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It’s fairly common to see old pairs of skis in hotels and restaurants near or at ski areas,* and of course you may see them in lodges on the hill. But how often do you get to see old snowboards?

The blog Alyeska Lift Crews has a photo of not just one, but six old Burton snowboards, plus one Snurfer. They’re mounted on the wall in the Sitzmark, an establishment of some sort (lodge? restaurant?) at or near the Alyeska Resort. You can see the photo and click through to a full-screen shot here.

* I’m a snowboarder who periodically dons skis, but “ski and snowboard area” is a mouthful.

It’s good to be king of snowboarding. One of Shaun White’s sponsors created a private playground for him near Silverton, Colorado, and dubbed it the Red Bull Project X.

The web site for the project has a number of videos, including those of four breakthrough tricks that White worked on in the built-for-him halfpipe. For those who understand the lingo, they were 1) a front double cork ten, 2) a switch back 900, 3) a double back rodeo, and 4) a cab double cork ten. No, I don’t quite get them all, but at an abstract level I know that there’s a lot of skill and athletic ability at work.

While I watched the videos of the tricks, I found some of the other videos more interesting, or at least easier to grasp. In something that borrows from cable TV shows “Mythbusters” and “Ice Road,” a crew in the Lake Tahoe region built an 8,000 metal container (think of an oversized Dumpster). They transported it to Colorado, and used two pieces of heavy equipment and skids to move it next to the end of the halfpipe. They filled the container with foam blocks, giving White a safe landing zone as he practiced different tricks. As I said, it’s good to be king.

Perhaps the most interesting video described the building of the pipe. For day after day, they set off avalanches, which caused a sufficient amount of snow to accumulate in one spot. Then they used a pipe cutter to shape the snow.

You may wonder why Shaun White deserves all this attention and the money spent on his behalf. If you remember your Econ 101, there’s a three-word answer: “supply and demand.”

Millions of people want to see highly skilled snowboarders strut their stuff. That’s “demand.” Only a few, including White, can perform at the highest level. That’s “supply.” When you’ve got many people with a demand and only a few who can supply the demand, those who can supply will clean up financially and in other ways. Often in sports (and this is the case with White), the payment doesn’t come directly from fans, but from advertisers who want to reach those fans.

One of the videos showed White in street clothing, with an open shirt and his famous locks draped around his neck. He could remind you of any number of other entertainers. “Hair metal bands” from the 1970s and 1980s come to mind. So too does someone who was popular when snowboarding wasn’t even born, David Cassidy, aka “Keith Partridge.” Enjoy the video below.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJYSu2OVCGM]

If you still have some disposable income, now’s the time to take advantage of the recession, with companies offering up new deals.

The Aspen Ski Co, for example, has teamed up with the local lodging establishments to entice you to visit during March with the “Kids Ski and Stay Free in March” promotion.

There is, as you might expect, as asterisk. Here’s how an article in the Aspen Times put it: “Families that purchase a minimum of four days of lift tickets and five nights of lodging get free skiing and accommodations for kids between 7 and 12 years of age any time in March 2010.”

Large families won’t benefit as much, as the benefits are limited to two-children families by this provision: “One child is eligible for the discounted lift tickets for each adult purchasing tickets.” Notice, too, that teenagers don’t qualify.

Last March, the company suffered a 22 percent downturn from its traditional business.

If you’ve got an unlimited budget, Aspen’s a great place to be. If you don’t, you can still find ways to cut corners and still enjoy yourself.

In the grand scheme of taking a family to Aspen, the package offers a modest benefit, but it helps. If you’ve ever thought of visiting, this might be your season.

Is the person who wrote that blog entry or newspaper article on the take, and where’s the appropriate role for government to police the press? These and other questions are swirling around in recent days, as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced earlier this month that bloggers must disclose, under penalty of law, freebies they receive. The draft regulations haven’t yet gone into effect, and may not ever do so, but they are dangerous nonetheless.

Snowboarding is just one topic I write about. Usually I don’t bring that other stuff into the Grays on Trays site. But I’m including below an article, related to the FTC announcement, that I wrote for a small, specialized newspaper. I’ll have more comments after the block quote.

Making a federal case out of blogging
Saint Paul Legal Ledger Capitol Report
October 22, 2009

John LaPlante

Freedom of speech and clear standards for law enforcement are two building blocks of constitutional government.

And yet, right now an overly zealous federal agency is threatening both, a state of affairs that could affect the hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans who use Facebook and other social networking sites.

In early October, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) laid down the law on people who write blogs, Facebook updates, and Twitter “tweets,” by proposing disclosure statements. The rules state that anyone promoting a product or service must disclose any “material connections” with the seller of that product or service. Violators could face fines of as much as $11,000, and might even be subject to civil lawsuits.

