David LaPlante

This just in: Snowing @ Heavenly Lake Tahoe

Let me just start by saying I'M DONE. DONE WITH SUMMER. DONE.

Heavenly has seen its first snowfall of the season!!!! It snowed for much of the day today, Thursday, October 5th.

Just showed the boys this photo that Heavenly emailed to me. They're in their room now finding their ski gear. (I wish I had their concept of time!)

More snow in the forecast for the days to come. 43 days to go!

If you haven't got your season pass yet, what are you waiting for!?

  Technorati : Heavenly, heavenly lake tahoe, lake tahoe, powder, skiing, snow, snowboarding, tahoe

Backseat Blogger: Staying Connected from Reno to Heavenly, Lake Tahoe in a Car

I hope that the collective marketers responsible for the Reno/Lake Tahoe destination become more aggressive in trumpeting its connectivity and ability to serve the 'Always On' crowd. While we're a far cry from Philly or the SF Goofleplex and our RNO airport wifi isn't free...from a cell service perspective we're blanketed. It's pretty hard to play in the Tahoe basin and not have great cell service.

The conventional thought is that "staying connected" is not appealing to people who are trying to play in Reno-Tahoe. This is misguided. The Travel Industry Association recently released results that concluded:

• "While the point of a vacation may be to “get away from it all,” travelers bring a surprising amount of technology with them in order to stay connected during their leisure trips, according to the latest Voice of the Traveler survey by the Travel Industry Association (TIA) and Synovate."
• "Thanks to technology, travelers no longer have to wait until they return from vacation to share their stories – 18 percent use the Internet to stay connected with family and friends while traveling. Nearly as many use the Internet while traveling to find places to visit or things to do (16%), or choose accommodations based on availability of a high-speed Internet connection or Wi-Fi access (15%)."

Clearly we wired business folk like to have our connectivity. Nothing STRESSES out an 'Always On' executive more than being 'OFF'. (If you happen to be the proprietor of an establishment in Reno-Tahoe, I politely remind you that it is 2006 and it's about time to get that wifi thing licked.)

So, I recently had a meeting up at Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe. So.Lake is about 50-60 a minute drive from my office in south Reno. (From 1996 thru 2000 Martin, Matt, Johnny and I raced the R.A.T.S. town league ski races and routinely made it from Reno to the base of Heavenly in under 50 minutes twice a week leaving at 4pm for a 5pm race-start.)

Carson City is much larger now and that's no longer possible to do it under 50 minutes without serious risk to yourself and others.

Now, it's no secret that I suck at driving. I really do. I just don't care. Hey - I grew up in Crested Butte. The only need for a car was to drive after the bus closed, to get 4wd somewhere to ride your bike, or to drive to Gunnison to go to school. Parallel parking is still one of my greatest fears. Before I graduated high school I'd totaled two of my Dad's cars...yeah. Best to let me ride in the back seat...

Which is why I was STOKED to note that I was able to sustain a permanent VPN connection over Sprint's 3g EVDO cellular network from Reno to So. Lake without so much as a hiccup in service. I was able to instant message over Yahoo and Skype the whole time and iTunes was downloading the Brian Krolicki podcast Robert and Josh had just laid down. Pretty cool.

 

tags: Reno, Nevada, Heavenly, Lake Tahoe, tahoe, Sprint, cell, 3g, wireless, wifi, alwayson, connected, vacation, travel, skiing, snowboarding

Logan's Self Portrait: Spyder & Rossignol Win the Kindergarten Brand War

Logan's Self Portrait
Originally uploaded by dave_laplante.

I love this...So I was flipping thru all of Logan's kindergarten writings and came accross this self-portrait he drew last year. Note the SPIDR jacket and the ROSinNL logos...Spyder and Rossignol should be proud of their brand marketing awareness amongst the 6-year old skier crowd! Not sure if he meant himself to be inverted or if he just drew on the paper upsidedown.

