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Last Weekend in Alta: the sweetness of Utah powder

February 7, 2010 by Rufus Griscom

Last weekend I took a spectacular four day ski trip to Snowbird/Alta, Utah, with five dastardly partners in crime: Greg Dillon, Leif Ueland, Jay Haynes, Mark Harris and Michael Hovey. On Saturday, I went heli-skiing for the first time with Mark in the Wasatch mountains — it was a beautiful experience, no doubt made all the more resonant by the risk factors. In the 48 hours that followed we got 12 inches of fresh powder, and skied it hard — at least by my 42-year-old standards.

Here I am enjoying a few turns in the fresh stuff on Monday morning in Mineral Basin, on the back side of Snowbird:

Mineral.Powder.01.31.10

Mineral.Powder.01.31.10

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Here’s a shot of Michael Hovey, who was a competitive freestyle skier back in the day, bombing the bumps, followed by Mark and Greg Dillon.

Michael, Greg and Mark bomb the bumps, Alta, Utah, 01.31.10

Michael, Greg and Mark bomb the bumps, Alta, Utah, 01.31.10

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Here are a few photos of exquisite fresh tracks Monday morning in Catherine’s Area off the Supreme lift in Alta. You have to hike to get to Catherine’s — I call it the Mark Harris health plan — but it is well worth it: it’s long on gorgeous glades and chutes and short on skiers.

I love to ski. I dream about it during the winter, spring, summer and fall. It occupies a place for me that is unrivalled by any other physical activity, with the possible exception of making babies. The closest I can come to describing it’s magic is that it combines the speed and exhilaration of racing motorcross with the zen of surfing or sailing. On the one hand there is a jockey adrenaline-ratcheting physicality to it — you can rapidly accelerate to 30 or 40 mph on the flats, carve tight, precise turns, and soar through the air by stiffening a leg or ripping a last minute turn over a knoll. Ski technology has come a long way in the last couple decades — skis are more tortionally rigid and thus unyielding on high-G turns, and at the same time damp enough to offer a smooth, cadillac ride. This is my younger self talking — the gearhead thrill seeker.

On the other hand, there is the connection with the mountain. There is a gentle push-pull to skiing the backcountry half-way competently — it’s more about absorption and deference to the terrain rather than a blunt inscription of will. You are water finding it’s stream bed, wending around bigger obstacles, playfully cascading over the smaller ones. Done properly, it’s a gentle and intuitive touch, ski to slope — your legs are a pliant, load-sensitive suspension system, and your upper body, the happy, oblivious passenger, eyes on the horizon, enjoying a tempo several beats slower than the clatter occurring below. Powder makes the mountain more silent, beautiful, and forgiving — it amplifies the otherwordliness of skiing. It is a drug and I am not sober … as you can see, just talking about it renders me delirious.

That’s what it feels like when I am doing it right, when I am in the groove, which is not always easy to come by — when I lose it my suspension bottoms out, I instinctively hunch over, my fore-aft balance disappears, and I am all of a sudden a septuagenarian with a ski pole for a cane. The groove is not always with us. The groove can be flightier than a beaten cat. Which makes it all the sweeter when it comes.

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Beautiful Moment #17: Cloudy with a chance of tickle tornadoes

January 17, 2010 by Rufus Griscom

Spent a chunk of the morning bouncing around on the bed and tickling Declan and Grey. So lovely. Tickling is absolutely fascinating as a phenomenon — one of those human behaviors that is so natural and instinctive that we rarely stop to examine it.

tickle tornado

tickle tornado

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When you do stop to think about the practice of tickling, it’s bizarre. It’s a simultaneously pleasant and unpleasant sensation from which kids try to escape, relishing it all the while. In an instant it can turn from being fun to being excruciating. I read some time ago that tickling is thought by some theorists to have evolved as a form of hand-to-hand combat training — kids learn to move fast to protect abdominal areas that are points of vulnerability. Do you buy it? I think I do — so much of play in nature seems to be about training — but there’s clearly also a lot of good old fashioned physical bonding involved.

