Ski Bum Poet

It’s late April 2008, and she’s thinking about crawling

…And I quote:

“Ski Rant: I know more than you do!”

And:

“Current conditions at a closed Utah resort. Support ski areas that are run by skiers, not by real estate developers!” Posted April 20th, 2008…

An old friend (Kendall) who is the man behind the Ski Utah Blog added links recently for both Ski Bum Poet and the Alta Ski Forum at AltaCam. I guess I’ll have to make sure and keep better ski logs here next season! Whether or not we make the move to the Finger Lakes, I’m hoping to still have a pass at Alta, so that shouldn’t be too difficult. Maybe I can even rant from other places as well…considering that after ten years and 1000 days of skiing in the Wasatch, I’ve skied in the west only a handful of times outside of Utah. Mike Doyle, here we come!

Thanks for the link(s) Kendall…!

Well there are a lot of things to RANT about. Everyday I think about them. Yet I can’t seem to find the time to post here. Such is life…what with our start up phase of an innovative, progressive and technology driven Affiliate network and all. Opps. Wrong term. “Affiliate network” is thrown around daily by thousands of people claiming to have the best one there is. But really, c’mon. Most all those people are punting…well, I’ll just leave it at that before I get myself into trouble.

Our company is more than an Affiliate network. We’re changing the game. There is no “intrinsic right” to our platform. Show us you’re taking this business seriously and adding value and you’re in. Otherwise, we’ll pass for now. It’s as simple as that. We’ve been called elitists, clueless and idiots…all because we’re concerned with quality, true partnerships and responsible growth. For us, it simply doesn’t make sense to open the flood gates and spend all our time supporting and policing. Seriously, it’s really that simple. We’re not hiding anything. Deal. For those saying “huh” right now…Dig into this thread on ABestWeb starting at post # 20 and then this one, and maybe you’ll understand. If you don’t get it, so what. Start your own network. HA (ok that was a fine work related RANT on a wine buzz…now more about family blogging and living and less about work…)

More things… In life we have a bunch happening on our family front. For one I have to mention our family blog (@ Peas & Love For Us ) that Danette’s been running for several months now. She’s a natural. Telling the day to day of the Marcoccia existence. Among MANY other things, I love her for it. Flickr hosts all the images (it’s $25 smackers a year to host unlimited photos and videos there), and she tells the story brilliantly as a true poet of our age.

What else?

Oh, our house is on the market. We’re selling this place and moving 2300 miles away to Ithaca, NY. Why? Namely because we can (AvantLink embraces the Results Only Work Environment…we don’t need no stinkin’ corporate stuffy ass office). But there is more. To wit: I consider it an experiment. And another opportunity to embrace the one constant in life: that being Change.

I love powder skiing in Utah, I love the mountains and I love Danette’s family that lives in Cache Valley…but it’s time to shake it up a bit. Besides, we’re convinced that there are accessibly more like minded folks in the Finger Lakes Region of NY. There are like minded folks here, too…but we’re friends with them all already (joking). Plus in central NY our drinking water will bubble up from the ground, the soil is rich (for farmin’ it up) and it rains about every evening in the summer. Oh, and there are streams and rivers and swamps and lakes everywhere. I miss that. Big time. At Jordanelle near our home now, it cost $9 to go take a swim or hang out by the water. Then when you get out you smell like boat engines…especially when the water level is low. Which is often this day in age in the western US.

We’re going back to Ithaca in five days. It’s Ellie’s first time on a plane. She’ll be 8.5 months old. We’re flying Southwest. Susan Lewis is showing us our favorite homes in the Ithaca area we found via the Internet. We’re excited to see family and start to more thoroughly plan out our next chapter in life.

The powder out here isn’t going anywhere…so not to worry. Greek Peak is close enough for now to help Ellie learn how ta turn. So I’ll be content skiing switch there with tuned skis, and coming back to LCC and Alta during those classic 6 day powder storm cycles we all know and love. After all AvantLink is based here. So is AltaCam. We’ll be keeping our powder skis and backcountry gear at Jesse’s. He doesn’t know that yet, though. But he’ll be ok with it. Fact is, I’ll probably end up skiing more from Ithaca area than I have the last two winters living on the Wasatch back.

By all means I plan to ski many MANY more powder days in Utah. I won’t be denied that…

Going to try and RANT more from now on. I’ve let the blog slip lately, but at heart I’m just a workin’ dude looking to come out ski bum retirement sooner than later. Thanks for reading….

