Ski Bum Poet

Whatcha think? In case you’re reading this months from now in a distant archive you can click here to see the v1.o header graphic I built. Here is the descriptions of the photos from left to right:

1. Classic GravityFed.com cover photo circa 2002 (or thereabouts). Johnny B took this picture in Westward Ho. Click Here for the large version of this photo in the GravityFed archives.
2. Photo taken at the rope line on the shoulder hiking up from Wildcat chairlift. A friend of mine Erik Gauger took this photo on a ski visit to Alta. Check out Erik’s award winning travel/photography site: Notes From The Road.
3. That’s me digging out a room at the Alta Peruvian Lodge the morning it was hit by a Toledo avalanche in March of 2003. I was in the lodge and felt her shake on impact.
4. My season pass picture for the 2002-2003 season. I was looking to the sky for snow. Slow start but ended up being a killer year.
5. Powder explosion photo when I was skiing early AM with Andy and Jeff from WaHsatch Powder Productions one early morning. This is a still taken from a digital video recording of some dang good powder.
6. My claim to fame. Haha. It’s me on the the fall 2005 cover photo of Bike Magazine. Photo by Keith Carlsen in Albion Basin, Alta, Utah.
7. Another cool photo Erik Gauger took while in town. This is the little shot off the knob at the bottom of ‘The Church’ proper…skier’s left of High Rustler (in the trees).

Of course, all photos are from in and around Alta, Utah

You may remember the infamous column ‘Ask Johnny B’ in the early days of GravityFed. When we first launched the site back in December of 1999, Johnny single handedly drove 100% of the traffic through his wit and sense of humor. I still have most of the archives stored away on an old PC box (that I plug in twice a year to extract old content and charge), and I’ve vowed to dig them out and re-publish one of these days. Actually, there’s one classic now on GravityFed: Johnny B’s Mexico Thrashing

At any rate, we’ve gotten Johnny involved on the web again and this time he’s producing podcast interviews with some of Alta’s best known personalities and living legends for AltaCam.com. The most recent, was his 3-part interview with ski photographer Lee Cohen. Here’s a snippet of the transcript:

Johnny B: Let’s take it back. Who was your first cover shot? Bring us back to the day. Who was it? Where was it?

Lee Cohen: It was my buddy, Steve Garrett. It was kind of…

Johnny B: Oh the legendary old man.

Lee Cohen: The legendary old man. It was in 1988 and I remember when it came out, it was at Alta, I didn’t even know I was getting the cover and somebody in the Rustler… I was in the Rustler hanging out, going to the bar and one of the employees said, nice cover shot! February ‘88.

Johnny B: No way!

Lee Cohen: I was totally surprised and blown away.

Johnny B: That’s awesome, man! That’s great. I’m sure that really propelled the old man to greatness himself.

Lee Cohen: Yeah, the ancient one, he’s still out there turnin’ em.

Johnny B: Yeah.

Lee Cohen: For the crotchety of old dude that he is.

Download and listen to this full interview (you can also read the transcript). Very entertaining. Nice work Johnny B! I’ll keep ya posted on any old Ask Johnny B archives that come out.

Over and Out, Gary M

Well in April 2006 Danette and I moved to Timberlakes. It’s a private 1500-acre development in Lake Creek Canyon east of Heber City, Utah. We bought our first place here, a 1000-sq foot dwelling on a lot that’s just over an acre. I’m sure you’re thinking oh that must be nice. It is…it’s beautiful, only a couple of miles from the Uinta National Forest where it’s wilderness all the way to Wyoming. BUT there are drawbacks, and like with so many other situations in life it’s the greedy and powerful few that are friggin’ it up for everyone else. Let’s see how far I can take this rant…

Now of course it was our duty to perform our own due diligence on the place before moving in, but we overlooked several things that will no doubt prematurely drive us outta here. What it’s come down to in this first year is nothing new in terms of our experience here in Utah. Basically, we just cannot seem to connect with the general population of people. Alta (where we ski bummed, met and got married) is different and special. It’s a little Hamlet where everyone is like-minded but unfortunately living up there is way beyond our reach now. So here we are, and here is a list of things I plan to bring up with the HOA if I can convince myself it would be worth my time in the slightest.

