Travel: Oxford And London II

Before we head to London, we left out a useful point about punting in Oxford. The punting rentals are at the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse. There is also a Magdalen College Boathouse in Oxford. Make sure you go to the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse for your punting trip.

Living in a small Midwestern city we love our vehicle but there is no need to have one in London and it is a big problem to park it. And if your are doing London and, say, Oxford, take the train to Oxford and rent a car there if you need one. We didn’t. Trains are a flexible way to travel from London because there are lots of them. We got two round trip tickets London to Oxford for sixty-some pounds. The trip out was in fifteen minutes and the return trip could be anytime within 30 days as long as it was after 9:30 (we think we have the numbers straight). England is smaller than Wisconsin but has almost ten times as many people so trains are very effective mode of transportation in such a densely populated area because they give lots of options to most destinations. Train stations in Europe are almost always in the city center so they are a great way to travel without a vehicle.

For getting around London you need an Oyster Card. As it says at the link, buy your card before you leave and save money. We used our Oyster card to get to and from the airport and all over London on the Underground. You can also ride the buses but our personal preference was the Underground.

Like any great city, London has more than you can possibly do. In previous trips we have done the history thing. If you do don’t miss the Churchill War Rooms. This trip was about entertainment and walking the city. We went to see three plays: Six at The Vaudeville Theatre, The Mousetrap at St. Martin’s Theatre, and Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe. We saw two sporting events: Soccer at the Emirates and cricket at Lord’s. And we walked around Little Venice and Kensington Park. And we ate out and the highlight was high tea at the Wolseley.

Let’s start with walking London. We think you should have some mellow time during your busy trip. London has lots of green space so it is a lovely walk in early May when the flowers are already blooming but the crowds are not. Weekdays are obviously better than weekends. As you walk along the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens you will see all manner of waterfowl from swans to grebes. Be sure to do the flower walk there and you should see the feral parakeets. They look like parrots to us but this post says they are parakeets. And if you are determined to go inside you can do Kensington Palace on the edge of the Gardens. Little Venice is another mellow walk. There are canal boats or narrow boats all around. If you really want to go narrow boating try here but there are short trips from Little Venice. Or you can go to the narrow boat with the puppet show. We found a little mellow time was needed to enjoy the more intense events. Like high tea at the Wolseley.

We enjoy pub food but high tea is not to be missed and the Wolseley is a great place to do it. Here are the details for afternoon tea. There is tea on silver, a variety of little sandwiches (make sure to try the coronation chicken), scones, and desserts. Enjoy them all at you leisure in elegant surroundings while the well dressed staff keeps a careful eye on you. You need to try tea at least once. There are lots more options for plays.

St. Martin’s and the Vaudeville are lovely old and intimate playhouses. St. Martin’s holds 552 people over three levels and the Vaudeville is similar. Go early so you can check out the theatre and don’t forget to order drinks and snacks for the interval. Well not for Six because it doesn’t have a break. Yup, you can make a bar order before the show and pick up your order at the interval. Honest folks in the UK. Six is the musical reunion of the six wives of Henry VIII. It is like going to see a concert for a girl band. There are 80 minutes of great singing and tight choreography. We thought it was great fun but would not go as far as saying it was great theatre. Your milage may vary.

The Mousetrap is the world’s longest running play because it appeals to both audience and actors. It is a tightly plotted mystery with eight major characters and no minor characters. The Mousetrap is great theatre because there are eight interesting characters all with secrets. We guessed the murderer at the interval. See if you can.

Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe is worth the price of the flight to London. The Globe has a huge stage but if you want intimacy you can be a groundling and get a piece of an orange from Benedict or help Beatrice get back on the stage. If you want to be less involved in the play the best seats are the front row on either sides of the pole between the different sections. The reason is that there are hard wooden bench seats and the pole gets at least half a seat so you have space for your umbrella, hat, and what not. We encourage you to rent the cushion for a few pounds. The seating chart makes it look like there is a wall between the sections but it is just a small empty space. We became a member to get tickets when we wanted. We don’t know if that is worth it but you don’t want to miss going to the Globe.

