Lou’s News #2 — Should Speechifying Be Terrifying?
Hi all,
You’d think I’d have gotten over it by now. Throughout my career, I’ve given a couple hundred presentations, otherwise known as speeches. Every one of them scares me nearly as much as soloing overhanging waterfall ice. Or honestly, that’s a crumby analogy. Speeches scare me a lot more than soloing ice. Which is probably why I prefer ice. Problem is, the last time I climbed ice ropeless was many years ago, and the speeches, they just keep coming.
The latest: Colorado Ski Country USA invited me to give the closing address at their annual Snow Conference, held this past April of 2022 in Grand Junction, Colorado.
I was extra nervous about this one. Far as I knew, the audience comprised snowmakers and cat drivers. What was I going to tell a bunch of motorheads about ski touring?
But I forged ahead. First, I dug out my Carhart jacket, under which I wore a La Sportiva fleece. I was covering all the bases. Next, subject matter. What better than a few anecdotes about uphill resort skiing? Doubtless a subject any snow worker was familiar with by direct experience, such as preventing uphillers from electrocuting themselves on 100 amp snowmaker feed lines. Or with winch-cat-ers, taking care to not snap a cable and bifurcate a nearby aerobic god or goddess.
Well, I need not have worried about my audience. They might have been mechanics and drovers, but they were skiers and riders nearly one and all. And when I asked for the standard hand shows: How many have climbed a fourteener? How many of you have skied one? Them all? I was amazed. This was hardly different from my usual talks! Just another bunch of Colorado snow-loving ski and snowboard riding folks for whom winter is queen.
I did have one bit of insurance. Knowing this crowd would be mechanically inclined, I stashed an early Dynafit binding toe in my hip pocket. I brought out the little thing halfway through the talk. In terms I figured might be appreciated by these manipulators of physical substance — it holds a ski boot with just this little thing! — I extolled Fritz Barthel’s invention, the tech binding, the disruptor of all things ski touring, the foundational reason a certain Colorado skiing consortium sold more than 8,000 uphill skiing passes last winter.
And so, it worked out. I signed a few event credentials, met some mighty nice folks, and even had my photo taken with a few fans. Thanks CSCUSA!
Me addressing the Snow Conference throng — about 200 nieve loving souls. Rapt attention regarding how many square millimeters of bearing surface there are in the tech binding boot/binding interface. The only thing missing were books to sign, I’m working on that…
Memoir News
Cover designer is on it. We’ll do a reveal here in a few months, when it’s final. Publication remains slated for early next winter. But I’m not rushing things. The manuscript is out to an important beta-reader at the moment, then slated for a few more revisions before the copy editor hits it. After that, it goes to more of the named characters for page reads. Takes forever.
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