Friday, January 6, 2012

Holding the future in your arms


By WARREN MILLER

Recently I held the future in my arms when our two young friends Nic and Jenny stopped by with their new baby, who they have named Magnolia Leigh. Magnolia was 6 days old and weighed 6 pounds. As I held her, she was so small that her fingers could not wrap themselves around my one finger. Holding her I thought about what lies ahead for her in her lifetime and how much the world will change during that time.

I reflected on the changes I've seen in my lifetime and thought of one of my earliest recollections, a horse-drawn streetcar on Franklin Ave. in Hollywood, Ca. in the late 1920s. I compared it to an email I received the other day of a 50-passenger rapid transit bus in Dubai. It is electrically driven and cruises with 50 passengers at 150 mph. At that speed I hope it never hits a camel.

I was 10 when someone invented the rope tow and now look at what skiing has to offer. No more hanging onto a wet and sloppy Manila hemp rope or even a frozen one of Nylon or Dacron. Today you can climb into a detachable quad chairlift and ride 3,000 vertical feet in a few minutes. Or you can ride a 6-passenger chairlift at Boyne Mountain in Michigan.

I started skiing just a few years after the metal edge was invented, I believe by Walter Prager's brother. Walter used to be the coach of the Dartmouth ski team. He rocketed to fame in Davos, Switzerland by winning won the Parsenn Derby by almost 20 minutes. It was a 12-kilometer downhill with no gates except a start and finish gate. He put brass edges on one side of his skis and steel edges on the other because all of his left turns would be on ice and his right turns would be on corn snow. That shows the progress we've made.

I've seen the disappearance of "Learn to Ski Week." There was a time you could buy a round trip train ride from Chicago to Sun Valley and return, get all of your meals, lift tickets, and lessons for $17 less than an all-day lift ticket costs today.

That 6-pound, 6-day old little girl named Magnolia will see just as many inventions and revolutions in her lifetime as I've seen in mine. I watched Dave McCoy invent Mammoth Mountain and stood by while Alex Cushing in 10 short years made Squaw Valley grow from a resort with a single chairlift and 2 rope tows when I taught there in 1949-50, to become the host of the 1960 Winter Olympics.

I watched the days of untracked powder in the back bowls of Vail become tracked up within an hour of when the first skiers arrived at the top. Many of the inventions we now take for granted. They are things like snow tires, automatic transmissions, snowboards, warmer winter clothes, and instant snow reports from anywhere in the world with only a couple of strokes on the computer.

I'm on the far end of the good invention cycle of my lifetime, though there are still a lot of things yet to invent. What about a powder snow pill that you could throw out in front of you when you are skiing that would change the snow to untracked powder wherever you wanted to ski?

Magnolia, or Maggie as we're now calling her, will be able to learn to ski almost instantly because ski equipment has become so user friendly that 4-year-old kids are already running slalom gates and riding rails in a snowboard park. She has a wonderful opportunity to enjoy her freedom at an early age. Her father and mother both worked at Mt. Baker when they met, and got married at the end of our dock in Deer Harbor, Wash. on a rainy summer afternoon.

I'm sure Magnolia with Jenny and Nic's guidance will profit by the inventions in her lifetime, just as I have during my lifetime. I'm right now looking forward to my next 50 years of what is around the next bend. I am sure that Jenny, Nic and Magnolia will be leading the parade.




About Comments

Comments with content that seeks to incite or inflame may be removed.

Comments that are in ALL CAPS may be removed.

Comments that are off-topic or that include profanity or personal attacks, libelous or other inappropriate material may be removed from the site. Entries that are unsigned or contain signatures by someone other than the actual author may be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or any other policies governing this site. Use of this system denotes full acceptance of these conditions. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing, Inc.

You may flag individual comments. You may also report an inappropriate or offensive comment by clicking here.

Flagging Comments: Flagging a comment tells a site administrator that a comment is inappropriate. You can find the flag option by pointing the mouse over the comment and clicking the 'Flag' link.

Flagging a comment is only counted once per person, and you won't need to do it multiple times.

Proper Flagging Guidelines: Every site has a different commenting policy - be sure to review the policy for this site before flagging comments. In general these types of comments should be flagged:

  • Spam
  • Ones violating this site's commenting policy
  • Clearly unrelated
  • Personal attacks on others
Comments should not be flagged for:
  • Disagreeing with the content
  • Being in a dispute with the commenter

Popular Comment Threads



 Local Weather 
Search archives:


Copyright © 2024 Express Publishing Inc.   Terms of Use   Privacy Policy
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.