Cricket is one of the world’s great sports that most Americans know nothing about. If there is an event at Lord’s go and find out. Alert: Cricket matches can go on forever and can have breaks for lunch and tea. You don’t have to stay for the whole match. Lord’s is an amazing venue with one part of the stands looking like a 19th century clubhouse and most of the rest looking very modern. Our tickets were only ten pounds for seniors so it was a cheap and fun afternoon. Have a Pimm’s while you are there. We suspect that the international events are much dearer. We left appreciating the game.

We have much to say about seeing soccer in London so we going to a third post for that.

Travel: Oxford And London

We’re back from the UK. We really thought we would write while we were on vacation but a combination of having fun, getting tired because we are old, and the depressing nature of politics kept us away from the keyboard.

We accompanied the Lady de Gloves for three days in Oxford and a week in London. This post will review Oxford and the next London. We are big fans of traveling off-peak. It is easy to get around, prices are more reasonable, and you can be spontaneous because places are not completely booked. Our advice is don’t even think about going to Europe in August because all the Europeans have their vacations then and try not to go in July.

Not long ago having local currency was important in Europe. Some places didn’t take cards and it was useful for tipping. This year everyplace we went took cards and most restaurants now add a service charge (be sure to check your bill!) so we like to have a little currency but you don’t need much and you could get by without any. We recommend you get a small amount like 100 pounds at your local bank before you leave. Inform your bank and bring a debit card in case there is an emergency.

When we stay for more that a day or two we almost always go Airbnb and rent the whole unit. We like to make a leisurely breakfast before starting the day. Our place in Oxford was a delightful townhouse with lots of room and a great bathroom. Look for Hazel if you want to follow us.

Oxford is a lovely city to walk. Because it was relatively undamaged in WWII it means the city walls from early times show up here and there leading to all manner for interesting discoveries from wandering around like The Turf Pub. You might see the crews practicing on the Thames and almost get run down by the coach on his bicycle because he was watching his rowers and not us. Bicyclists in Oxford and London are a real danger. Besides watching for vehicles on the “wrong” side of the street, you need to be alert for bicycles and scooters. Many of them are electric powered and move really fast.

Our three events in Oxford were: punting on the Cherwell, touring Christ Church, and a recital in Trinity College. Depending upon how you count there are 39 or perhaps 43 colleges that are part of Oxford University. Each college is independent and relatively small. Our recollection is that Christ Church (both a church and a college) had less than a thousand students and is working towards being a thousand years old.

Punting on the Cherwell is an amazingly relaxing activity. It is especially true if you do it in April when there are few, well, zero, other punts around and if you hire a chauffeur. We’re not quite sure how they fit six people on a punt but two and a punter are lovely. Punting is a must for any trip to Oxford. You might even take a hand at the pole.

Christ Church has an audio self-guided tour. You get to see and hear about the church and college. Depending on timing you might see more or less but it is still and excellent tour. We saw a little less because it was exam period but still thoroughly enjoyed it. Christ Church is used in movies and TV so you can hear and see where, among others, Harry Potter was filmed. The most moving part of the tour for us was the list of dead from The Great War (WWI). We have often been astounded by the losses suffered by the UK in WWI. Yes, the same is true of other countries but we haven’t gone to the right places to see them. Remember that Christ Church College is less than a thousand students now so to see such a long list of the dead (our recollection is over a hundred) help us understand why the British tried so hard and perhaps foolishly to avoid war with Hitler. Christ Church is a great tour and one of the few colleges you can see the inside of.

