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Family skiing

February 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

On the chairlift at SolVistaHeather and I skipped work last Fri­day. We went ski­ing at SolVista. It’s a fam­ily ski area that’s not the clos­est to Den­ver, but still within easy dri­ving dis­tance of our home in the suburbs.

We had a great time. The slopes are gen­tle and smooth. Ben and I loved cruis­ing down one slope as fast as we could — repeat­edly. And it’s uncrowded, so we had no fears of any life-threatening accidents.

Rachel, our youngest, did fine, even though she hasn’t been ski­ing very much. She was able to drift through the trees and nav­i­gat­ing a fun course for kids that included ski­ing through a small “barn.” Jay, our old­est and most adven­tur­ous son, had fun doing sev­eral stunts in the ter­rain park.

I know a lot of hard-core skiers and snow­board­ers would turn their nose up at SolVista, but we loved it. If you’re ever in Col­orado and want to have some fam­ily ski­ing fun, SolVista’s the place.

And a final foot­note — so you can tell this is not a spon­sored post — if you have the cash for a ski condo, the com­pany that runs the resort way over­built, so you can get one for a rel­a­tive steal.

Filed Under: travel

Review: Fisker Karma vs BMW 335d

February 16, 2012 By 2 Comments

Fisker Karma carSuper high-performance and green? As you think about your next lux­ury sedan, you may be think­ing about buy­ing a Fisker Karma.

I say that fully kid­ding — I know that none of my read­ers are think­ing about buy­ing a Fisker Karma.

Any­how, I read with inter­est a Car & Dri­ver mag­a­zine review of the new Fisker Karma. Think of it as a much faster Chevro­let Volt with a super beau­ti­ful body.

The gas engine pow­ers a gen­er­a­tor that charges an elec­tric motor that moves the wheels. So it can run only on elec­tric power for about 25 miles.

Why am I com­par­ing the $116,000 Karma to a $44,000 BMW 335d? Here are sev­eral reasons:

1. Per­for­mance? The BMW is faster than the Karma... BMW = 0–60 miles per hour in 5.3 sec­onds. The Fisker does 6.1 seconds.

2. Inte­rior room? Similar.

3. Qual­ity of mate­ri­als, fit and fin­ish? Similar.

4. Fuel econ­omy? BMW wins... 27 miles per gal­lon vs. the Fisker’s 24.

5. Green? Dis­pos­ing of all those lithium-ion bat­ter­ies when they fail to hold a charge any­more will be a night­mare. And diesel is more dirty than gas in some mea­sures but cleaner in others.

BMW 335dThe Fisker is a clear win­ner in the dis­tinc­tive­ness realm. You won’t see another on your block, guar­an­teed — no mat­ter where you live. But for every­thing else, the BMW wins.

A final note: the Porsche Panam­era S Hybrid is def­i­nitely a closer vehi­cle to com­pare. It costs a closer $95,000, does 0–60 in 5.7 sec­onds and gets 25 mpg.

Pho­tos are cour­tesy of the Fisker and BMW websites.

Filed Under: cars Tagged With: ,

Love you

February 14, 2012 By 3 Comments

Drawing of a heartHey read­ers, I wanted to say that I love you.

Thanks for faith­fully com­ing back and read­ing my stuff.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Filed Under: Life

A new option

February 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

Email subscription optionIf you would like to get an email each time I put a new blog post up, you can now sub­scribe, via the lit­tle wid­get to the right.

Hope­fully this will make it eas­ier for some of you to get Shiny Bits goodness.

Filed Under: blogging

My longest-owned thing

February 7, 2012 By 5 Comments

Victorinox knifeI bought this knife when I was about 12 years old. I still have it. As you might guess, it’s a lit­tle too bulky to carry around in my pocket. But I do throw it in the lug­gage when we’re head­ing for an overnight.

When I bought it, I was under the illu­sion that big­ger was bet­ter. And at the time, the Vic­tori­nox Cham­pion was the biggest and most feature-laden model avail­able. I paid $19 for it, which was a lot of money to me back then. (The lat­est equiv­a­lent has a few more fea­tures and costs $99.)

I am amazed that the basic design has remained the same over all those years. The seventh-generation Porsche 911 looks sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal 1963 model. When a design is good, it’s worth­while to explore deeply the rea­sons for chang­ing it, before a re-design.

What is the thing you’ve had longer than any­thing else?

Filed Under: design Tagged With:

Tastes good, like a cigarette should

February 2, 2012 By 5 Comments

This is a guest post by my brother Bill. I also lived under that anti-commercials par­a­digm — so it’s ironic that my work involves mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing. But I do use the remote to mute com­mer­cials, the vast major­ity of the time.