Posted in Declan, Grey, evolution, funny, home life, parenting | 1 Comment »

Unsolicited Advice for My Younger Self #1: mentors are more accessible than you think

January 17, 2010 by Rufus Griscom

The first thing that comes to mind in the category of “advice for my younger self that might or might not be heeded by my younger self were he available to receive the message” is the importance of seeking out mentors. Here’s what I didn’t realize twenty years ago, and still need to remind myself of regularly: mentors need mentees as much as vice versa. Older people, by and large, are positively aching to share what they know. This reservoir of knowledge, and the appetite of those who have it to share it, should be seen by younger people as a natural resource. Seek out people who have climbed, or attempted to climb, whatever mountain you have your sites on. Not all the advice will be good advice — it’s critical to correct for distortions in the lense, to ferret out the biases or non-transferrable elements of a given mentor’s experience — but the process will usually be fruitful. The conclusion may be that you are looking at the wrong mountain. In my experience, a huge preponderance of the mistakes made in business and life are made over and over again, and more lessons than we think are broadly applicable — innovative internet companies confront a lot of obstacles that also confront lampshade manufacturers.

Why are mentors so accessible? Because sadly, this post title notwithstanding, we can’t give advice to our younger selves and we want to. Sharing what we’ve learned with someone in an earlier stage of life is as close as we get. If they have the same haircut we’ve had at the time, all the better.  Many people get paid to relieve this urge through professorships and book deals — a great solution. Everyone else over a certain age, who thinks he or she has learned a thing or two, tortures his or her children (whether six months old or sixty) with an overabundance of unsolicited advice, and bottles up the rest.

Much can be learned from reading the blogs and books of mentors — I am making a note to self to do more of this — but a direct relationship makes possible advice customized to your needs, and the longterm possibility of useful introductions, support for your endeavors, and maybe even lasting friendships. But it is always best to focus on the request for counsel — the “flattery-for-wisdom” exchange is the foundation of the mentor-mentee relationship, and offers the most immediate reciprocal benefit.

Speaking even more broadly, it seems to me that intergenerational relationships are good for everyone. They make younger people wiser and older people more tuned into new ideas. It feels like these days most of us have fewer intergenerational relationships than was common in past eras, when generations lived and socialized together. We should seek them out. I hope when I am 90, if I am so lucky, I will have friends in every stage of life, and the good sense to hunt down the 100 year old down the hall and figure out what she knows.

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The Soul of The Cocktail; Let It Not Taste Like Reconditioned Tin — A New Year’s Resolution

January 7, 2010 by Rufus Griscom

The warrior with his tools.

I have good news for local liquor stores, if not house guests: I intend to take cocktailing seriously in 2010. Not just the consumption of cocktails, which I have taken seriously for some years now, but the creation of cocktails. As an expression of my seriousness, I have purchased The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks by David A. Embury, originally published in 1948, known among bartenders and Men’s Journal editors everywhere as nothing less than the gospel of mixology. Embury was described by the esteemed Gary Regan, author of The Joy of Mixology, as “probably the most important cocktailian author of the 20th century” and “the man who took drinks apart, examined their inner soul, and carefully put them back together again.” If any guy could give cocktailians a good name, this is he.

I have but begun my tutelage in the fine art of mixology, but I feel the strength of the calling. Embury says on page 33, in the “What, Then, Is a Cocktail” section,

The well-made cocktail is that most gracious of drinks. It pleases the senses. The shared delight of those who partake in common of this refreshing nectar breaks the ice of formal reserve. Taut nerves relax; taut muscles relax; tired eyes brighten; tongues loosen; friendships deepen; the whole world become a better place in which to live. But don’t expect these results if you serve bitter drinks, syrupy drinks, watery drinks or drinks that taste like reconditioned tin.

Amen. Let there by cocktails, and let them not taste like reconditioned tin. I shall study at the side of this wise cocktailian, and report back with word of my progress.

Posted in grown-up endeavors, home life, resolutions | 2 Comments »

Optimal Loneliness, Theory of

December 31, 2009 by Rufus Griscom

We are spending Christmas vacation at home this year, which is utterly delightful. We’ve been able to slow down, play with Legos, remote controlled cars and chemistry sets, and otherwise lollygag about. I’ve also had the opportunity to take a little time to myself, whiling away long mornings and afternoons in random downtown coffee shops.


I have always loved coffee shop loitering — it’s the perfect kind of solitude, alone and among people, observing and observed. A four or five hour block in a coffee shop, ideally outside my neighborhood so I feel the invigorating chill of complete anonymity, is enough for me to feel the early onset of loneliness.