Because it is hard to see the inside of the colleges at Oxford University we decided to go to an event at one of the colleges. In our case it was a viola and piano recital at Trinity College. The recital was wonderful and only 25 pounds. Equally important, we had an opportunity to walk the grounds and see the buildings. The building we were in was opened by HRH, the Prince of Wales. That’s right, King Charles III before he got his new job. We recommend you try to find an opportunity to see an event at one of the colleges.

There is much more to do in Oxford but for us it was time to move to London. See you in the next post.

Change Or Resign Mr. President

We’d really like to vote for a Democrat for president this year to help jumpstart the post-The Donald GOP. Our first preference is that the Democrats take out our current president, The Frontrunner, and replace him with the current vice-president, Triple A. In our fantasy, she makes a feint towards the center at the convention by taking some of the fringe Democrats to task. Of course Triple A wouldn’t really go far towards the center but it would attract lots of votes. Our 44th president was right when he said something like: “Don’t do stupid stuff.” The problem as he and his two successors have shown is that it is difficult model to apply.

If The Donald wins there won’t be much for conservatives so the Democrats have a real chance to attract conservatives, independents, and Nikki voters. Unfortunately, for us and the country, The Frontrunner Administration seems hellbent on driving us away.

Sidebar: We are going to emphasize The Frontrunner Administration for the rest of his term because it seems unlikely that The Frontrunner is really in charge. One of the problems we have in making a vote is we don’t know who is making decisions. End Sidebar

We have three examples: Sanctions on Alaska, mush, and anti-trust. The WSJ (paywall alert) has a great editorial on The Frontrunner and Alaska. First, his administration blocked oil and gas leases:

The Interior Department blocked new oil and gas leasing on 13.3 million acres in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. Congress expressly set aside the region in 1923 for oil and gas development, but the Administration ignores this and says drilling would disturb the Arctic’s “natural wonders.” 

Then they found a way to stop mining of critical resources:

Interior on Friday also denied a permit for a 211-mile road necessary to develop the Ambler Mining District, which is one of the world’s richest deposits of copper, cobalt, gallium, germanium and other critical minerals. The Trump Administration granted the permit, but Biden officials used a lawsuit by green groups to reconsider and veto the project.

You would think that being less foolish than The Donald would not be that hard. But it is again as we see in Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt. Jim has a section with the wishy-washy title (that is satire folks!) More Mush From The Wimp where he reviews The Frontrunner’s interview about antisemitism on campus. You should read it all but you really shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of leadership from our current president. Here is a bit from Jim who seems as frustrated as us:

Heaven forbid that anyone listening conclude that the explosion of antisemitism on college campuses in this country is a uniquely insidious and dangerous problem that must be addressed immediately. No, no, the president of the United States must announce, at every opportunity, that the Palestinians have it just as bad, too.

The Frontrunner whiffed on a great opportunity. We see, as the last post described, that a few people in the GOP are showing a lack of tolerance for the intolerant. The Frontrunner (or Triple A) might not be Harry Truman but at least they could be Bill Clinton.

Then there is the personal. One of the stocks we own is Live Nation Entertainment (LYV). Here is a report on a report telling us:

The DOJ is targeting a lawsuit as soon as the fall, according to a Politico report, which cited people following the matter. The suit may claim that the Live Nation is abusing its power over the live music industry.

LYV fell 8.5 percent despite higher than expected earnings. The regulatory agencies that The Frontrunner is charged with overseeing is attacking LYV, Apple (The DOJ Case Against Apple Looks Pretty Rotten), and many other targets.

The Frontrunner seems incapable of reining in any of the worst elements of the Democrat Party. If he wants our vote (and we think we are part of a pretty large group) he needs to change but we doubt that he will. That is why we would like a chance to vote for Triple A. Time to resign or change Mr. President.