Old TV setGrow­ing up in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, we kids knew there was a con­di­tion in our home for watch­ing TV. Our dad had a firm rule that the com­mer­cials had to be turned down! As this was before the inven­tion of remote con­trol devices and “Mute” but­tons, it involved jump­ing up from your seat as soon as a com­mer­cial break started, run­ning to the TV set and turn­ing the vol­ume knob coun­ter­clock­wise all the way. Then the whole process would be repeated in reverse once the show was back on. He did this because he wanted to spare us (and the adults) from the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing com­mer­cial jin­gles run­ning in our heads (or hum­ming them around the house). In those days, most com­mer­cials con­tained a jin­gle (song) writ­ten specif­i­cally for the prod­uct, and they were indeed quite catchy. A few must have snuck through from those infre­quent times when com­mer­cials weren’t turned down — to this day, I can sing you the open­ing bars of “Wouldn’t you really rather have a Buick?” or “Win­ston tastes good, like a cig­a­rette should.” (Yes, cig­a­rette com­mer­cials were allowed on TV for part of that time.)

Think­ing about all of this made me won­der when exactly jin­gles went away, as they are very rare now. A tele­vi­sion viewer from that era would be put off by what we see today ... com­mer­cials now to involve a lot of action/motion and quick cuts. (I could do with fewer quick cuts, myself.)

Photo is a mod­i­fied ver­sion of a Flikr photo by theter­ri­fictc.

Filed Under: Guest Post

Cars: Choose Your Loss

January 31, 2012 By 3 Comments

2 station wagonsWhen you buy a car, you have a choice to make: fun or prac­ti­cal. Fun = expen­sive. Prac­ti­cal = sav­ing money in the long or short run.

Case in point: these two wag­ons were for sale locally, for rel­a­tively low prices. When com­pared to the orig­i­nal prices, the BMW was an incred­i­ble steal. How­ever, the BMW will end up cost­ing way more than the Ford, in prac­ti­cally every way you can imag­ine. (Trust me on this; I had an old BMW for a few years.)

But every sin­gle minute behind the wheel of the 528 (when it is run­ning OK, that is) will be way more enjoy­able than every minute behind the wheel of the Escort.

You must pick your poison.

(And I dream of poi­son. When I saw that BMW, I thought a lit­tle too long on how fun it would be to have it. Alas, we will con­tinue to drive one of the most bor­ing — and prac­ti­cal — cars on the planet, the Toy­ota Corolla.)

Filed Under: cars

The Champs-Elysees

January 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Alfa Romeo MitoLast sum­mer we went to Paris.

I don’t say that to brag. It was part of our visit to my sis­ter and her fam­ily, who live in Belgium.

Any­how, one after­noon, my old­est son Jay and I decided to stroll along the Champs-Elysees, a famous avenue in the city known for its roman­tic cafes and lux­ury spe­cialty shops.

Need­less to say, we didn’t sip cof­fee at a side­walk cafe. How­ever, we thor­oughly enjoyed vis­it­ing a Fiat/Lancia/Alfa Romeo shop/museum. (Jay is next to the won­der­ful Alfa Romeo Mito, a car that sadly won’t be mak­ing it to the USA.)

Arc De Triomphe wedding photoOne sur­real moment was see­ing scores of Chi­nese peo­ple get­ting wed­ding pic­tures taken in front of the Arc de Tri­om­phe.

The point of this story? My roman­tic dream of expe­ri­enc­ing The Champs-Elysees involved a leisurely brunch at one of those cafes. That didn’t hap­pen. What did hap­pen may have been even bet­ter — a fun after­noon with my son that we’ll prob­a­bly both remem­ber for the rest of our lives.

p.s. Heather and I did enjoy a roman­tic evening in Paris. We had dessert at a divey bar, not on the Champs-Elysees.

Filed Under: travel

Sadness in the life of toothpaste

January 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

used-up toothpasteIf you haven’t been to to my “cut­ting floor” blog, head on over: Paul Merrill’s Tum­blr.

Filed Under: Life

Review: Ink Joy

January 17, 2012 By 4 Comments

InkJoy penI love writ­ing. As in, tak­ing a pen out and drag­ging it across a piece of paper. It’s a dying art.

Paper­mate recently released their InkJoy series of pens. I bought a 6-pack (well, 4) and love the writ­ing plea­sure this pen pro­vides. It glides across the page unlike any­thing else I’ve tried.

It’s a ball­point, so the ink is maybe more per­ma­nent than a gel pen’s. And it just glides more smoothly than a gel pen ever could.

Oh — my color of choice is blue — peo­ple are more prone to believe it’s real. (That line of think­ing goes back to the xerox days — when black always meant a copy.)

Finally, no dis­clo­sure needed. I bought these with my own money. Office Depot adver­tized them, and the ad con­vinced me to give them a try. I’m glad I did.

Filed Under: review
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