Tuesday, April 28, 2009

We Love Whistler

Sunday marked the end of the ski season for Whistler, and although Blackcomb Mountain remains open, it is a symbolic end to the season. It's a good time to share why we've become so fond of Whistler. We have been there seven times in the last 2-1/2 years. We used to go to balmy Hawaii every year, but since we discovered Whistler, it's been "Aloha, Hawaii" and "Hello, British Columbia, eh."

It all began with a memorable photo from the Whistler Blackcomb website of some little kids, maybe 4- or 5-years old, outfitted head-to-toe in ski gear. They were flanked by 2 ski instructors and stood in a line, looking out over a panorama of snow-covered peaks. The photo was taken in a location I think I recognize as the top of Whistler mountain. The kids, participants in the Whistler Kids Ski Program, were about to launch themselves down an unseen, out-of-camera ski trail. I wish I could find that photo to link to (the best I can do is a portion of the picture in the 5th thumbnail down on this page). The image of the small kids, dwarfed by the enormity of their surroundings, yet undaunted by them, was inspiring. They looked ready to conquer the world. That picture put my husband on a mission to convince our 7-year-old daughter to trade her swimsuit and sunglasses for the upcoming winter break to a parka and ski goggles. It worked.

Now that we are Whistler aficionados, we can tell you some of the reasons we keep going back:
We never get tired of this place.

The combined Whistler Blackcomb ski area is HUGE! There are 38 lifts to carry you up the two adjacent mountains, where you will find over 8,100 skiable acres with more than 200 ski runs. And when you are ready for lunch or just a break, there are 17 restaurants on the mountains. The food is really good and is reasonably priced.

They have an EXCELLENT ski program for kids. Our daughter has loved every day of her various ski and snowboard camps and lessons. The instructors have been great: they teach the obvious skiing skills and safety rules, but they also keep it fun (particularly given varying weather conditions and a spectrum of little personalities), and they understand and respect the kids' limits while encouraging them to go just a little farther than they otherwise might have.

You don't need a car. You catch a bus from the Vancouver Airport for the 2 - 1/2 hour ride (a highly recommended ticket because I promise that you won't want to drive that route in a snowstorm in the dark). Once you arrive in Whistler Village, you can either walk or use the local shuttle bus. The Village Stroll is a pedestrian-only walkway linking many if not most of the village's restaurants, shops and accomodations. For lodging not located near the Village Stroll, the city bus can handle your needs. I have seen taxis about but in seven trips, have never required their services.

Depending on where you are staying, you can walk everywhere you want to go. We have stayed in a variety of locations and have concluded that, for us, the ability to walk down the Village Stroll in the evening to choose our dinner venue trumps just about everything else.

There are lots of restaurants in the Village to choose from for breakfast and dinner. We are still discovering new finds on our 7th and most recent trip and we have discriminating tastes.

Everyone is so friendly. The company that operates the ski resort, Intrawest ULC, has a corner on the market, so to speak, and they want to make sure that everyone has a good time. So that equates to great attitudes from every employee you meet, from the online reservation agent that helps you out in a pinch to the ski instructors to the lift operators. It is a happy place.

Kids are welcome in Whistler. Unlike some ski towns that are as much about the night-life as they are about the skiing, Whistler is very kid-friendly. Every single restaurant we have visited welcomed kids. And this is not to say that Whistler doesn't have a nightlife, I imagine that it does but we haven't been out to investigate....

It is a great family vacation spot. We all have a good time. When our daughter takes a lesson or goes to Adventure Camp, my husband and I have time alone together during the day, followed by the fun reunion in the afternoon when we get to share stories and laughs about our day. When our daughter skis with us, we spend time together doing something that we can all enjoy.

Everything you need can be found here. There are grocery stores, liquor stores, bakeries, drugstores, candy stores, kitchen stores, book stores - you name it. I even found a friendly photo store with all kinds of camera and electronic stuff, including a cable to connect my camera to my laptop that is just like the one I accidentally left at home.

Kids are tired at the end of the day. This translates into easy bedtimes - they've probably already fallen asleep if you're sitting near the fire.

And as an added bonus, you burn a lot of calories while you're having a great time.

Have you been to Whistler? Do you have a favorite ski place? Let me know - we'd love to hear about it.

Friday, April 24, 2009

No Handcuffs Needed

What? A mom in NY gets arrested and spends a night in jail because she made her unruly kids (ages 12 & 10) get out of the car and walk?

I don't know if it was safe or not to let them out where she did. I wasn't there. And I don't know how far they were from home. There's a lot I don't know. But I think people should cut this mom some slack.