Mike Johnson, Statesman

We haven’t had much behavior that that would lead to a profile in courage award. In fact, we mean to get to all the stupidity but it is so little fun. But suddenly Mike Johnson has got the House to pass bills on supporting military aid to our allies Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine as well a bill to stop control TikTok by the Chinese communists. That would seem entirely unspectacular except that the fringe of the GOP has gone, to be kind, isolationist. Thus Mike’s sensible action left him in danger of being defenestrated as Speaker of the House. Jonah Goldberg at The Dispatch has a nice tribute to Mike. He thinks Mike will survive. We hope that Jonah is right.

We like that at least some members of the GOP are fed up with the antics of the fringe. One reason that we have hope for a post-The Donald GOP is quotes like these (from Jonah):

Amid threats to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson for allowing a vote on aid to Ukraine, Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas captured the party’s own divide between the good and the rest in colorful terms on CNN Sunday. “It’s my absolute honor to be in Congress,” he said, “but I serve with some real scumbags.”

And our local Congress critter:

“The majority of the majority—the vast majority of the majority—is sick and tired of these high school antics,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden said last week. He also noted that “the only way to stop a bully is to push back hard.”

Although it has been a long time coming, the GOP behavior is in marked contract with the behavior of that other political party and, of course, The Donald. We will discuss that other party soon, we hope. Vacation beckons at the end of the week.

How Not To Find Support For The Donald

It is a strange way to try to convince people to vote for a candidate. We’ve see a couple of columns like Kurt Schlichter’s Time To Rethink Your Never Trumpism. Kurt probably didn’t write the title so we will forgive that he is not trying to convert the Never-The-Donald crew. There are, however, conservatives like Men With Gloves, Nikki voters, and other people on the right and some in the center who might be convinced to vote for The Donald in 2024. So what does Kurt do to woo us? He insults us:

Let’s agree that he’s icky for the purposes of this discussion. Let’s agree that his tweets are mean, that he’s not a conservative ideologue, that he says dumb things and gets into useless fights, and that he does many other unseemly and annoying things. Let’s agree that this is all true. Let’s concede that in normal times, one might want to forgo supporting a guy like that. But these aren’t normal times.

It is true that The Donald’s foolishness and boorishness has and will continue to damage the GOP brand. But the real problems with The Donald are bad policies and lack of effectiveness on good policies. The Donald’s behavior cost him leadership like Paul Ryan who fixed corporate taxes during The Donald’s administration. Age cost him Cocaine Mitch who saw that the judicial nominations from the Federalist Society were approved. The stuff that The Donald tried to do himself like the wall between the US and Mexico never happened. And he did start the trade wars but, as expected, everybody lost.

The Donald received substantial support from conservatives in 2016 despite, as Kurt hilariously says, The Donald not being a conservative ideologue. He received conservative support because he promised to nominate judges selected by the Federalist Society. Many conservatives voted for him again in 2020 because he, well, Cocaine Mitch, kept that promise. Perhaps he intends to do it again but we have not heard much about selecting judges from The Donald. Instead we have heard about increasing tariffs, devaluing the dollar, ignoring entitlements, and, of course, revenge. Rarely have conservatives been offered such a large negative return for their votes.

We agree with Kurt that we don’t want The Frontrunner’s administration to win another term. As of today, however, we would rather spend the next four years trying to get to gridlock with a Democrat president and hoping that the GOP would become a useful party by 2028.

Still, we could be convinced one way or the other. As we have said, if our current vice-president, Triple A was to engineer a takeout of The Frontrunner and make a feint to the center we would vote for her. On the other hand, if The Donald was to nominate ND Doug (Doug Burgum) for vice-president we would only be a heartbeat or a conviction away from having a good president. We doubt either of those will happen but we can still hope for both.

Insults have gotten The Donald three nominations and one general election win to date. It is not surprising that his minion Kurt used The Donald’s playbook to try and help his master. And, as the last sentence shows, insults are really easy. We would suggest limiting insults to the opposition and offering policies that might attract those few voters still on the fence. We really don’t expect either of those to happen either.

