July 28

July 28 has historically been a bad day for me.

In 1987 it was the day I parted company with an employer and immediately started my own somewhat ill-fated computer business, which I ran for ten years and then sold to a former employee whose birthday was July 28. But the sale did not go smoothly and resulted in legal wrangling to reach a settlement.

In 2004 it was the day I founded my eBay business, shortly after being laid off from a great IT job at Aspen Valley Hospital. That business was a financial disaster, so I closed it down after a year to stop the losses.

Today it is July 28 again, and I am trying not to tempt fate. I was going to go on an adventurous solo dirt-bike ride between Gateway, Colorado and Moab, Utah, but Nan talked me out of it after I mentioned that July 28 has been unlucky for me. My luck may be changing though because I was successful, just a few minutes ago when they went on sale, in getting two tickets to the Green Bay Packers vs. Denver Broncos Monday Night Football game on October 29--probably our last chance to see Brett Favre play in person. How lucky is that?!

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.

Where the name comes from

The name "Whispering Jesse" has multiple meanings for me. It is the name of one of my favorite ski runs at Snowmass, a steep and rolling slope punctuated with islands of spruce trees that give the illusion of intense speed when passed at close range. It is also the title of one of my favorite John Denver songs. Some of his fans think the song is about his daughter Jesse Belle, but she was born after the first album to include the song, Higher Ground, was released in March, 1988. More likely, Jesse Belle was named after the song.

Here are the lyrics:

I often have wandered in deep contemplation
It seems that the mind runs wild when you’re all alone
The way that it could be
The way that it should be
Things I’d do differently if I could do them again

I’ve always loved spring time, the passing of winter
The green of the new leaves and life goin’ on
The promise of morning
The long days of summer
Warm nights of loving her beneath the bright stars

I’m just an old cowboy from high Colorado
Too old to ride anymore, too blind to see
I sleep in the city now
Away from the mountains
Away from the cabin we always called home

I dream I left there
On an old Palomino
Whispering Jesse rode right by my side
I long to hold her
To hear her soft breathing
The touch of her cool hands on my fevered brow

Whispering Jesse still rides in the mountains
Still sings in the canyons
Still lives in my heart

Words and music by John Denver

I like to think that John, who was an avid skier, also liked the ski run, so much that he put its name into his song.

But the significance of the song for me is more about John than it is about the song itself. I had the great good fortune to know John during the final years of his life. We were introduced by his assistant Stephanie Ryan shortly after she started working for him in 1994. Stephanie had worked for Marty Stouffer of Wild America fame for several years as a producer, and I was their computer consultant. When she left Marty to work for John, she suggested to him that they use me for their computer needs. It was the highlight of my professional career.

During the next three years, I got to know John both professionally and personally. He had always been an advocate for technology, especially as it positively affected the environment in ways such as reducing tree cutting and paper waste. He was a late adoptee of personal computers for his own use, however, so I spent many hours teaching him how to use his Macintosh laptop computers to do word processing and email, conduct research on the Internet, and generally keep his hectic life better organized. He was an eager student and would actually utter his famous "Far out!" when he had a new revelation about his computer and what it could do. He was also a humble man, astonished that a Yahoo search on his name would result in thousands of matches.

I saw John for the last time on the Tuesday evening before his death on Sunday, October 12, 1997. Stephanie and I were up at his house in Starwood getting him organized for his trip to Monterey. Stephanie was working on his agenda and I was working on making sure his laptop’s dial-up access would work when he got out there. John was in a great mood, more interested in socializing than in planning his trip. He had just recorded a new song, Yellowstone, that he wanted us to hear. So we went into his home studio to listen to a tape of it. There are some wolf howls in the song, so John was howling along while Stephanie and I laughed uncontrollably. Then we were off to his little music nook to hear a brand-new song he was still working on. He grabbed a guitar off the wall from among several hanging there, pulled out his piano bench, sat down, and immediately launched into the song. I can’t remember the melody but the lyrics told the story of two old lovers running into each other after many years. It reminded me a little of Harry Chapin’s Taxi, or Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up In Blue. More than anything, I was enthralled by the sound of his voice in that small space. I had seen John perform at Fiddler’s Green in Denver during his 1995 tour, but it was completely different to experience a personal concert. He strummed out of the song after a few minutes and said, "There’s a bridge that goes in there, but I don’t have it figured out yet." Stephanie and I just stared. "So what do you think?" he asked. All I could think to say was, "I can’t believe you can just pull a guitar off the wall, sit down and start playing like that! No tuning or anything!" He smiled one of his patented broad smiles and said, "But John, this is what I do."

Later, after Stephanie left to go home, John and I shared a couple of Fat Tires while making sure that he knew what he had to do to access his email and agenda from Monterey. When I was sure he had it down, I told him it was time to go. Since I had parked down by the guest house, he saw me out his back door. It was raining lightly. I thanked him for the music and the beer, and he thanked me for the computer help, then he said he was going to go sit and watch the storm roll in for a while. He clapped me on the back and then waved good-bye as I walked away.

I can’t find the quote now, but John once said that he had performed all over the world, and the thing that struck him wherever he went was that people are the same everywhere, that everybody wants the same things from life. I want to experience that feeling myself, to explore the world, meet the world’s people, and share in that sense of world community. To honor John’s memory, the sailboat that will take me there one day will be named Whispering Jesse.

Addendum 2/9/08: A loyal John Denver fan located the quote I couldn't find and sent it to me: "My music and all my work stem from the conviction that people everywhere are intrinsically the same," Denver said in a 1995 interview. "When I write a song, I want to take the personal experience or observation that inspired it and express it in as universal a way as possible. I'm a global citizen. I've created that for myself, and I don't want to step away from it. I want to work in whatever I do - my music, my writing, my performing, my commitments, my home and personal life - in a way that is directed towards a world in balance, a world that creates a better quality of life for all people."