I first heard about this yesterday on the Today Show. In two different segments, they talked about how the mother had “snapped” and had “abandoned” her children. How she had "crossed the line." They talked about what this mom should have done: take a deep breath, try to understand where her emotions were coming from. (I'm sorry, but that advice is not helpful). They did come back in the second segment with something a little more tangible: the mom should get out of the car and tell her "sweeties" that she "needs a mommy-timeout." While this was a better solution than the first two, it did nothing to address the fact that it was the noisy kids who needed a time out in the first place, not the mom. The show's segments were based upon the presumption that the mom was completely unjustified and the focus was on what the mom should have done.

Ironically, making misbehaving kids get out of the car and walk is exactly the solution offered in one of my favorite parenting books, Parenting With Love and Logic, by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. The authors say this should only be done in a safe environment, and in a safe and age-appropriate way. (When it isn't safe for the unruly kids to get out of the car, the authors suggest the parents get out of the car, leaving the kids inside to get bored and think about the situation). So in the case of the unruly kids in NY, we don't know if it was safe or not but it certainly seems age-appropriate to me. It seems out of hand to automatically condemn the mom.

I hopped on over to Motherlode to see what Lisa Belkin and others had to say. Lisa also feels that 10- and 12-year-olds are old enough to get out of the car and walk home, depending on the neighborhood. I perused the comments to Lisa's post and I must say the fur was flying! People are passionate about this - there are now 169 comments about her post.

With the help of my 9-year-old daughter (who, for the record, thinks the NY mom was completely wrong), I tallied the first 75 comments to Lisa's post. The majority of commenters were sympathetic or supportive of the mom. There were 32 comments in favor of the mom, 19 that were neutral or needed more information, and 24 that found the mom out of line. There were harsh comments (#2 and #9, for instance) as well as helpful and humorous ones (see #16). In the end, the Today Show's perspective of an out-of-control mom was not shared by the majority in this unscientific little sampling of opinions.

Parenting is a series of judgment calls, about a thousand of them a day. How long do you leave your 5-year-old, playing quietly in his room, alone before you see what he's up to? Your 6-year-old cries at swim lessons - do you force her in the pool anyway? Is your 9-year-old ready for overnight Girl Scout camp? Judgment is a tricky thing. Different people arrive at different conclusions. We ourselves might even reach a different conclusion on a different day.

Lastly, we are human. As a parents, we do not always act in the best, most perfect way. Maybe we fail to use a polite tone of voice when asking them for the hunredth time to pick up their toys/clothes/shoes/etc. Perhaps we are a tad sarcastic when they ask us for the hundredth outfit for their Build-A-Bear friend. Anyway, I think this mom deserves the benefit of the doubt and a little time and space to figure out what works best for her kids.

By the way, my brother is a police officer with almost 20 years experience, none if it in NY, I might add. I called him last night to ask what he would have done. He paused for a millisecond, no doubt putting on his "cop" face and summoning the accompanying non-judgmental tone of voice, and said "No, I wouldn't have arrested her." I smiled. He would have left his handcuffs on his handy police-gadget-belt; no handcuffs needed.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

An "Infernal" Machine?

On Monday, a US Marine was arrested for carrying a gun, ammunition, and bomb-making materials on a commercial flight from Las Vegas to Boston. I read about the incident in Tuesday's Las Vegas Review-Journal. TSA employees in Boston discovered the banned items during the Marine's layover; apparently the Marine's bag was mistakenly unloaded in Boston and had to be re-screened so that it could be returned to the aircraft for the last leg of the Marine's trip. Good job, Boston TSA. The question now is "How did this stuff get by the Las Vegas TSA?" I was curious, and not just because I live in, and travel from, Las Vegas. I read on.

The article said the Marine was charged with possession of a concealed weapon and "possession of an infernal machine." I did a double take to make sure I read the words correctly. An infernal machine? Isn't "infernal" simply an adjective used to associate something with hell or damnation? A word you use in a moment of frustration to convey your negative feelings about a person or object? (I'm fairly certain I've heard the word used in the same sentence as the word "lawyers"). Surely someone can't be arrested for owning something "infernal."


There was no dictionary close by so I reached for my laptop. Dictionary.com indicated that "infernal" means hellish, fiendish, or diabolical. OK, so nothing new there: infernal really does just means hellish and bad. So how is it that one could be arrested, in this day and age, for possessing a "hellish" or "diabolical" machine? I mean really, my curling iron could qualify for that title on some days.


I walked in the next room to consult a dog-eared paperback American Heritage Dictionary which I think accompanied me to college, meaning that it is not very up-to-date. It provided no further illumination. Just the same "relating to hell" et al. Thus, I'm still left with the worrisome premise that you could be arrested for possessing something that another finds hellish or diabolical. That's a highly-subective standard that even a non-attorney like me can see is unworkable. Surely after 9/11 and the Shoe-bomber we would have learned how to write our laws so they can be enforced if someone tries to carry bombs on to an airplane.