According to a Harris poll survey conducted earlier this year, half of all Americans have an account on MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter. That likely means that well over a million Minnesotans could be subject to FTC scrutiny if these disclosure statements become law.

Marketers and advertisers are unhappy, of course. The International Advertising Bureau has called for the FTC to withdraw its enforcement guidelines. Randal Rothenberg, president of the advertising association, said: “These revisions are punitive to the online world and unfairly distinguish between the same speech, based on the medium in which it is delivered.”

While the FTC is concerned that a blogger who receives a free package of Pampers from Proctor & Gamble may say something nice about the company, travel and fashion writers at the New York Times or Glamour are free (as far as the FTC is concerned) to accept free trips or clothing. So should bloggers and tweeters.

Another problem with the rules is that they are too subjective and open to manipulation. Several prominent legal bloggers have made this point, including Ann Althouse of the University of Wisconsin (http://althouse.blogspot.com/), who worries about selective enforcement.

Walter Olson, who writes at http://overlawyered.com/, says, after reviewing the FTC materials, “FTC enforcers will engage in their own fact-specific, and inevitably subjective, balancing before deciding whether to press for fines or other penalties: in other words, instead of knowing whether you’re legally vulnerable or not, you get to guess.”

Ambiguous law strikes at the heart of constitutional government. The more ambiguous a law is, the more government is a government of men, not laws. As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said a few years ago in the case of a Los Angeles man cited for displaying a “for sale” sign in his vehicle, “Commercial speech is a form of speech individuals, as well as corporations, must be able to exercise without arbitrary restrictions.”

More generally, the FTC rule weakens respect for the First Amendment, which states, in part, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” It’s true that commercial speech has long been regulated, to our loss, and the FTC rules would solidify that precedent.

The FTC says it has no plans (and no resources) to actively police the millions of blogs, Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds. In fact, it tells bloggers, in essence, “Don’t worry, be happy. We’re just going after the advertisers.” But as Jeff Bercovici asks at AOL Daily Finance, “Since when do we give government agencies broad new powers in the expectation that they’ll be used sparingly and judiciously?”

You might think that the guidelines were, as many new laws and regulations are, a panicked response to a recent crisis. You would be partly right. While some companies do engage in blogger payola, there is no sudden need to act.

One FTC staffer has denied the commission saw “a huge problem out there that was imperative to address.” Rather, the FTC is bureaucracy doing what a bureaucracy normally does—expanding its reach and scope until citizens push back.

The commission says that it’s merely updating existing rules to apply to new technologies, but it neglects how those new technologies work. In short, the Internet is a great place for ferreting out unscrupulous actors. As Gordon Crovitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal column, “The Web has its own self-regulatory mechanisms. Failing to disclose interests sullies one’s reputation online, and reputation harm travels faster and lasts longer than it did before the Web.”

On a practical level, the rules have some problems as well. The most common form of advertising, at least in terms of number of sites if not dollars spent, is Google AdSense. Google serves up ads, from third parties, based on words on various web site, including one that I use to write about snowboarding. When readers of that blog click on an ad, Google puts a few pennies in my account and charges the advertiser a few more. Every so often, it sends me a check for $100.

While I can exclude certain advertisers from the ads, I can’t determine whose ads will appear. Should bloggers like me start monitoring such ads and then disclaiming them? That requirement lessens rather than increases the amount of speech, which is not good for democratic self-government.

Finally, there’s a cultural reason why the FTC action is also bad : It treats adults as children by trying to protect them from somehow being harmed by a ‘tainted’ blog entry. Remember the rule “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”

A little discernment would go a long ways.

There used to be an old saying: “Don’t make a federal case out of it.”

With the latest FTC action, however, every casual blathering online might become just that.

I didn’t mean to pick on the New York Times, and used them simply since they’re so well known. It’s ironic, perhaps that shortly after I wrote this article, I read that some very-big-media writers (think NYT and Washington Post) were charged with violating company guidelines for accepting freebies (swag).

As that incident suggests, publishers have a self-interest in having a clean reputation. I’d rather have that logic at work than getting the FTC into the business of regulating blogs, for the reasons I mentioned above.

For an example of how the discipline of reputation works, I’ve often looked for Shayboarder for insight into snowboards. While she endorses the FTC rules, she doesn’t need to, as she has, over time, gained the respect of thousands of readers for her work.

With the world of publishing in turmoil, having a clean reputation will be more important than ever.

For my own part, I have gotten a few trips at a reduced cost, and I hope the context of what I’ve written about them makes that clear.

Yesterday I mentioned attending a meeting of ski clubs and learning about nordic walking. If that seems too tame, consider something else I learned about: snowkiting. Think of wakeboarding, but powered by the wind rather than a boat motor.

