Black Diamond on Wheels

Black Diamond on Wheels

When the snow melts, mountain bikers head for the ski resorts

Ski resorts aren't just for ski bums anymore. In fact, many of the nation's ski resorts are keeping their doors and lifts open all summer long so that mountain bike enthusiasts can enjoy the same thrills, jumps, and speeds that skiers do during the winter months.

Capitalizing on the popularity of mountaing biking, 130 of the nation's ski resorts currently offer summer biking programs. Mountain bike aficionado Stan Zykowski of bicycling magazine has put together a best of the best list (below), but for a complete list of the ski resorts offering mountain biking, refer to the Bicycling magazine.

All of the resorts on Zukowki's list offer breathtaking scenery and challenging rides, not to mention a lift up the mountain (you may be adventuresome, but you're no fool). Shuttle service, gondolas, or chairlifts generally bring bikers to the top of the mountain, where they are free to roam the miles of ski trails, logging roads, and national parkland that adjoins many ski resorts. The riding ranges from intermediate to expert. If you've never been on a mountain bike before, 11, 000 feet above sea level on a narrow downhill trail is not a good place to learn.

No matter what your skill level, you may experience a flat tire or an accident while on a trail, and many of the resorts offer emergency repair and rescue. Besides the exhilarating rides, one of the biggest attractions of ski resort biking is the off-season prices. Lodging that would cost you several hundred dollars during prime ski season can run as little as $80 a night off-season.

A bike. Photo by Elena.

Taking Moguls on a Bike

Stan Zukowski of Bicycling magazine picks his favorite resorts biking.

Mount Snow, Vermont: Sixteen miles of trails on the mountain, but bikers also enjoy access to many miles of adjoining land. The vertical drop is 1,700 feet, all-day tickets.

Vail, Colorado: Four miles of downhill riding, many more miles of trails traversing the mountain and on access Roads.Vertical drop almost 3,000 feet., all-day gondola.

Crested Butte, Colorado: Adjacent to Gunnison National Forest, which offers bikers 600,000 acres of riding territory. Ranges by the hour or by the day for trail access only.

Brian Head Resort, Utah: Sixty miles of single-track trails from 11,300-foot summit. An all-day lift pas. 

Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, California: Vertical drop of 3,100 feet. Over 55 miles of trails, half-day ticket, all-day ticket.

Why Women Still Earn Less

Why Women Still Earn Less

The gap is narrowing, but men still make considerably more money

Penny by penny – a dime in the past decades – women's full-time wages have been approaching men's, but the gap amounts to more than 40 percent of the workforce and earned an average of 80 cents to each dollar earned by men, up from 67 cents in 1999 based on weekly wages.

The historic gap between women's and men's incomes has started to diminish, notes the U.S. Government's Population Reference Bureau. But many women do not share in these improvements.

Indeed, the wage gap between men and women exists for low-paid and high-paid jobs. Female dispatchers for rental cars, buses, security services, aircraft, etc., make up half of those in the job category but earn only 80 percent of what men do who perform the same jobs. Almost a third of all lawyers now are women. But they earn, on average, just under 85 percent of male lawyers' wages. When we talk of comparing women's earnings with men's earnings, we find that no matter how we measure them women's earnings are below those received by men, says the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau.

Education and work experience may explain some of the gap. Although the number of women attending law school has shot up dramatically in the past decades, only after they've been practicing law for a while will the salary gap start to narrow further. Another statistic may be more revealing. Despite the increasing numbers of working women, men stay in the labor force for an average of 40 years, while women average 30 years. That, too, is changing. Women are taking less time out when having children. In 2015, 52 percent of women were working by the time their children were a year old, while only 17 percent were between 1961 and 1965.

A beauty. Illustration by Elena.

Women are still virtually shut out of some sectors of the business world. According to Catalyst, a non-profit research and advisory group dealing with women in business and professions, only 6.2 percent of board seats on the Fortune 500 and service 500 companies were held by women in 2000. In addition, according to a 2000 survey, women make up less than 5 percent of senior managers (vice presidents and those higher up) at those companies. Asked why, chief executives most frequently cited management's aversion to “taking risks” and a “lack of careful career planning and planned job assignments for women.”

Paradoxically, the wage gap is narrowest in the few fields where a large percentage of the workers are women as well as in the occupations that have attracted few women workers. Female secretaries, stenographers, typists earn 97 percent of the weekly wages of their male counterparts, who make up only 2 percent of that work force. Only 4 percent of mechanics and mechanical repairers are women. But they earn more than their male counterparts!

Hey Boss, Can You Spare a Raise

Hey Boss, Can You Spare a Raise

Don't count on getting much, even if you're doing a great job

The heady days of chunky annual pay raises went out with the greedy 20th century. The typical raise for a job well done these days is about 4 percent, not much more than a cost-of-living increase. Twenty years ago, the spread between the average raise and the consumer price index was a slim 1,7 percent, and it's projected to get slimmer still, to mere 0.8 percent in the next years. And workers shouldn't expect a pay raise just for doing satisfactory work. You're going to prove you've done a spectacular job.