1. Walking trails. We live in a wilderness area with amazing opportunities in terms of mountain biking, snowshoeing, hiking and trail running. But not one common trail to use! Instead, the stinking-ass, obnoxious and loud ATVs (in the summer) and Snow Machines (in the winter) blow by the house at 5 times the posted speed limit. My dog can’t walk the neighborhood because it’s ‘against the rules’, yet these people can get away with abusing and exploiting the land and damaging our experience of living in the mountains. We are over walking on the rocky road-base and sharing that with recreational vehicles and speeding sport utilities.
2. The gate. There’s this prestigious gate that is nothing less than a JOKE to be sure. It’s big and it’s fancy and there’s even a goon who sits in the little security hut…yet every weekend in the winter the little parking area down the road is full to the gills with ridiculously over-sized snow mobile trailers and even more ridiculously over-sized pickups hauling them. Furthermore, people tailgate through the gate that don’t live up here ALL DAY LONG. I’ve watched it time and again. My HOA fees pay for this ‘gate’ and ‘the goon’ and I’d rather those fees went into more productive things.
3. The rules. Now this is a broad gripe. I’ve added a link to the Protection and Covenants (PDF) of the development should you have the slightest inclination to read through the absurd set of regulations that are some how in place. For example, no clothes lines. Ha. Beat it. I can’t believe ‘the Declarant’ (that’s not even a word BTW) would even have the nerve or gall to include some of the things he has. For example, “Declarant reserves all the grazing rights on all land in the development”…yet…”no animals, livestock or poultry of any kind shall be raised, bred or kept on any lot.” Dude, that’s laughable.
4. The part-timers. Apparently, Timberlakes was “created as a recreational community” and therefore the full-time residents have to step aside and get pissed on whenever it’s a holiday or long weekend. Or frankly, whenever the part-time residents want to come and ‘get-away’. Yeah, that’s terrific. Get away to their garage full of stinking and polluting recreational vehicles. And of course you can’t miss these people. They’re the ones going 45 mph up the road in their shiny Hummers with a cloud of dust. Many of these people have absolutely no respect for us…the little full-time hippies in the cabin. You know, the ones paying the same HOA fees and looking after their 350-day-a-year vacant mansion. Of course not all part-time residents are bad apples…discount yourself if you’re a good one.
5. The trash bins. My only gripe here is the lack of the HOA to address the busy weekends and clear the dumpsters more frequently during these busy weekends. We bring ONE trash bag down every ten days, yet on busy weeks the dumpster lot is not only full, but trash is piled on the outside of the dumpsters and you can guess what happens then. It’s the wilderness and it doesn’t take long for animals to spew it everywhere. Mind you, these are ‘guests’ leaving their loads of trash. Glad we pay the fees for them. Oh yeah, and glad we’re covering the costs for the contractors to drop off their materials on the way out, too.
6. The water. Right down the road from our house there is a 50 acre lake called ‘Witts Lake’. Ha. A lake they say. It’s actually a controlled reservoir that gets exploited and sold off to pad the pockets of this so called ‘Declarant’ I keep reading about in all these fancy documents. This guy must be a gem. A 50-acre ‘lake’ all manicured and full of drainage pipes and stupid systems of control; and according to a sign near the dam I can’t trespass. Again, laughable. I can and will walk my dogs to the ‘lake’ so they can jump in and I can’t wait for one of ‘Declarant’s’ cronies to say something to me (apparently he lives out of state). Yep I’m a rebel. Call me anti-establishment but if ‘Declarant’ is going to sell lots on the ‘lake’ for jacked up prices it might be a good and nice gesture to let the residents of the community have access to the resource. I mean no motorized recreation on the water (because surely some would have their jet skis out), I’m all for that! But how about a hot summer swim or a canoe float? Yeah now I’m dreamin’.

I think that makes the point. I could go on and on. What a shame. We’ve sat idly by this first year we’ve lived here and observed an insane working order. Not sure it’s worth my time to rant about it, actually. But it is fun, and it’s good Google food for my experiment (this Wordpress blog), too

Before moving here I was lost in Alta and Little Cottonwood Canyon for some time, then remotely on the Dolores River on a wilderness ranch near Moab. So frankly, I’ve lost touch with America I guess. But I do hope the whole country isn’t like this now that we’ve surfaced to try and co-exist or Jah help us.

BTW the reason for this rant was because a house (well, mansion) three doors down the road apparently has a group of Sundance Film Festival renters in it. Even though that’s against the ‘rules’. That’s my guess, anyway. A Salt Laker owns this mansion and apparently he thinks it’s ok to do what he wants. Hell, he’s not here anyway, so he wasn’t disturbed for 3 hours straight last night when a dog was out on the porch howling to come in. Yep. I enjoyed getting out of bed at midnight, getting dressed warm (it was around 0 degrees) and walking up the road to let this dog in. No problem. Glad they were out living it up in Park City while this dog was keeping up the whole area with his echoing howls. Not blaming the poor animal, after all it was cold for an LA black lab. Lucky he was fat.

Over and out, Gary M

Well it’s begun. I’ve started blogging (running a couple of other blogs with WordPress and I’ve really enjoyed learning the platform) and now it’s AOBTC…as they say. Oh yeah, that stands for ‘All Over But The Cryin’ in case you were wondering. I’ve always wanted…better yet….needed a place to spew my words in babbling fits of semi-structured paragraphs and my own grammar. I’ll do my best to keep compelling topics and articles moving through these pages. But sometimes I do hope to lose the readers, too.

On a more serious note, my name is Gary Marcoccia and I do web junk full-time. That’s my job now. Internet marketing, web publishing and I also head up the marketing efforts for a new and very innovative Affiliate marketing network called AvantLink.com. My job throughout my twenties was to survive 1000 days of skiing in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, Alta specifically while staying motivated to make my mark on the world of web and content publishing.

I fortunately learned to recognize my limits skiing and pedaling my bike, but with that recognition I have always enjoyed getting after it and pushing harder. It is definitely an addiction that I have worked hard to break in the last couple of years. I’m getting through the withdrawals by way of settling in to a wonderful life with my wife Danette (and our first child on the way).

So I guess that’s a good start for this project. I’m linking this sucker up from several sites right out of the gate. In time I’ll work on the aesthetics of this weblog but for now…just my words

Over and out, Gary M