more than a few days out of town in an area with lots of single women would reset your "lonesomeness timer", so to speak. Single women in Rossland would then be obliged to introduce themselves to the single men in town in order of seniority. If Ms. Single didn't find Mr. Single #1 to her liking, she would proceed to Mr. Single #2 and so on until the stock of single men was exhausted. This fair and equitable system would assist the lonely hearts in town and possibly also breach a number of Canadian laws and social conventions.
Thanks for writing in, Asher. It turns out that this is an unusually interesting question here in Rossland, because the standard stereotypes don't really apply. Red Mountain is unique among the skifields of British Columbia in that the entire workforce is still unionised. Everyone who works here is governed by a collective agreement between the hill and the United Steelworkers of America, who might do a fine job of representing steelworkers, but actually blow chunks as far as being a union for a ski hill is concerned.
All of my housemates are ski instructors, and recent upheavals in the ski school universe have meant that I, as the only member of the household to speak English as a first language, have actually read the collective agreement for the hill. Basically, in enshrines the right of management to do whatever they want to their employees, provides a few guarantees to employees that strike a careful balance between being pretty unhelpful to staff and making the ski hill costly and infuriating for management to run, and ensures that the union has its finger firmly embedded in the Red Mountain pie.
Anyway, the central concept that is enshrined in this pretty hopeless document is the idea of seniority. The ski hill is obliged to provide job security, promotion opportunities, shifts and pay increases based on how many hours each staff member has worked at the hill in previous seasons. Those seasons have to be consecutive - if you leave town for a winter or get a job poking racoons in the eye or something you drop to the bottom of the seniority ladder and have to work your way back up.
This system has some unusual results on the makeup of the workforce. There are a bunch of locals who have been working as lifties for years, and the hours they have built up over those years make them high on the seniority list. That means they get guaranteed job offers each season, lots of shifts, and the highest level of the laughable pay scales that people get for crappy jobs out here. Consequently, a surprising number of the lifties here are old guys who have lived in Rossland and swung chairs since the dawn of time. The vast bulk of the remaining lift hosts are young local lads and lasses who have either grown up in Rossland or moved here a few years ago. They work as lifties each season and in the summers they hibernate in cocoons woven from their own facial hair. As a lifty, you are strongly encouraged to snowboard. I don't think skiing is explicitly banned, but it would certainly be frowned upon by the senior staff.
Of course, most of these local lifties do smoke pot, but that hardly makes them "local pot smokers" as set out in the categories Asher suggests. Saying "local pot smokers" implies that the locals who smoke pot end up as lifties. In Rossland, the locals who smoke pot are pretty much all of the locals, so it's not really an informative category to use when describing people from here.
To my knowledge, there are two Aussies working here as lifties - one of them has been here for so long that his accent has eroded to some kind of unwanted international linguistic bastard-child, and the other has already used his accent to maximum effect.
I haven't met any South Americans anywhere in Rossland. The closest thing we have is Quebexicans. I would say that they're like a French analogy of regular Mexicans, but there are some people in Rossland who actually read this blog now, and I don't want to be beaten up, so I won't say that at all.
The system of seniority does have some practical applications in town aside from simply making it more difficult to run a successful skifield. I am currently campaigning for a system of seniority to apply to the single men of Rossland, as a way of dealing with the oversupply of single men with respect to single women in town. Under my proposal, men would be ranked according to how long they had been in Rossland and single . Spending more than a few days out of town in an area with lots of single women would reset your "lonesomeness timer", so to speak. Single women in Rossland would then be obliged to introduce themselves to the single men in town in order of seniority. If Ms. Single didn't find Mr. Single #1 to her liking, she would proceed to Mr. Single #2 and so on until the stock of single men was exhausted. This fair and equitable system would assist the lonely hearts in town and possibly also breach a number of Canadian laws and social conventions.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Things I have not done recently
OK, so it’s been a long time since my last post. In my defence, it has been snowing. In my life as it currently operates, there is a very strong correlation between snowfall and the number of important things I don’t get done. If you were to write out a list of the usual functions that are required to sustain me in my current lifestyle, starting with the least important and working your way down to absolute life essentials, it would look something like this:
- Checking for mail at the post office
- Washing (clothes)
- Socialising with people who aren’t my housemates
- Writing blog entries
- Ski boot maintenance
- Cleaning the house
- Emailing people
- Ski maintenance
- Important administrative stuff (booking or changing flights, getting a British Columbia driver’s license)
- Washing (myself)
- Food shopping
- Going to work
- Skiing
- Sleeping
- Eating
As more snow falls, I ignore more and more of the items on this list, starting at the top and moving down. It is thus theoretically possible that if enough snow fell I would stop skiing completely and simply stay at home eating and sleeping. That would have to be a complete boatload of snow. It’s not so much about total quantity of snowfall either – it’s more related to how regularly snow falls in quantities of roughly 10cm or more.
And on that front the last two weeks have excelled themselves. We had two days without snow, and the rest were all between 5 and 15cm. It’s not much per day, but it all adds up. And it has resulted in new lows on the list of things I’ve been ignoring. Let’s just say that I’ve still been buying food, but that’s about as good as it gets.
However, today is Friday, and I’m at work for the next three days. There’s also no snow in the forecast, so this is chance to get my life in order before I head to Silverstar (a ski field near Kelowna – a few hours from here) next week to visit Giuliana from Broken River. Believe it or not, I actually have several clean pairs of socks and even a clean pair of undies for the weekend. Given that I don’t know when I last did laundry, this is something of an achievement. It is, however, an achievement that demonstrates just how little effort I have put into finding clean socks and undies – these have been hanging on a rack somewhere for a week or two and I didn’t even notice.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)