So who's making out like bandits? The guys in the corner office, that's who. The income gape between chief executive officers and average workers keeps getting wider. In 1999, according to Business Week, the average CEI earned 40 times what the average worker makes. Fifteen years later, the chiefs were earning a staggering 150 times more than the troops in the trenches.

The bigger the company, the bigger the bucks for the guy at the top. The income gap between chief executives at big corporations and those at smaller companies grow, according to many studies by human resources consulting firm. Total salary plus bonus for heads of small companies rise just 3 percent every year. Bu contrast, a Mercer survey of 350 Fortune 500 companies show that they increase cash compensation for their CEOs by 8,1 percent.

Widening pay gaps are, in part, causing companies to look anew at how they reward employees. Traditional tier party pay structures are fading fast/ On the rise are more flexible “broadbanding” pay systems that cluster job categories into a handful of layers and consequently produce flatter and less hierarchical organizations. So far, only 8 percent of employers surveyed recently  by Mercer use broadbanding of salary ranges, buy 31 percent are considering a switch.

Companies also are experimenting with “skill-based pay,” evaluation systems that determine raises by skills, not job title. Part of the reasoning is that this way workers will take more responsibility for their own career development. Many companies that are adopting skill-based or competency-based pay also are helping retrain employees.

“In this new world where skills and knowledge are what really counts, it doesn't make sense to treat people as jobholders. It makes sense to treat them as people with specific skills and to pay them for those skills,“ say experts and proponents of skill-based pay.

Updated regularly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Occupational Outlook Handbook is a treasure trove of useful information The book covers the training and education needed, earning, working conditions, and employment prospects for job from accountant to zoologist. In real life, of course, salaries can vary considerably by region, level of experience, and other factors, but the list does give a good comparison of average incomes. Photo by Elena.

So far, the approach has worked best with factory workers, but it also is spreading to white-collar jobs. Part of the problem: skills or competencies are not easy to measure at the managerial level. Still, many companies are giving it a shot; over half the Fortune 1000 companies now use skill-based pay in some form, according to a few studies.

Another innovation: the boss no longer is the sole judge of performance in many offices. Companies are calling on co-workers, customers – even subordinates – for so-called 360-degree feedback. By one estimate, a quarter pf a;; companies now tap peers to review an employee. Some companies, like Honeywell, base raises on such reviews. Others, such as Sprint, use them, to spawn ideas about how to improve skills.

Not everyone is pleased with 360-degree feedback. Critics say that sometimes being reviewed by so many people sends unclear or conflicting messages about an individual. One piece of advice from the experts: Demand anonymity if you are reviewing your own boss.

Seven Guaranteed Ways to Get a Raise

Just kidding. But, hey, why not give them a short? Here's the best of the advice that's out there. Your particular strategy will depend on your spot on the totem pole.

Don't be shy, claim credit: The farther down the rung you are, the more you need to do to make sure your boss knows about you.

Make yourself indispensable: Spread your skills in a number of areas within the company. Your market value is tied to your particular set of skills.

Convince others of your talents: Prove not only to your boss but also to customers, peers, and subordinates that you have special skills. Don't make threats: Your bluff may be called if you threaten to quit. But courting real offers from other firms can be an effective ploy in winning pay increases.

Stress quality and efficiency: Mangers hold on to talented staff; those who use assets wisely are most apt to be rewarded.

Don't compare yourself to a better-paid co-worker: You're setting yourself up to be put down and have your co-worker's praises sung.

Choose the right industry: A company that's downsizing isn't likely to hand out generous pay hikes. More often than not, pay raises are linked to industry-wide performance variables. Working extra hard in a floundering industry won't help.

Attention TV Shoppers!

Attention TV Shoppers!

There’s a bazaar of goods for sale on the tube. Not all are bargains

Those 24-hour shopping shows are luring more than chronic TV browsers. Viewers are shelling out billions to buy a vast array of goods. The variety touted by the shows is immense: autographed baseballs, kitchen storage containers, exercise bikes, floating cordless phones, you name it. The quality ranges from phone gems to genuine diamonds, from trendy fashions to fine silk suits.

The two big players in the business, the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and QBC Network, each sell about $2 billion a year. Catalog I, the cable shopping channel developed by Time Warner and Spiegel, pitched more upscale goods from the likes of Williams-Sonoma, Neiman Marcus, and the Bombay Company.

There are a few bargains to be found on TV sales shows. An 18-karat gold bracelet, for example, was once sold on QVC for $278.00. An independent appraiser later valued it at at more than $600. But recent research by Consumer Reports found that a number of goods selling on QVC and HSN could be bought for less in local stores. And Arch-brand quilt selling for $147.72 on QVC, for example was going for $99 at a department store.

TV shopping and a little panda looking through a window. Photo by Elena

Clothing is though to buy from television. Getting those form-fitting jeans to fit your form is hard to do without trying them on. As a result, TV shoppers return an average 20% of items they buy, compared with only 3 percent for store shoppers. Jewelry is an easier buy. The networks will send callers sizing kits to help deter,ine ring sies and necklace lengths.

