It's that time again

According to the classifieds in the Conway Sun, the retailer at Jackson Ski Touring is advertising for a full staff for the coming winter. "Racing experience a plus."

I had this sudden image of a southern plantation owner who would dump all his old slaves and get new ones every year the way some people trade their cars. It's a very Jackson thing to do.

No surprise that apparently no one wants to come back for more after a winter in that happy little valley. I can only imagine how someone with racing ambitions will enjoy instawaxing gashed-up touring skis instead of skiing like a rock star...or even skiing much at all. A better fit would be a washed-up racer who still wants to talk about it. Whoever takes the position will have to stay up to date on the latest trends to sound convincing. A lot of customers in the racing realm, at least at Jackson, spend more time wrangling about gear than they do actually skiing fast. If they don't hear the right stuff from that idiot in the shop they won't buy so much as a scraper.

Actually, since Jackson Ski Touring styles itself more as Jackson Ski Racing, they're hoping the spores just come spend money and ask for little in return, so the Foundation staff and retail grunts can concentrate on selling the racing crowd expensive waxes and base grinds that peel years of life off their pricey skis. You wanna be fast? It's gonna cost ya.

The trick to handling the racer types is to let them know you know enough to do the most rudimentary tasks without messing them up, but still let the customers feel like they're smarter than you are. And of course they're faster. You can only play the Expert card on someone who has already voluntarily admitted they don't know and want to learn from you. You will basically never hear that from a racer.

Fit Night at Jackson Ski Touring

Hey, December 7 is Fit Night at the retail store at Jackson Ski Touring. Expert fitters from Swix and Fischer will be there to fit you to equipment.

Gee. When I was there, you could get fitted to skis any day we were open, by people whose loyalty was to you, the customer, not a specific manufacturer. Everyone on staff knew how to suit a ski and ski equipment to the needs of the specific customer and we took pride in doing so. The only exception might have been the gangly, aging cyclist who worked for us one season, whose last retail experience had been at EMS in the 1970s. Turned out he didn't even know the sidecut on a Fischer Cruiser. Ah well. He moved on. An ill wind brought him and an ill wind took him away.

The difference is between serving the customer and servicing the customer like the bull services the cow.

There's a lot of razzle dazzle in Big Time Nordic. Bonfires, promotions, smoke and mirrors...plenty of smoke unless they've gotten that fireplace reconstructed. You have to feel you're someplace special, someplace greater than you. Someplace someone would bother to homologate.