Milton, Jennifer, And Jimmy

The editorial board reminded us that in our review of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns we forgot to include what Jennifer forgot to investigate. Jennifer properly gives Jimmy Carter credit for deregulation. Jimmy ran on it, implemented it, and it was a great idea that worked great. Unfortunately for Jimmy, deregulation, like almost all government policies, has a time lag from implementation to effects. The positive impact wasn’t really noticed until after Jimmy left office. And, of course, the left doesn’t really want to admit that Jimmy convinced them to support deregulation or that it was a great idea and the right wants to give credit to Reagan so Jimmy is under appreciated on both sides of the aisle.

Jennifer recognizes Jimmy’s economic accomplishments including deregulation, appointing Paul Volcker to head the Fed, and movement towards floating exchange rates. What Jennifer fails to investigate is the connection, if any, between Jimmy and Milton. Deregulation, monetary policy, and floating exchange rates are all topics in the absolute center of Milton’s wheelhouse. We are not sure that Milton, Jimmy, or anybody knew that Paul was the guy to fight inflation at the Fed. But surely Jimmy deserves credit for deregulation and the movement towards floating exchange rates under his administration. The flip side is that deregulation businesses in the US and deregulating exchange rates by letting them float are at the core of Milton’s ideas. Jennifer needs to tell us more. Did Jimmy pick up on Milton’s ideas by reading Newsweek or was there a more direct relationship? We are not going to write that book so the idea is free to anybody who wishes to follow it. We wish Jennifer would have.

Milton Friedman By Jennifer Burns

Jennifer Burns biography of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative is a book you should read. It is not a great book but it contains enough of Milton’s triumphs and brilliance to be worth your while. Amity Shlaes, writing at NRO is right about the book’s numerous shortcomings and yet right to call it a quality revision. One of the problems is the title. Why is Milton classified as a conservative? Why is he the last conservative? Why not the first conservative, as he was a dozen years older than William F. Buckley, jr.? We will allow ourselves one crass comment and suppose that Jennifer is hopeful that the world is rid of those folks that look at actual results.

You should read it because, although Milton never ran things, he did have influence and readers need to know how that influence came about. His influence over us started with his Newsweek column. Yes we can confirm that as Wikipedia tells us, Newsweek was widely distributed magazine in the 20th century. We were there trying to find eleemosynary in the dictionary and learning why Nixon’s wage-price controls were a bad idea. Very few words stick for over fifty years from one trip to the dictionary but a word from Milton did.

What makes the book worth reading is that Jennifer does a quality job on explaining the joys of academic research and the implications of Milton’s work and predictions. It is a first rate biography of most of Milton’s important work. There are lots of quibbles and if we were doing an academic review we would include them all. Here we will just include common one. Milton was pro-markets rather than pro-business. Some businesses prosper in markets and others don’t. Consumers are the ones that benefit from markets that run according to the rule of law.

One new thing we learned from Jennifer’s book was the left’s evil response to the Chicago Boys advising Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile. The Chicago Boys were students of Milton and they advised, as Milton would and did, that Chile should move quickly towards a market economy after the disastrous try at socialism with the previous government. It was standard stuff that was used by Thatcher, Reagan, even the Chinese a bit, and many others to revive economies in that era. What we took from Jennifer was the nature of the left’s reaction. Augusto overthrew the failing leftist government. The left hated him for that. Augusto was also mean and cruel but that wasn’t the problem. Why wouldn’t Milton or anyone else give their best advice to any government? Augusto was not a market guy but the Chicago Boys moved him in that direction to the benefit of the country. The left was angry and protested almost everywhere Milton went including his Nobel Prize ceremony. The left’s attempts to destroy to opposition have a long history.

Despite the flaws, you should make time to read Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns. Perhaps you can figure out what the title means.