And I miss feeling lonely, as strange as that may sound — it’s like the dark shadows in a charcoal drawing that lends a picture depth, or maybe like the acidic developing agent that renders a photograph crisp. Early stage loneliness — ESL, I will call it — is the dark room of revelation, at least it has been in my life. It’s now something that I need to remind myself to experience, to schedule, to fight for. This is particularly true in my stage of life, with young, beautiful, vulnerable children and a young, beautiful, vulnerable business (true of all young children and businesses) and a young, beautiful, growing marriage, all of which require intense and constant communication. It’s an extraordinary experience — I deeply admire my colleagues and friends and family and relish the process. But a decade could easily pass without my feeling even a flicker of loneliness. Which would mean, as I see it, not fully digesting, or perhaps even comprehending, this period in my life.

I think there is such a thing as optimal loneliness: we need enough emotional comfort to avoid the distraction of insecurity, but not so much that we are anesthetized. Too much love and belonging may be like too much heat — it leaves us languorous, listless. Not enough, of course, is much worse.

What I am realizing is that I need to refine my emotional climate control a bit better in 2010, bring down the emotional temperature a few degrees. I am prescribing myself ten hours of solitude, once per month, a little like cracking the window.

Posted in personal, resolutions, theory, unsolicited advice | 1 Comment »

Overlooking Transgressions, Santa Delivers Bat Cave

December 29, 2009 by Rufus Griscom

Santa proved magnanimous this Christmas — he ignored a long list of transgressions by Declan and Grey in the last several weeks and delivered a small mountain of toys, including the much anticipated Bat-Cave-with-working-drawbridge-and-retractable-crane. Though Alisa and I succeeded in keeping trademarked action heroes out of our house for most of Declan’s first four years of life, the levee has broken and I now find myself answering detailed questions about the specific capabilities of Batman, Spiderman, and their partners in crime-fighting. The following occurred at 6:01 am on 12.25.09.

The Splendor of the Bat Cave

The Splendor of the Bat Cave

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This was a magical Christmas for our little guys, who have started to play together amicably for seconds, sometimes minutes in succession. I one such moment follows.

Glasnost

Glasnost

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Posted in Declan, Grey, parenting, personal | Leave a Comment »

Space Shuttle Underwear Touches Down

December 15, 2009 by Rufus Griscom

Yesterday one package of Space Shuttle underwear arrived from Gap Kids. Declan picked them out online, and ever day since Alisa ordered them last week, he has been asking when they would arrive. Declan is in many ways a boy’s boy — he gets misty eyed over garbage trucks, but has never given a flying tahooty about clothes.This is the first item of clothing that Declan has ever been truly excited about in his 4.8 years of life.

Posted in Declan, parenting, personal | Leave a Comment »

Holiday Card Subtext

December 15, 2009 by Rufus Griscom

We thought we'd just come out and say it this year ;)

We happily participate in the great holiday card tradition, one of the last uses of snail mail that I genuinely enjoy. That said, even a holiday polyanna like myself can’t help but notice there is a bit of a “look how perfect our lives are” quality to the exercise. As I was polishing the dimples on our card this year, I was overcome by a moment of Holiday Card Tourette’s (let the record show that this did not pass Muster … this is the tongue-in-cheek, web-only edition).

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Holiday Card Subtext — prettier and harder to read

December 15, 2009 by Rufus Griscom

You know it's true.

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Water Birth

December 12, 2009 by Rufus Griscom

Grey, in his 22-month-old wisdom, has decided that the bath is the perfect place to go number two. He did it a few days ago when Alisa was bathing him, and this morning he did it yet again, this time under my supervision.

Happy Squat

I’ve seen Caddy Shack and knew exactly what to do — I sounded the alarm, evacuated and drained the tub in a mild frenzy, and then meticulously sanitized it, gingerly removing the little larval confections, each lovingly wrapped in a wipe. In transit to the john, I was careful to support them evenly and avoid squeezing to maintain structural integrity. This, I thought, is fatherly devotion. We resumed the bath and not five minutes later, he delivered an encore, loudly announcing, “look, Daddy, look! All done. Out please.”

This is clearly no longer accident. Maybe Grey enjoys watching me clean. Or perhaps he thinks the tub offers all the advantages of a water birth — zero gravity, smoother delivery, greater comfort. I will ask him after his nap.

Posted in Grey, funny, home life, parenting, personal | 1 Comment »

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