Last ski season I had the opportunity to meet Mike Doyle (Skiing Editor from About.com) and his daughter Katie. We spent the day at Alta skiing around the entire area. I had a good time showing them a place that’s very close to my heart. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Mike recently, and I’m not even sure if they made it out west to ski this year…but I just received the following news that he’s won a prestigious Internet writing award! Way to go Mike!! Here’s the news:

The North American Snowsports Journalists Association (NASJA) honored three notable persons who have made significant contributions to winter sports endeavors and also bestowed their top awards in the field of snow sports writing and photography for 2007. The awards, this year presented at the Mt. Washington Hotel in BrettonWoods, New Hampshire, were revealed at a banquet on March 29, 2008 that was climax of the organization’s annual meeting.

The Carson White-Golden Quill Award, named after the group’s first president, honors an individual who has made a significant contribution to snow sports in North America. For 2008, the honor went to long-time SnowSports Industries America (SIA) president David Ingemie. Starting out as a marketing director in 1976 for SIA, he took over as president in 1981 and remains so to this day. This native New Englander guides the non-profit winter sports trade association from its McLean, Virginia headquarters.

NASJA’s 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award, honoring a lifetime of snowsports-related innovation, competition, design and other endeavors, was presented to Cecile Ryden Johnson, a well-known watercolor artist who created lasting works of winter scenery, sports and imagery from countless resorts and mountainsides. This nonagenarian, whose work has appeared in Skiing Magazine and in many television specials, is still active in the art world from her Washington D.C. home.

Bonnie MacPherson, the media relations director at Vermont’s Okemo Resort, is the recipient of the 2008 Bob Gillen Memorial Award. This award, named in honor of a former Ski Magazine editor and marketing wizard of Crested Butte and Sugarbush ski resorts, honors an individual who exemplifies the highest standards of professionalism in public relations and media communications. Ms. MacPherson came to Okemo via stints at the Mt. Washington Hotel, and Loon Mountain and Cranmore resorts.

The Harold S. Hirsch Awards, named after the ski clothing pioneer-creator of the White Stag Company, honors the best writers in the snowsports journalism fields of magazines, newspapers, columns and internet and for winter sports photography. The awards were underwritten by prize grants from the Head Ski Corp. and Sport Obermeyer, the ski gear manufacturers.

In Magazine Writing, Chris Solomon of Seattle, freelance writing for Ski, Skiing and the New York Times Magazines, captured the Hirsch trophy and some Head skis for his 2007 stories. He was a double winner at last year’s awards.

Claudia Carbone of Denver, Colorado, a former president of NASJA and Hirsch winner, took home the Columns honors for 2007 with pieces on Colorado destinations such as Wolf Creek, Keystone and Loveland.

Tops in Newspaper Writing for 2007 was freelancer Hilary Nangle, from Waldoboro, in the Great State of Maine, writing for the Boston Globe about her state’s ski destinations and equipment innovation. She is also a previous Hirsch recipient.

Internet Writing honors for 2007 went to About.com’s Skiing Guide Mike Doyle, from Stillwater, New York. Doyle, who is a first-time recipient, made the jump into cyberspace from stints as the IBEW union’s press secretary and traditional print media.

In the category of Snowsports Photography, Karl Weatherly of Ketchum, Idaho took top honors with attributes the judges describe as “the best sense of light and composition, excellent action, shot by someone with obvious expert skiing skills.” Karl’s photos appear on the Getty Images and Corbis websites and in winter sports magazines.

About NASJA
The North American Snowsports Journalists Association, founded in San Francisco, California in 1963, is the largest organization of its type in the world. Please visit our website at www.nasja.org for more information.

By the way if you’re interested, check out the piece Mike wrote on our day at Alta last year:

Skiing Alta and Snowbird on the Same Day?

And here is Mike’s Blog:

Ski The East

I went and listed our place for sale on Craigslist.com. We’ve been playing with the idea of trying out a new place to live. Actually it’s not much “playing” anymore, I think we’re pretty committed. The thing is I can work from anywhere these days as long as I have broadband Internet and a room of my own (my workdays get intense, to say the least. Sorry to D :~).

So we figure why the hell not. I look at it as an opportunity to go out and about and live it up, farm it up, the way we want to now (no growing season up here), instead of regretting that we didn’t do it later. I’d rather not snap out of it in ten years and wonder why it is that we had a chance to go and live/work anywhere, and we didn’t. Our first stop will likely be the country side of Tompkins Country, NY. Near Ithaca. But shoot, with the price of gas and where it’s going we’re talking more about a spread in town with sustainable living emphasis in the house and out.

Yes we’ll miss Alta and the powder. What kind of a question is that? But it’s all good because I’ll still be cranking on AvantLink, ranting on Ski Bum Poet, workin’ on AltaCam; and D will still be documenting life on Peas & Love. Oh and we’ll be leaving our touring and fat skis at Jesse’s house. (or somewheres on the Wasatch front) Won’t be needin’ those at Greek Peak, where Elliephant may be learnin’ to turn.

If things work out like I have them planned then we’ll be back in Utah at least some of the time, maybe up the PowMow way instead of in the stinky city and urban sprawl zone. Give us 3-5 years on that, though.