Strange Events In Chocolate

We have recovered from COVID and got our tax forms filed so we are ready to write. To us, posting is a joy not a duty so duties come first. Shrink inflation has come for our chocolate. We were at the local supermarket today and there were two similar large variety bags of Dove Chocolates. We’d like to say that our expertise on Dove Chocolates is because we buy them for our bridge club. Don’t judge us. The old, mostly white bag with blue and red trim sold for $8.49. The new bag was mostly brown with red and blue trim and sold for the same price, $8.49. To our eye the new bag had more red than the old. The difference was that the old bag was 15.8 ounces while the new bag was 14.08 ounces. We wonder how many shoppers went for the new smaller bag. Our president, The Frontrunner, has another example of shrinking package size. This one reduced by over ten percent.

But strange events are afoot in chocolate. Although Dove has reduced the size by over ten percent, cocoa prices have gone through the roof recently. As you can see here, they have more than doubled since the beginning of the year. A drought is West Africa seems to be an important cause of the price increase in cocoa. So it makes sense to us. We can’t be certain but we are pretty sure that the prices for our Dove bags have been going up and it makes sense to us that we first paid more and then got less as the price of ingredients went up. Way up.

Here is what doesn’t make sense to us. Our investment club owns shares in Hershey. What one headline writer calls A Cocoa Price Crisis would seem to be bad news for our investment in the chocolate maker. Yet the six-month Hershey chart does not seem to have any direction despite the sky-rocketing price of cocoa. It opened the year at 185 and change and closed today at 185 and change. Although the Dow Jones Industrial Average does better than Hershey over the past six months, for the year-to-date, when cocoa prices have been exploding, both have been pretty flat.

We are convinced that the cocoa prices are coming down soon. Our question is: when the cocoa prices come down what will happen to Hershey’s earning and market price?

Dynamic Pricing For Ski Tickets

We all know that prices are important but Milton Friedman help focus us on that. Skiing is a great example of pricing and price flexibility. It shows why sellers have gone from what was once limited to Happy Hour but we now call dynamic pricing. To help you understand pricing in the ski game we start with this story from the folks at The Morning Dispatch who gave us this link to the kerfuffle over free ski passes for, it appears, eight Swiss officials and their partners. Here is the story:

As of January 1, 2025, seven Swiss ministers, the Federal Chancellor – Secretary General of the executive branch – and their partners will “give up” the annual ski pass, worth 4,234 Swiss francs (CHF) (€4,350), which entitles them to free skiing anywhere in the country’s many ski resorts.

Speaking of prices, there was a price to read the rest of the story and we were not willing to pay that. If the story is correct and the price is a little over $4,700 for two passes at today’s exchange rates then $2,350 is a premium price for a season ticket even at multiple areas. The Ikon pass without any blackout dates cost $1,259 and you get unlimited access to seventeen areas and up to seven days at over forty other ski areas. Snowshoe in West Virginia might not make your skis tingle but Ikon has a very impressive list including two big Swiss ski resorts. The point is that you can’t clone yourself and ski all the resorts at once. Thus, a season’s pass covering multiple areas is not much different in price from a season’s pass at one big area. The problem is getting the various areas to divide up the price established. Of course, our passes at Mt. La Crosse are substantially less than an Ikon because it is a small area with a fairly short season. One element of dynamic pricing is that season pass prices go up as we get closer to the season. Buying a season pass in March for the coming season is much (!) cheaper than buying it on the first day of the season.

Ski areas love season pass holders because they come and spend money on the mountain and often bring their friends. The challenge of ski areas is the excess capacity for most of the year. They try to have capacity for all the folks that want to come on holiday weeks (Christmas etc.) and peak weekends. Killington’s price chart for April is instructive. We’re not sure the link will stick as the months change so we will tell you the story. This Saturday a ticket cost you $181.44. So as we told you in an earlier post, the spring season pass at less than $400 is a great deal. It can be cheaper than a long weekend. By Monday the 29th prices are down to 68.40. Why? Because not much of the mountain will be open by then and only a few die-hards will try it.

