One of the principal benefits of membership in Realskiers.com is the right to correspond with yours truly one-on-one, that I might address and ultimately resolve your most urgent, ski-related issues. As skiing, in my view, reaches into all aspects of one’s being – sensual, technical, athletic, intellectual and spiritual – no queries are off-limits, although the reliability of my answers increases the closer we hew to my core competence.
In this week’s Revelation and attendant podcast, I want to remind my Dear Readers and Listeners that this unusual access to an unrivaled store of experience in the field perches precariously on a fragile foundation, namely, you.
That’s right, just as in your childhood fantasies, the future we all want to believe in can only be assured by your personal intervention. If the past has taught us anything, it’s that you cannot count on your hypothetical “neighbor” to step up and fill the considerable gap in my personal finances that yawns before us. No, the solution begins with you accepting the inevitability of your role, that saving mankind begins at home, in particular my home, without which saving a bunch of other homes, such as your own, won’t mean much to posterity.
I think a clever soul such as yourself would realize by now the severity of the situation. If this doesn’t describe you, imagine that Realskiers has been convicted of a crime it did not commit and was sentenced to die unless the pardon you’re crafting arrives in time. While you diddled vaingloriously over the finer points of your copious legalese, Realskiers was executed.
At this moment, I want you to pause and feel just how much you’ve disappointed me, and more importantly, yourself. Awful feeling, isn’t it? I’ll bet you feel like you did when you were first caught lying, probably about breaking a favorite vase while rough-housing, or maybe insider trading or Medicare fraud. You see, life, in all its mystery, has consequences. If you believe otherwise, I want to know your secret.
By now, you’re probably wondering where this fascinating train of thought is heading. As in all good mysteries, it’s heading back to you and your pivotal role in my personal journey. You see, you have something I want more of, and who are you to deny me? After all we’ve been through together, the late-night bickering, the pre-dawn caterwauling we can’t even remember the details about anymore; let’s put all that aside and just focus on what you can do for me now.
Ok, here it is: I need more money, and it might as well come from you. Oh, I know what you’re going to say, that you “already gave at the office,” or “you already double-billed me.” True, but that was in the past; that was the Old Me, the Pre-Enlightenment Me. I’m ten times the person now, but only twice as much in debt. You see, I’m growing up right before your ancient, rheumy eyes.
I could yell examples of my plight into your ears at deafening decibels and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference, so I’ll forego the usual auditory assault. Instead, let’s gloss over our past squabbles over who-billed-whom-how-much and get back on point: it’s been a solid ten seconds since I asked for more money and you haven’t made the slightest move to fulfill this simple request. Some kind of friend you turned out to be.
But it’s not too late for us to get back on track, to re-build what we once had! In the misty past, you could have argued that I haven’t provided you with the means to send me extra money unless I billed you several times over for the same service, a practice some prickly subscribers protested.
But that tired argument will no longer hold water, as today we have installed a digital “Tip Jar” right on the Realskiers.com home page! Now there’s no reason not to send an appreciable chunk of your disposable income directly to Realskiers.com, and I’ll take it from there, trust me.
Think of all the money I’ve saved you over the years, not to mention the unquantifiable value of being a Realskiers.com member, instead of some ignorant, self-hating schlub. Now take that money, multiply it by the current rate of inflation and send it back to me, thereby closing the Circle of Life and restoring mankind to something closer to its true, and as yet unrealized, potential.
If that sounds like a big, important job, who’s to say it isn’t? Do your part. Be somebody involved with something that’s bigger than you are, and far, far more important. Under these circumstances, how can you say no? I anticipate that you will soon stop reading or listening to this rant so that you can unclog your mind and send me more money with a clear conscience.
To prove my prescience, I furthermore predict you will stop reading – or listening – in the next few seconds. What you do in the immediate aftermath, alone with your conscience, will matter more to me than either of us can possibly say.
Please, for everyone’s benefit, don’t screw it up. If you donate right now, I can assure you that you’ll experience a surge of self-esteem that will last at least until your payment is no longer refundable.
Amen.
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The Making of a Skier, Part IX: The ASTM, Carl Ettlinger and I
One of the many hats I wore as North American binding product manager for Salomon in the early 1980’s was that of delegate to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). I believe the first meeting of F8.14 – the sub-committee on ski safety – that I attended was in Pennsylvania. I was flying under the wings of Salomon’s seer of all standards and patents, Gilbert Delouche, and the binding product manager for the North American zone at that time (and my mentor), Joe Campisi.
I was a babe in the woods, but I soon caught on to the game under Delouche’s patience guidance. I recall a debate on the binding specification then being batted around in the technical committee chaired by Carl Ettlinger. Ettlinger wanted language that would require any release/retention setting of 10 or above to be “visually distinctive” from the rest of the scale.
In Memorium, Carl Ettlinger
Carl was a giant of a man whose outsized voice roiled every conversation like a burst dam and whose expansive vision reached across the mixed milieus of research, journalism, risk management and education. I knew him when he was at the peak of his powers, as he explained to me when I interviewed him for a “where are they now?” profile in Skiing History. He was able to conduct long-term research on injury patterns as well as analyze the particulars of the current binding market, turn around and package this knowledge into articles for Skiing and Skiing Trade News, followed up by a workshop tour that would bring enlightenment to the grassroots level. No one but Carl could have pulled this off, and Lord knows no one has had the requisite talent, energy and will power since.
But time and tide wait for no man, and Carl’s finely spun web of influence was eventually plucked apart. The loss of his pivotal positions in the press allowed him to slip from public view before we, the skiers of the world, realized we hadn’t taken the time to thank him.
We have the time to thank him now.
So thanks, Carl, for being first and foremost a teacher, for teaching is at the heart of the evangel’s mission.
Thanks for being so damn stubborn. Your insistence on improving skier safety wore through a wall of resistance as tough as Vermont marble.
Thanks for having a heart as big as that melon-sized head of yours. The fuel to your tireless mind was a caring heart that tried to embrace the world.
Thanks for all the stories once the Mount Gay flowed. Who knew we would have won the Vietnam War if only his superiors had listened? I can’t remember exactly how – he wasn’t the only one drinking Mount Gay – but I recall the light in his eyes as he relayed his twisted tales, taking us down successive rabbit-holes of digression that I lost track of at the seventh level.
That’s what I remember most vividly about my many interactions with Carl: his brain so teemed with thoughts he rushed to get them out in a verbal jailbreak that would travel around the cosmos until returning, many lost minutes later, to the subject that had inspired them. That was Carl: too many words for one sentence, too many tasks to tend to and all of it, every erg of his endless energy, devoted to a cause he never ceased to serve.
Fare thee well, Carl Ettlinger. The world misses you already for it will never see another quite like you, whose every moment seemed larger than life itself.
I raise my glass to you, old friend. Mount Gay, of course.
Jackson Hogen
June 23, 2020
Why This Buyer’s Guide?
Don’t read the 2021 Masterfit Buyer’s Guide in Partnership with Realskiers.com for its 62 ski reviews. I should know. I wrote or edited all of them.
Not that the ski reviews aren’t worth the read. But ski reviews on the web are as common as rice, while the Buyer’s Guide contains something no other publication, whether in digital, print or video format, can claim: the most respected, thorough and dependable boot reviews in the world.
This isn’t mere puffery. The Masterfit Boot Test is so well regarded by the supplier community that nearly every brand not only sends its following year’s line-up in four men’s sizes plus three for women, it also dispatches its top designers and/or product managers to a distant North American site for most of the test’s five-day duration.