What a contrast! Nordic walking versus snowkiting. “Anyone can do that” versus “Ooh, that looks dangerous.” Something that maximizes the control that you have over your movement versus an activity that depends on something as unpredictable as the wind. Something that guarantees you’ll always have one foot on the ground versus an activity in which some people can purposely jump into the air and float for a while, suspended by a kite. (Snowboarding contains but is more than throwing yourself off a jump or spinning in a halfpipfe. Snowkiting contains but is more than jumping into the air.)

There was no presentation at the meeting on snowkiting. I learned about it when I across one of the younger people in the room (I’m guessing he was no younger than 42) who was talking with someone else about it.

I’ve long wondered how you pass the winter in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas. Though snowkiters (who use snowboards or skis) can and do take to the mountains, I’m guessing that adding a kite works pretty well for flatlands, giving you the chance to slide on the snow without having either lifts to ride up terrain or drops to ride down.

The following sites look like good introductions to the subject:

Lakawa — a Minnesota-based community of people who go kitesurfing in the summer and snowkiting in the winter. (Why not “surfkiting” and “snowkiting?” I don’t know; I’m just following their usage.)

Snowkiting is beginning to take off, Boston Globe. “Although snowkiters can achieve speeds of more than 60 miles per hour and heights above 40 feet, the sport does not necessarily have to be pushed to extreme level.” The article mentions also some cultural issues facing a rapidly growing yet still new sport, and important differences between using kites on open water and on frozen water or land. (There are more than the obvious differences.)

Mackiteboarding says that “Flow or other easy entry bindings are a plus, but don’t feel that you need to invest a fortune in new gear.”

Bestkiteboarding points out the versatility of snowkiting: You can do it “in the mountains, uphill or downhill, even on flat snow packed land or frozen lakes.”

From what I’ve read on the subject, it’s useful to know how to ski or snowboard before you start snowkiting. The most challenging part of learning, however, isn’t dealing with skis or a board, but in handling the kite.

A book review about a new book on spontaneous order and politics throws out a point about snowboarding as well. It’s meant to be an illustration of the unpredictability of life, and how it’s important to adapt–or die.

Harrison sees neoclassical economics, both free-market and interventionist, as stuck in a static-equilibrium-model way of thinking that deters progress and limits understanding. Progress happens when an equilibrium is shattered, something no economic model, no matter how sophisticated the formulas through which it is expressed, can predict. The key is understanding evolutionary dynamics and being open enough to let them happen.

He uses the fascinating example of snowboarding. The first snowboarders were baggy-panted delinquents likely to be stoners who were less than welcome at respectable ski resorts; some resorts banned them. But snowboarding kept growing in popularity, and now ski resorts not only tolerate boarders, they welcome them and design trails for them.

Michael Perry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, now says that “if it wasn’t for snowboarding, the industry would have suffered a major contraction.”

No economist or trade association predicted that snowboarding would save the ski-resort industry, and the industry’s first impulse was to discourage it. Eventually it had the good sense to let the evolution happen.

I’d like to see that quote from Perry sometime. It sounds plausible, though it should also be noted that snowboarding participation reached a plateau for a few years. The financial impact of snowboarding varies from hill to hill. The Aspen Ski company, for example, gets less than 20 percent of its business from snowboarders, if I recall correctly. Many areas in the Pacific Northwest, however, draw about half of their customers from riding.

The larger point is true, however: The benefits of uncomfortable changes are often not obvious, but can be essential.

What can you do if you love snowboarding but get sick when you go to the mountains? One option is to seek out ski areas that offer a bit-mountain experience at a lower altitude.

Recently I compiled such a list. I started with all the ski areas in the U.S., and then cut out everything with a a vertical drop of less than 2,000 feet. I used this admittedly arbitrary number to define a “real” mountain. For a second cut I looked for places where the base elevation is less than one mile high, or 5,280 feet.

Roughly two dozen areas made the list. Alyeska has the lowest base elevation (250 feet), but it’s in Alaska–a long ways away from most people. Many of the places on the list are in the Pacific Northwest, which has a reputation for wet snow, which many riders find less than ideal. The Northeast (with a reputation for ice) is over-represented on the list. Then again, Jay Peak, Vermont, has a good reputation for powder, and one of my best powder days was at Cannon Mountain, New Hampshire.

So as you might expect, there are some trade-offs to consider. But if altitude sickness is a significant problem for you, they may be worth the trouble.

Today I was at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport when I heard the “last call” for a flight to Hancock, Michigan.