Another difference between Killington and Mt La Crosse is that most Mt. La Crosse skiers are local while Killington gets folks from all over the world. A big part of the Mt. La Crosse revenue comes from night skiing while Killington doesn’t offer it.

Sidebar: How do areas stop folks from sharing passes? At lower tech Mt. La Crosse we show our season pass at the ticket window every day and even there our photo comes up when we get a daily ticket. Each day ticket has a different color (yes there are a limited number of colors) so it is pretty hard to reuse them and easy for the line checker to see. They also allow us to bring a friend cheaply so we don’t share a coat. At bigger areas like Killington everyone has an electronic ticket on their person connected to a picture that lets you through the gate. At one area we have a relative who compares the skiers to the pictures. If she finds a mismatch she gets a nice bounty. We don’t know if anyone has gone facial recognition yet but if it hasn’t happened it will soon. End Sidebar.

Ski areas are a great example of the usefulness of dynamic pricing. They making financial incentives for you to come week days and especially Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We’ve come quite a way since Happy Hours and Early Bird Specials. Dynamic pricing makes it better for consumers.

Skiing Killington With Grandkids

We are back from vacation. We apologize for not posting for some time but it turns out that getting to ski all day with an eight and ten year-old is exhausting. Then we got COVID-19 on the way home. It has been a wild roller-coaster ride of highs and lows. COVID-19 was not a big deal for us. Both the Lady de Gloves and MWG got it and it wasn’t fun but it wasn’t bad.

Much more interesting is the travel. We have been skiing with the grandkids at Mt. La Crosse which has three chairlifts, a rope tow, 516 vertical feet, and an average snowfall of 41 inches. So, yes we ski on man-made snow here. Mt. La Crosse is a nice place to ski with a variety of trails and terrain parks including the only double black diamond within a large radius. The eight year-old tells us they have the best cheeseburgers on earth. The ten year-old started a few years ago but was disrupted by COVID-19 while the eight year-old just started this year. As we are already in our seventies, we decided that time was a perfect time for us to introduce them to a big mountain. We threw some guilt at the Princess de Gloves about the kid’s ages and our mortality and she agreed to let us take her children for a week. It was decided that the Lady deGloves, not a skier, would accompany us and we would meet a brother, nephew, and grand nephew there for part of the time.

We will divide the trip up into planning, execution, and evaluation. We start with the planning: Why choose Killington? We could have gone west or east or stayed in the midwest. We didn’t stay in the midwest as the Lady de Gloves suggested because the ski areas don’t get much bigger. They get more snow and have more trails but the vertical isn’t much different. We chose east over west because it would be an easier switch for our young skiers and they might be able to see some relatives. But why Killington? For our decision the main point was Snowshed. The Snowshed slope is about two hundred feet (?about? it is really wide) wide and three-quarters of a mile long over 560 vertical feet. It is the perfect place for an eight and ten year-old who have been skiing 516 vertical feet to start. Ski trails are rated, from easiest to hardest, green, blue, black and double black. The Snowshed Slope is a great green where you can learn to ski, practice your technique, or get used to Killington.

There were many other contributing reasons to our decision but we will give you three. First was the Unlimited Spring Pass. First pro tip: You should look into the Unlimited Spring Pass. After (we think) March 15 you can ski the rest of the year for less than $400. It is not obvious on the website so when you click tickets and passes be SURE to compare buying lift tickets to buying the Unlimited Spring Pass. It was a great plan for us because we could arrive on Sunday afternoon and ski for an hour or two without paying big $$ for a weekend lift ticket.

Second was Ramshead. It is just a short tunnel under the access road to get to from Snowshed. It is a green and blue area with roughly a mile long chairlift and over a thousand vertical feet.

Sidebar One: The trail map shows 1,410 from the bottom of Ramshead to the top of the mountain but the lift no longer goes to the top of the mountain. If you ride the lift you can see where the old chair went. We rode the old chair years ago and it was windy with terrible conditions at the top. It was a good call to shorten the chair. End Sidebar One.