So that’s that. The place is on the market. This is my first attempt to sell it on our own. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve, so stay tuned. Here’s the listing on Craigslist:

Timberlakes Utah Mountain Home - 1 Acre Lot

Sorry. Not that anyone is really waiting for the apology, but I guess it just feels good to say it. So sorry again. I gave an honest go at trying to keep SBP updated on our adventure details from back east, but it just didn’t happen . (Danette did a great job documenting the trip on Peas & Love, though) My effort stalled at Ellie’s First Road Trip, Episode 1 and Trip Episodes 2, 3 and 4 (and more) to come! …HA! That’s a laugh. But I really was sincere at the time I was writing those about posting more rants while back east.

I must say the trip was a little stressful, what with the winter cross country trip, then back. But at the same time it was important. I REALLY wanted Mom and everyone to bond with Ellie.

To shift gears a bit (this is trule Daily Grind), part of what made me want to post tonight is to show off our Alta wedding web site I put together before our day on Sept 20, 2003. Funny reading through that again. I had a lot of energy. And I was so excited to share the wonders of Little Cottonwood with people who had never seen it.

Funny, too…when I went to link up the wedding site from Danette’s lastest blog post on Peas about our first weekend at Alta this year, I discovered a non-functional and bloated post board file. It had been overtaken with comment spam. The HTML file was 16M! Anyways I cleaned it up, disabled the form and now she’s back online (touching comments we’ll always want to save there!). Lotsa good Google food there as well ;).

I especially love the map to Alta Danette hand drew for our guest. Check it out:

Just another killer MP3 in the AltaCam Podcast series for the 2007-08 ski season. AltaCam is releasing these interviews every two weeks all season, and then the out takes during the summer months o 2008! JB is fine tuning his interview skills with each new release. From old time legends to the most popular skiers in the industry right now, Johnny knows how to get the info you want to hear/read!

From the digg submission: “Another AltaCam exclusive MP3 interview and transcript. This time Johnny B interviews Sage at his home at the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon in the Wasatch mountains of Utah. Read about Sage’s journey from Alta, Wyoming to the Alta Peruvian Lodge dish pit in Alta, Utah to international ski fame!”

Here’s a quote from the directly from the interview transcript itself:

Sage: Well I grew up at Targhee. I was on the ski team right away. I went to school and our school had a program that brought us skiing once a week. And so that was the original.

When I first started going out on skis, my mom took me out and the school is taking me out. And then I was on the ski team by 5th grade or so. And so the coach at the ski team really taught me the fundamentals of skiing. But Targhee wasn’t a really good race hill because we get so much pow similar to Alta, Utah and Alta, Wyoming. It’s same thing. Gets dumped on a lot.

After a while, after learning the fundamentals of skiing, it was really fun to get racing. It was like am I really going to slip this four inches of powder off the soft groomer so that I can race gaits or am I going to go ski around. My favorite memory is just once I started. I had that knowledge of ski fundamentals. And then it was just cruising around, skiing powder, jumping off stuff. And there was lots of good stuff to jump off at Targhee.

Read/listen to the full MP3 interview or digg this story. There is also a thread started on this interview in the Alta Ski Forum: Sage Cattabriga-Alosa Interview & Podcast.

I posted Episode 1 of Ellie’s first road trip, but as can be expected I am a little frazzled what with the drive across country, two dogs, a baby and one ice storm so I’m a bit behind on the trip reports! I do plan to catch up, though. Lots to report, but so far so good. Danette has picked up on the trip on Peas & Love…so in the meantime have a read there: Dodging Storms

So for now, over and out from a La Quinta in Indiana (at least we’re officially out of “Ill-annoying”!)

The 3rd in many this winter, this AltaCam exclusive is one you should definitely check out. Talk about some inspirational stories and classic times! Johnny B does a great job talkin’ life and powder skiing in Little Cottonwood Canyon with Alan Engen. Can you imagine charging untracked powder all day in the 50s and 60s when you were 16 years old? If that’s not enough to imagine, now think about following around Alf, Sverre and Corey Engen all day. Like I said, a classic interview that will go down in the legends of archived Alta Skiing web content.

Here’s a snippet from the interview transcript…

Alan Engen: You can see when the three of them would go out and ski powder, Sverre and Alf were always…they were skiing fools in the powder. Corey was struggling a little bit until it got all hard-packed and then Corey was just phenomenal in what he could do too. He was an Olympian and everything else.

Read/listen to the full MP3 interview or digg this story. There is also a thread started on this interview in the Alta Ski Forum: Alan Engen Interview & Podcast

A timeless photos from the Alan Engen Ski History Collection (Photo of Alf & Alan Engen making a double jump in front of the Alta Lodge. Photo circa January, 1949. Alan was 8 years old at the time)