RGJ Article: Entrepreneurship, technology important for building diversity, vitality

Chuck Alvey of EDAWN had a nice article in the RGJ in which he mentions Twelve Horses and my fellow EO'er Darik Volpa:

"In fact, one local entrepreneur, Twelve Horses CEO David LaPlante, came here to ski race, never expecting to stay for businesses. He told me recently that the ability to do both -- tourism activities and business -- prompted his decision to stay and start up a business.

Darik Volpa, CEO of UnderstandSurgery.com, came here for the business-friendly environment and the quality of life that our tourism industry both provides and highlights. LaPlante and Volpa both report that this region is perfectly suited for start-up ventures of primary companies. They also agree that while the area is good for entrepreneurs, attracting entrepreneurs is good for Western Nevada.

The tendency is toward higher levels of income and wages with creative people who tend to sink deeper roots into a community. They tend to care about the place they live and therefore give more back. Our region has some assets in place: business-friendly environment, competitive tax rates, the University of Nevada, Desert Research Institute and a growing cluster of local technology companies."

Reno-Tahoe Snow Alerts

So I fell victim to my own mousetrap today. I had forgotten that I had signed up for the Reno-Tahoe Snow Alerts. I was sitting in a meeting and I got a text that read:

Reno-Tahoe resorts got 12-16 inches of fresh snow last night. Today's forecast: blue skies!

I got all excited. Started thinking of getting out on the hill. And then I remembered that my good folks at the RSCVA were just doing their job and I fell vicitm!

Bode Makes History!

Bode Miller killed it today. He slapped down two perfect runs on the snow to fly fastest in Sestriere's Slalom. Tonight, Bode matched Marc Girardelli's 1989 feat of recording wins in all four alpine skiing disciplines in the same season. That's huge!

From Eurosport:

18:59 CAN MILLER GET INTO THE RECORD BOOKS? LOOKS LIKE HE WILL!!! HE'S OVER A SECOND AND A HALF AHEAD ON THE HALF-WAY STAGE!!! Then a flawless final section sees him take the slalom by 1.23 seconds!!!! HE'S DONE IT!!! A WIN IN EVERY DISCIPLINE THIS SEASON!!!

From Ski Racing:

It took Miller just 16 days to accomplish a feat that few other skiers have even approached. Only six other skiers have ever won in every discipline, and only two -- Marc Girardelli and Petra Kronberger -- have won a downhill, super G, GS and slalom in the space of a single season. And neither of them did it as quickly as Miller, who has taken the World Cup by storm this year, more than doubling the point total of the next-best skier on the tour, Hermann Maier of Austria.

---

The Chutes are Open!!!

The Chutes at Mt. Rose are now open and legal. Photos to come.

While I'd debate they stack up to the Extreme Limits on my home mountain of Crested Butte, nevertheless, this is the most welcome news of 2004. I can feel the lactic acid in my legs already...

---

Happiness is...

...sharing a bag of M&M's on the chairlift with your kids while they associate the colors of the M&M's to the various names of PowerRangers. FYI, Red Ranger M&Ms make you ski faster.

---

Atomics, Austrians and Bode

From Ski Racing...

Rupert "Killy" Huber, vice president of Atomic for research and development, racing and operations, and the longest-serving employee of Atomic (since 1968): "Mainly, the number one question I'm getting actually is 'does Bode Miller ski on Eberharter's skis?' And the truth is we've given a couple of skis to the WC4 team [overall threats] in Austria and some to the U.S. team. So, of course, some of the skis are available for Bode, also for Daron, but they have never skied [with them] in a race this year. So it's a lot of bull—and a lot of guessing...And, on the other side. I don't think Eberharter had faster skis than Maier or anybody else in the last year, because saying that would be lowering a lot the performance and the results of Eberharter...He's angry because the press is commenting and saying Bode has the fastest skis, and that's why he's winning. It means because Eberharter had these by-far better skis this is why he was winning. And this is not true."

---

1-2 Finish for USA at Vail DH

Vail World Cup: Bode Miller won his fourth race this season! Bode placed first and Daron Rahlves was second -- the first 1-2 finish for U.S. men in a World Cup downhill.

---