Fair-Weather Skier

During a normal ski season, we would be enjoying the best snow of the year right now. The cold, dry conditions of late January and early February typically produce the light, fluffy snow that is perfect for skiing. Not this year. Western Colorado is just coming out of a solid month of single-digit temperatures, crystal-clear skies, and no wind. A temperature inversion had settled in and then refused to leave, preventing any new snow from falling and making skiers miserable.

I have skied only twice this season, and not once since December 30. I can't remember an entire January passing by without going skiing at least once since I started skiing forty-five years ago, at the age of ten. It occurs to me that I have become what is known as a "fair-weather skier." This is not necessarily a bad thing. One of the reasons I moved to Colorado from Wisconsin back in 1986 was so I could pick and choose my ski days, not be stuck with whatever conditions existed during annual week-long ski trips out west. My buddies and I would ski some of the most terrible conditions you could imagine, because that is what there was. Also, growing up skiing on Wisconsin's icy runs, we really didn't know any better.

Living in Colorado spoils a skier quickly. Now I won't go skiing unless the weather is good and the snow conditions are decent, even though I live less than an hour away from Powderhorn ski area. It's no fun to freeze your butt off on slow chairlifts to ski rock-hard, month-old snow. Why bother? But our frigid drought ended this weekend. While it was raining non-stop down in town yesterday, it was snowing hard up in the mountains. I just checked Powderhorn's snow report, and it showed seven new inches. Today would have been a great ski day, but there were things that needed doing. I'll just have to wait until next weekend to get up there. I may get to pick and choose my ski days now, but work still limits those choices to weekends only.

A note about the photo above: It's a picture of me skiing "Ozone" in the Bowl at Aspen Highlands, taken by my friend Dave Johns on March 8, 2003, almost ten years ago. The reason you can't see anything but blue sky behind me is that the run is so steep that the camera is pointed up at an angle of almost 45 degrees.

My dog Charlie

My dog Charlie will turn 10 years old on March 29; I will turn 50 in June. Charlie was my birthday present from my wife Nan when I turned 40. In a way, Charlie was meant to take the place of Rollie, our first golden retriever, whom we were forced to give up in 1992 when he was still a puppy, but that is a story for another time. Charlie was a very different puppy from the calm and lovable Rollie, and it took us some time to adjust to the differences. The fact that Charlie's father's name was Tuff, or that the breeder told us, "That one? He's so willful," should have tipped us off, but he was so adorable that we accepted the challenge.

Charlie was the kind of puppy who, when you gave him a command, would cock his head and stare at you, like "You're kidding, right?" It was obvious that he understood what was being asked of him, he just couldn't decide if he wanted to do it. Treats were usually the key. He would do anything for food. After Charlie figured out that I was boss and that the treats depended on his obedience, we developed a strong positive bond.

Rollie was never much of a retriever. I used to say about him, "He's not a golden retriever; he's just a golden." Toss a tennis ball at him and it would bounce off his nose. I was determined that Charlie would be different. He had good "eye-to-mouth" coordination, developed from catching treats out of the air, and he was a natural retriever, rolling balls back to me when he was still too small to fit them in his mouth. A tennis ball soon became a necessary component of every walk.

A couple of years ago, Charlie was retrieving tennis balls in a park with a couple of younger dogs. As they were running at full speed, one of the dogs broadsided him, blowing out the ACL and tearing the meniscus of his left back leg. He was immediately lame, unable to put weight on the leg without it collapsing. We opted for an expensive Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy surgical procedure, and it was an amazing success. We figured that Charlie was a rough-and-tumble dog and it was unfair to him to not have the full use of his legs for the rest of his life. Two years later, you wouldn't know that he had ever had the surgery if you didn't feel the steel plate that is still screwed to his tibia bone.

Now we're facing a new health issue. On New Year's Eve afternoon, while I was teaching skiing up at Powderhorn, Nan took Charlie to the groomer and also requested a tooth brushing since his breath had been bad lately. When she got him home, he started bleeding from the mouth. She rushed him to an emergency pet clinic, where they discovered that he had a tumor in his mouth along the upper gum line by his back left molars. The brushing had aggravated it and caused it to bleed. The vets stopped the bleeding and told us we should get a full work-up to see if the tumor was malignant.