“Hancock, Michigan? There’s no such place,” I thought, drawing on my nearly 30 years of living in the state. Then I realized my mistake: There certainly is a Hancock, and it is the second city in the twin cities of Houghton-Hancock. It’s a small combination, to be sure, with a combined population of less than 15,000.

Houghton is known for two things. One is a state university. The second is that it’s the closest “big” city to Mt. Bohemia, a sparse “resort” yet another 40 miles north. In Michigan, the Upper Peninsula (UP) is remote. Jutting into Lake Superior from the main part of the UP is the Keweenaw peninsula. More remoteness. Bohemia is about 12 miles from the end of the Keweenaw–literally, the end of the road. Still more remoteness. By car, it’s about 8 hours from both the Saint Paul-Minneapolis and Chicago metropolitan areas, and 5 hours from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Ordinarily, ski areas in this part of the country live and die by their ability to make snow and groom it well. Bohemia does neither. Destination ski areas such as Boyne Mountain or Crystal Mountain build spas and fancy hotels. Bohemia doesn’t. Further, its “slopeside lodging” resembles a cross between a hostel and camping out, and the on-mountain dining facility resembles a factory lunchroom more than a fancy restaurant.

On the other hand, Bohemia claims “triple black diamond” lines with cliffs and chutes, as well as significant powder and tree skiing.

Now I’m telling you all this based on what I’ve read in various publications. I haven’t been to Mt. Bohemia but if you head to company web site, you can find a collection of some of the reviews.

One of the active participants of the Grays on Trays discussion board went there last season. He wrote, “The real reason to head here is the trees …. I would guess 80+% is all covered, some gladed, some not.” He’s on the younger side of our board membership (about 30), which probably means that he fit right in.

Still, you don’t have to be a hard-charging youngster to enjoy Bohemia. That’s what I take away from an article by a middle-aged skier who wrote about Bohemia in MyNorth.com. After reading about Bohemia’s business model, I’d have to say that it just might make sense.

Last call for Hancock? Maybe I’ll be on that plane myself sometime, just to check it out.

One challenge in being a middle-aged snowboarder is finding reading materials that are written more like the New Yorker–or even USA Today–and less like … well, I’m not going to go there. A few years ago I wrote a review of snowboarding magazines, and didn’t much like what I saw.

In particular, I had harsh words for TransWorld Snowboarding. One reason is that it is the industry standard and has (I believe) the largest circulation of snowboarding magazines. Another is that it takes the unsatisfactory qualities of the genre–vulgar language, an unreadable graphic design, and an attitude that plays to the stereotype of snowboarders–to a higher level.

Sometime after writing those reviews I received an e-mail from one of the editors of TWS, saying that the magazine was changing. (Unfortunately it got lost in my e-mail box and I didn’t see it for quite a while.) I haven’t had much contact with the publication since.

Thanks to Twitter, I found out today that TWS gives GraysOnTrays.com, and older riders, some recognition in the November, 2009 edition, which contains a letter from KJ Riley, entitled “Old Dog”:

Since your mag is the only widely distributed snowboarding periodical I can find, I get it regularly and enjoy the pics of snow-covered hills, dreaming of that time I will be retired with enough money to ride all those places. But, being 59 and a crazy ol’ man boarder, I sure would like to see some other seniors represented once in a while (maybe I’m one of the very few around … who knows!). Even if we see a lot of good snow riding pics (I don’t do rails or pipes, and I’m waiting until I slim down by 50 pounds to do any jumps) especially on double blacks like Kirkwood’s Wall, Sugar Bowl’s Palisades, or Mammoth’s runs from the top of the gondola, I could get down with that …. otherwise, keep up the good pics and articles like you’ve had last year about resort areas.

The editors responded:

Hey, KJ, We’ll keep stoking you out with epic shots and resort features, but we don’t want you to feel like you’re alone out there, so we’re hooking you up with a Web site to check out: graysontrays.com. It’s for “grown-up” riders. The site itself is whatever (yeah, we read that review of TransWorld … dis!), but they’ve got active discussion boards that are broken down into regions and even one for the ladies. Everyone knows it’s more fun to shred with a crew.

Thanks, TWS, for helping out a rider by referring him to a site that he might find helpful, even if it did give you a “dis” review. Now that’s customer service. Thanks also for the kind words about the discussion boards. I have found them helpful and I know that others have, too.

By the way, another letter in the same issue comes from “a mom of three boys that all snowboard.” She asks “is there any hope of learning to snowboard at 40?”

Absolutely! The TWS staff gave a good reply: “Hey, you can and you will learn this winter–just take some lessons, use the right equipment, and try not to fall on your wrists.”

We’ve finally joined the new media world. The Grays on Trays site now has a Facebook page, a Facebook group, and a Twitter feed. There’s also the original bulletin board.