I sighed, realizing that I would have to walk all the way downstairs to get our super-duper dictionary: a leather-bound 1,500 page volume of Websters Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary with gold-edged pages and my husband's name embossed on the cover. (My husband received the book as a gift for speaking at some accounting conference years ago but hasn't used it 1/100th as much as I have). I thumbed through the pages, landing on page 619 where I found the entry for "infernal," including the now expected hellish and diabolical references, followed by {drum roll please} an entry for "infernal machine." For the record, an infernal machine is "a machine or apparatus maliciously designed to explode and destroy life or property." Thus, I learned an "infernal" machine is quite different than an "infernal machine." Mystery solved.

I finished reading the paper with a sense of relief, satisfied that I didn't need to worry about the vocabulary skills of our lawmakers just yet. I brushed away any doubts about the adequacy of my own vocabulary with a pledge to sign up for Dictionary.com's word-of-the-day email. And best of all, I wouldn't have to worry about getting arrested for possession of an infernal curling iron the next time I travel on a bad hair day.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Ahh.....Vacation :-)

Vacation. The very word brings a smile to my face, a deep breath into my lungs, and a drop in my blood pressure. No work. No cooking. No schedule. . . . No email.

Yes, that is vacation. Even if you choose to do some cooking or stick to some kind of schedule, it is still vacation and it feels blissfully different from the daily routines of regular life. Perhaps the magic of vacation is simply the freedom of choice it provides: on vacation you can choose to set the alarm for 7:00, or you can choose not to set the alarm and enjoy sleeping in. You can choose to go sight-seeing or you can choose to go shopping. Or maybe vacation earns its high marks just for being different from our everyday lives. Or possibly vacation is great because we're all basically lazy and vacation requires nothing from us.


What makes vacation so good? It is too serious a question for me to ponder right now (after all, I am on vacation). Plus it makes me start to wonder if I like vacation because (a) I am too controlling and have to be able to choose what I'm doing, (b) I have a dreary life and doing anything different is better, (c) I am a lazy underachiever who will never accomplish anything in life because I'd rather be on vacation, or (d) all of the above. In an effort to avoid contemplating any nasty character deficiencies, let me just say that I am all for vacation and leave it at that.


We have chosen to spend our daughter's Spring Break skiing in Whistler. We have been to Whistler several times and know where we like to stay, where to go to dinner, and where to get important vacation provisions like chocolate croissants for breakfast and Okanagan Valley wines for apres-ski. It is fun for the whole family.

Of course, Whistler is completely different than Las Vegas. And while skiing isn't exactly a lazy vacation, all you have to worry about is where to point your skis to next.

What makes a good vacation in your book? Is it the escape from reality? The chance to literally leave your problems behind for a few days? The ability to see new places? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. In the meantime, I'm off to the hot tub while our bottle of Jackson-Triggs Chardonnay is chilling...

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Day 1 of Life 2

OK, maybe Day 1 of Life 2 is a bit dramatic to describe my first day of blogging. It is a take on a quote from Nelson DeMille's "Spencerville" in which a Cold-War-era spy gets fired at the end of the Cold War and he is forced, just five years shy of a full pension, to begin a "new" life; the former spy drives out of Washington DC in his Saab 9000, declaring:

Today was day three of life two. Whoever said that there were no second acts in American lives had never worked for the government.
I never worked for the government and regrettably was never a spy. Rather, I was a certified public accountant (until a few months ago when I decided it really wasn't fun anymore). I spent years writing reams of tax accounting memos and other riveting works of nonfiction. It is definitely time for something new. I've always wanted to write for fun. Blogging should be fun and easy (right?). At any rate, it is a start to a new beginning and I look forward to discovering some of the many other bloggers out there.

I am vacationing with my family (husband and 9-year-old daughter) in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. It was here in Whistler over the Christmas holiday that I got the real idea to start a blog. I promised myself I would get it started by the time we returned to Whistler for Spring Break. I also boldly announced this promise to my family, thereby obligating myself to really get it done.

So, it is now Spring Break and we are back in Whistler and it is thus from here that I make my first post. I hope to post everyday, even on vacation. (There I go again, publicly announcing my private intentions).

Soon I will explain the meaning of the title, "Where's Joe?" I have my family to thank for that one and it will take some creative explanation... In the meantime, let me just say that the question I have been thinking about today is "Why blog?" For me, it is the chance to meet new people in the blogoshpere, keep up with my real world friends who I don't see very often, and basically because I think everyone has something to say. If you happen upon this blog and
care to share your thoughts about why you blog, please do so.