That was more than two weeks ago. Since then Charlie has had periodontal x-rays, tumor and lymph node biopsies, chest x-rays, a blood test, a urine test, and a CT scan. He has been to three different veterinary hospitals. The vets can't agree on what it is, whether it's amelanotic melanoma, fibrosarcoma or maybe squamous cell carcinoma, but they all agree that it will be difficult to remove. The CT scan revealed that the tumor has invaded the zygomatic arch and is dangerously close to the orbital, threatening the vision in Charlie's left eye. The foremost veterinary surgeon in the area summed up Charlie's prognosis as "guarded." He has recommended that we go to the veterinary college in Fort Collins for an assessment and possible surgery. We have an appointment next Wednesday.

Nan and I agree that we should do whatever is possible to help Charlie get better. He is our best friend and we love him dearly. Please think good thoughts for Charlie as he faces his uncertain future. I will let you know how it all goes.

Christmas Letter 2006

Dear Family and Friends,

Every time I sit down to write our annual Christmas letter, I reflect on life's changes. A year ago at this time, the business I had started in Grand Junction, Colorado was shutting down and I was looking for a real job, Nan was working at Aspen Valley Hospital and coming home to the house we had bought in GJ on weekends, and we were both wondering what to do next. Job opportunities in GJ were few and paid poorly, but as luck would have it, after posting my résumé on Monster.com, I received an email message that my old job at AVH was available again. It had been almost two years since I was laid off and I wasn't sure if I should apply, but Nan insisted. They hired me back without even an interview, not as Network Administrator but rather in the newly created position of Database/Internet Administrator. I started in late February, leaving behind my interim employment as a ski instructor at Powderhorn Resort, a great little ski mountain just outside of GJ. My half of the photo shows me in uniform but free skiing on Powderhorn's best powder day of the season, March 12, after it snowed four feet in two days.

Nan and I agreed that it didn't make sense to move back into our Aspen house, which was being rented at the time. The move to GJ had been an ordeal and we weren't eager to repeat the experience. And besides, we had grown fond of our living situation in GJ--the friendly climate, the good shopping and restaurants, the beauty of the high desert. We just couldn't afford both mortgages. So we found a house to rent downvalley and put the Aspen house up for sale in May as the lease ran out. We thought we could save on commissions by trying to sell it on our own, but the negotiating process was too draining, so we listed it with an old friend who had a firm offer in less than a week. We closed at the end of August. Now I guess we're former Aspenites even though we both still work there and live, during the work week anyway, just down the road.

These transitions didn't leave us much opportunity for travel this year. We carried through on reservations we had made almost a year in advance to spend a June week in Las Vegas, originally to attend the annual eBay convention, but my struggling business had eliminated any enthusiasm for that pursuit. Instead we walked all over the Strip, read novels by the pool at the Paris hotel, gambled a little and saw two great Cirque du Soleil shows, the Beatles' "Love" show and "O".

Nan and I both made it home to Wisconsin on separate trips for family time. My sister Susan organized a small family reunion that brought the Chicago contingent to Milwaukee for a day of food, fun, reminiscence and music. The rest of the week was a blur of spotty golf, a concert with sister Jane in Chicago and a visit to the Wisconsin State Fair. Nan's visit home brought together almost all of her eleven siblings. In between visiting around the dinner table at 846, Nan attended the Fall Festival at Camp Sinawa, where her father was so involved, and made day trips to see sister Sarah's family in Green Bay and old friends in Door County.

Most of our weekends were spent in GJ working on our new house, but we also managed a few weekends elsewhere, like in Moab, Utah a few weeks ago, where Nan ran in the Winter Sun 10K. As you can see in her half of the photo, Santa was there to record her finish time, which was good enough for third place in her age group.

We'll be making up for the lack of travel in a big way next year, including a repeat of our 2004 sailing adventure in the British Virgin Islands, this time on a bigger boat with Nan's sister Monica and friend Vicky as crew. Hopefully, it will go more smoothly than our ill-fated "Where's the dinghy?" experience.