QVC and HSN use different styles to hawk their goods. Hosts at HSN sell in a high-pressure frenzy. They add to the pressure by putting deadlines on prices – “Buy now or cry later.” Hosts at QVC, which stands for quality, value, and convenience, use a softer sell.

All the TV shopping shows have mastered some form of celebrity sales, though. Celebrities entertain viewers as they pitch their wares, often taking on-air calls from the audience. Even the non-famous hosts are becoming mini-celebrities. At QVC hosts receive an average 500 letters every week. At HSN, the average is 1,000. Meanwhile, the stars are striking gold. Joan Rivers has raked peddling her line of jewelry on QVC. Vanna White has sold more than $25 million in pumps, clothes, and jewelry on the HSN, Ivana Trump’s initial appearance on HSN drew such huge clothing sales that the network ran out of Ivana fashions to sell.

(text published in 1994, in Dollars & Sense).

The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coat

The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coat

By Chaz Brenchley (excerpt)

Our unannounced visitor, the uninvited, the unknown: he was tall even by Martian standards, and the shortest of us would overtop an average Earthman. Mr Holland must have been tall in his own generation, six foot three or thereabouts; here he was no more than commonplace. In his strength, in his pride I thought he would have resented that. Perhaps he still did. Years of detention and disgrace might have diminished him in body and spirit both, but something must survive yet, unbroken, undismayed. He could never have made this journey else. Nor sat with us. Every tree holds a memory of the forest.

The stranger was in his middle years, an established man, confident in himself and his position. That he held authority in some kind was not, could not be in question. It was written in his assumptions, as clearly as in the way he stood, the way he waited; the way he had taken charge so effortlessly, making my own display seem feeble, sullen, nugatory.

Mr Holland apparently saw the same. He said, “I don’t believe we were introduced, sir. If I might venture a guess, I should say you have a look of the Guards about you.” Or perhaps he said the guards, and meant something entirely different.

“I don’t believe any of us have been introduced,” I said, as rudely as I knew how. “You are…?”

Even his smile was weighty with that same settled certainty. “Gregory Durand, late of the King’s Own’” with a little nod to Mr Holland: the one true regiment to any man pf Mars, Guards in all but name,”and currently of the Colonial Service.”

He didn’t offer a title, not even a department. I could hear the doubt in my own voice as I tried to pin him down. “The police?”

The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coat. Photo by Elena

“On occasion,” he said. “Not tonight.”

If that was meant reassuring, it fell short. By some distance. If we were casting about for our coats, half-inclined not to wait for those drinks, it was not because we were urgent to follow him into the conservatory. Rather, our eyes were on the door and the street beyond.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “be easy.” He was almost laughing at us. “Tonight I dress as you do,” overcoat and hat, “and share everything and nothing, one great secret and nothing personal or private, nothing prejudicial. I will not say “nothing perilous,” but the peril is mutual and assured. We stand or fall together, if at all. Will you come? For the Queen Empress if not for the Empire?”

The Empire had given us little enough reason to love it, which he knew. An appeal to the Widow, though, will always carry weight. There is something irresistible in that blend of sentimentality and strength beyond measure, endurance beyond imagination: we had cried for her, we would die for her. We were on our feet almost before we knew it. I took that so much for granted, it needed a moment for me to realise that Mr Holland was still struggling to rise. Unless he was simply slower to commit himself, he whose reasons – whose scars – were freshest on his body and raw yet on his soul.

Still, I reached out my hand to help him and he took it resolutely, quick of thought and quick to choose. Quick to go along. A lesson learned, perhaps. I was almost sad to see it, in a man who used to disregard protocol and convention so heedlessly; but it was sheer wisdom now to keep his head down and follow the crowd. Even where that crowd was disreputable and blind itself, leading none knew where.

Being led, I should say. Through a door beside the hearth, that was almost never open this time of year. Beyond lay the unshielded conservatory, like an open invitation to the night.

An invitation that Mr Holland balked at, and rightly. He said, “You gentlemen are dressed for this, but I have a room here, and had not expected to need my coat tonight.”

“You’ll freeze without it. Perhaps you should stay in the warm.” Perhaps we all should, but it was too late for that. Our company was following Durand like sheep, trusting where they should have been most wary. Tempted where they should have been most strong.

And yet, and yet. Dubious and resentful as I was, I too would give myself over to this man – for the mystery or for the adventure, something. For something to do that was different, original, unforeseen. I was weary of the same faces, the same drinks, the same conversations. We all were: which was why Mr Holland had been so welcome, one reason why.

This, though: I thought he of all men should keep out of this. I thought I should keep him out, if I could.

Here came Durand to prevent me: stepping through the door again, reaching for his elbow, light and persuasive and yielding nothing.

“Here’s the boy come handily now, just when we need him. I’ll take that, lad,” lifting the tray of refreshments as though he had been host all along. “You run up to Mr Holland’s room and fetch down his overcoat. And his hat too, we’ll need to keep that great head warm. Meanwhile, Mr Holland, we’ve a chair for you hard by the stove…”