We thought it was the logical next step up for our inexperienced skiers. Killington is a huge series of interconnected mountains where it is easy to get separated but Snowshed and Ramshead are pretty much self-contained.

Third, if you are going skiing in New England in late March you want to be reasonably sure the area will be open. Killington takes pride in opening early and staying open late. Today is day 152 for them. We are pretty sure they went into June last year.

So how did the execution go? The great news was that it was snowing hard at Killington the day we left. Our phone was very close to right when it predicted 27 inches. Unfortunately the same storm brought ice and snow to Albany, our flying destination. We ended up staying in Chicago rather than Albany Saturday night and the flight didn’t leave until Sunday afternoon. The grandkids were real troupers and the rental van was waiting in Albany when we arrived. It was a little over a two hour drive plus a stop for groceries in Rutland. No skiing on Sunday and we weren’t up for first tracks Monday morning but we got to Snowshed before ten.

Snowshed was a great first step. From the detachable lifts to the wide forgiving slope it was perfect.

Sidebar Two: Detachable lifts, as you might guess, detach from the cable so they move slowly to pick you up and drop you off but zip you up the mountain more quickly. They are much more expensive, much nicer to ride, and, for a huge place like Killington, more efficient because more skiers get up the mountain more quickly. End Sidebar Two.

And my two charges got along with their cousin from Massachusetts and the two other adults. By cheeseburgers at lunch [not as good as Mt. La Crosse] we decided to go through the tunnel to Ramshead. We held our breath as the eight year-old started off. A few seconds later we realized we better get going if we were going to catch her. The next day we left her with my brother and went to try the Skyeship Gondola. We took the Great Eastern trail 3.6 miles to route 4 and the bottom of Skyeship. Second pro tip: The top of Great Eastern zig-zags around and skis harder than the green rating. A better way down is take Gateway to Bear Trax to the first part of Snowshed Crossover and then Great Eastern. If you are looking for an alternative cruise you can use the same start and follow Bear Cub to either Sunrise or Bear Mountain. Bear is almost entirely black but you can escape it from the lifts at the bottom. The next day after the relatives had cleared out we took both grandkids on our alternative Great Eastern. Unfortunately it started raining before noon so we headed back to the condo to start the fireplace and dry everyone out.

The last two days we even did a pretty tough blue: Cruise Control. The kids showed it the respect it deserved and had no problem. Third pro tip: Kids, especially younger kids don’t know or won’t admit when they are tired. If you are skiing with younger kids give them a rest on an easy trail so they can handle the harder ones. For us it was mixing Great Eastern and Cruise Control.

We will limit ourselves to three items of evaluation: detachable lifts, gondolas, and tunnels. Detachable lifts are great but there are a few chairlifts that are not. Be alert and make sure everyone else is. One of the nice things a liftee (those are the folks that work on the lifts) did was slow down one of those attached chairs for us three when there wasn’t a lift line. Killington has the two part Skyeship gondola and the K-1 gondola. They are great in bad weather. We got a fair amount of skiing on the rain day by riding the Skyeship.

The neatest thing was all the tunnels with overpasses. We are not sure when they were all built but they make skiing much more enjoyable for everyone. Killington, as we said is a bunch of connected mountains. That means there are a number of dangerous intersections. At at least five of these they have built tunnels for the green/blue skiers and overpasses for the blue/black skiers. The tunnels are big. They might be a fifteen foot half circle. The kids loved them and they were unaware that the experts were going twice their speed just over their heads. It is an expensive solution but it improves the skiing for everybody. Well done Killington.

It is time to starting planning your ski trips for next year even as the snow piles up outside our window. We hope you will be as happy where you go as we were at Killington. Remember if you go to Killington the mountain is cashless so be sure to have plastic. If we made any egregious errors in this post we blame COVID fog.