Things definitely appear to be looking up, not just for us but also for our country. The November election proved that most people, at least the ones who vote, are paying attention and want a return to peace and sanity. We're hoping the momentum carries through to 2008, when we expect to see the election of our first African-American president. Go Barack!

Best wishes to you and yours this holiday season!

Love, John and Nan

Old Dog, New Tricks

Best powder day of the season, Sunday, March 12

When Nan and I first moved to Aspen almost twenty years ago, her first job was working at a hotel at the base of Buttermilk Mountain. After finishing work at my computer job in town, I would wait at the hotel's bar for Nan to get off work. Most of the bar crowd at that time of day was the après-ski crowd, winding down from a day on the slopes. One afternoon, as I was nursing a beer, a young lady on the other side of the U-shaped bar yelled across to me, "Hey, this guy says ski instructors are the best skiers. Is that true?" I immediately determined that the guy in question was wearing a ski instructor's uniform and that he was using the line in an attempt to pick up the young lady. Without thinking, I shot back, "Yeah, they're the strongest intermediates out there!"

As a long-time skier, my attitude has always been that ski instructors make pretty turns on groomed runs but can't ski the tough stuff. All that changed for me this ski season when I became a ski instructor myself. The business I had moved to Grand Junction to open last January never really took off, so by October I was looking for something else to do. I was also thinking ahead to the ski season and wondering if nearby Powderhorn Resort would fill the bill for me after twenty years of skiing in Aspen. I checked powderhorn.com for a trail map and ski pass rates, and noticed that the ski school was hiring. I thought, why not give it a try? It couldn't possibly be as competitive as Aspen, so I was pretty sure they would take me. And Nan said it was fine with her, so I applied.

I had no idea how the training would be structured. I thought I could just go in and say something like, "I've been skiing for thirty-seven years and I'd like to teach skiers who are looking for a breakthrough in skiing moguls, steeps or powder." I quickly found out that this is not how it works. Everyone starts at the bottom, teaching "never evers," people who have never ever skied before. If I stuck it out, I might be teaching breakthroughs in about three years!

We new applicants spent an evening session finding out what it's all about and then an all-day session learning about the movements involved in skiing, people's learning styles, and the progression that turns them into safe, competent skiers. All this took place before we ever hit the snow. On Saturday, December 10, when Powderhorn opened for the season, all the prospective ski and snowboard instructors were out there trying to impress the trainers with their ability. Most survived to ski or ride again on Sunday. Everyone who survived to the end of that second day on snow was accepted into the school--only about fifteen of us. Actual teaching began the very next day. As someone who had agreed to teach full-time, I was scheduled to teach the next seven days in a row.

Needless to say, this rookie instructor quickly gained experience in getting people, mostly kids, to progress from having trouble keeping their balance to riding a chairlift and skiing safely and in control down an easy ski slope, sometimes in as little as two hours. When it went poorly, it was frustrating, but when it went well, it was deeply rewarding. For example, I was waiting with a class of ten-year-olds in the lift line one day when I spontaneously yelled out, "Are you guys having fun?" They responded in unison with an enthusiastic "Yeah!!" It made me smile for the rest of the day.

While all this teaching was happening, I was noticing that some of the veteran instructors were extremely good skiers, much better than I would have expected given my past close-minded perspective. They were not only great skiers, they were also great instructors and they taught seminars to other instructors most mornings. A frequent topic was what I would call "new school" skiing, a concept I had been resistant to since the introduction of shaped skis almost ten years ago. My five-year-old, "lightly shaped" 191-centimeter skis were not going to cut it, so I bought some new 169-centimeter "R16s." What a difference! Instead of letting my edges skid slightly through short-radius turns, I could now stand on my edges and feel them carve all the way through a turn. Instead of my inside ski just being along for the ride, it was now an active component of the turn, tracking its own edge. With fine-tuning during the early-morning seminars, I felt my skiing move to a whole new level, way beyond where it had been stuck for the last ten or so years. And boy was it fun!

By the time the ski season ended on March 26, I had skied close to seventy days and taught at least as many lessons. I had also taken and passed my PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors of America) Level 1 certification exam, which entitled me to proudly wear the badge of a professional ski instructor on my uniform jacket. Was it worth it? Yes! Will I be back again next year? You bet! Did I learn anything? More than I ever would have believed.