James D. Dyer
Dr. Kim De Vries
ENG 5870
Co-observation with Adam Russell
Spring 2009

Adam and I met this afternoon, at my house where I have a table and chairs set up in the backyard. That is where I do most of my work that does not require my presence on campus, and as I am ill today, I suggested that we could do the dual observation entirely virtually, or with a combination of computer and phone calls. However, since Adam lives nearby, he suggested that he just stop over after work because we could just pick something to observe, talk about criteria, observe it, and then we could each write it up seperately.

Works for me. Since Adam just got back from a trip to Kirkwood Ski resort, we decided to look at their daily ski video on the resort website. We would look at it both rhetorically and ethnographicly, and we would each bring our own backgrounds of mountain sports culture to the observation seperately. As I previously mentioned, Adam is an avid skier, and just returned from a trip to this resort, so his observation will be informed by recent participant observer status while my expeience of mountain sports is extensive, but more than a decade in the past.

Another difference between our perspectives is that Adam is an avid skier, and while I learned to ski as a teen, once I tried a snowboard, I never got on skies agan nor am I likely too, except cross-country skies for the purpose of traveling through the woods in winter with a pack on, and that is not very likely this year at least. Skier culture and snowboard culture share the same mountains, but there is a constant conflict and competition between them for hills and valleys. Skiers see snowboarders often as reckless amateurs and thugs who get in their way, and snowboarders (at least back in the day) saw skiers as chickenshit old fogies. Kirkwood is known as a skiers mountain, the destination of choice for those who really appreciate skiing and live within easy reach, it is not Mamoth, or Aspen, but it is a nice, upscale mountain resort for sure, as I have never been there, I took the time to look at some of their footage, and advertisements, and I also have talked to many people who have gone skiing there. Pretty much the Ski area of choice for those who live close enough, and don’t want to go as far as Tahoe or Mamoth mountain. Now, To give some additional perspective, even in this economic climate (which is obviously frigid) condominium appartments, albeit nice ones, at kirkwood are listing for $309,000 and up, while half acre homesites without a house on them yet list at $695,000-$925,000, and up. In Modesto, I could buy up half the block I live on, well over an acre and about six houses, for $925,000, in a nice part of town, with big lots and small, older houses.

Kirkwood, like skiing and snowboarding in general is not poverty friendly. However, it’s season pass, day pass, and lesson rates are very reasonable in the industry. A mid season all access pass is only a hundred dollars (99.99) and that is for the rest of the season, not bad, in Aspen fifteen years ago it would have been over two hundred, probably well over. And this year at SKIROSE in Tahoe, a season pass is $599.00 and I did not see a mid-season discount on their site.

Also, this observation is conducted by two anglo men, who have very different histories, but those histories are still grossly similar in many respects, as far as middle class background, history of mountain sports activity, both with bachelors degrees, both teach English—though Adam teaches English and Film studies at the high school level, while I have taught remedial classes and am currently teaching this freaking amazing first year comp class (over two hundred blackboard posts in five days, which is why I am a bit behind on submissions, I read and responded to more than fifty pages of student work Monday, and another fifty Tuesday, and even with mostly brief readings and responses it just gobbled up my time).

So, we have to figure that the demographic of winter sports in general in this country is an afluent, mostly anglo, and articulate audience. Adam and I took that as one of our base assumptions when looking at the daily video and the overall presentation of the website. First impression, well done site, clean, medium green background, a large picture of a skier waist deep in powder and going fast, and rocking it, wearing helmet and goggles in silver and black, crisp against the flying white snow, with the captions, in white shadowed with purple and red, WELL, JUST LOOK AT IT!

Prettty cool huh? I constantly have to remind myself that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and in this medium we can use them. I am so accustomed to working just with text, even though the medium of intertextuality has been a part of my life for years, sometimes I forget.

After smoking a couple cigarettes and talking about our perspective, Adam and I played the video, let’s see if I can copy that too…no, I can’t move it, protected I guess. Sort of anyway, here’s a link. http://kirkwood.mobilerider.com/flash/player/index.php?vendor_id=420&video_id=15015 Well, it starts out with a flash of the Kirkwood logo and the caption “RARE EARTH,” which I think is a nicely targeted advertising ploy, the phrase appeals to me, and probably will to anyone who would think of going there. It is an excellent catchphrase, and I suppose it is Kirkwood’s official motto, a middle aged, but very fit blone haired white guy wearing a yellow hoodless parka, talks for a minute about it sometimes being good to be lucky, but lucky and good is better, and “Kirkwood is both right now.” Then he gives the snow report, more than twelve inches of fresh snow in twenty four hours, he says, “but right now watch some great skiing and riding.” some smoky, groovy blues tune comes on, quite good actually, and possibly by a local band, I kind of dig the blues, and I have not heard them before I don’t think.

Then there is a suprise, The first footage is of a snowboarder just cruising down the hill, cutting shallow turns that fit the music, chilling and having a nice ride. The next cut is also a snowboarder, and the next, and the next, and the next. In fact, there is only one brief clip of a skier in the entire day’s video, the skier isn’t doing anything interesting, and Adam seems to be perturbed, his expectations were of a bunch of skiers and the occasional snowboarder, he’d just been to that mountain, and he’s a skier, and it’s a skiers mountan by god. I am not being critical of Adam, nor am I being critical of skiers in the ongoing feud between riders and skiers, but I found myself enjoying the ride, and I noticed my partner’s reaction, which is sort of the whole point of ethnography as I understand it. We want to be IN the world, but simply checking out the scenery without expectations (as much as possible) and just see what happens. Even though it was almost all just cruising to the blues with only one brief clip where a guy (or a gal, to be fair there are alot of women boarders, and it’s hard to tell in snow suits and helmets) and hit a real steep section, he was still just cruising to the beat, but much faster. Man, I would love to get out on the snow again.

At the end of the clip, they identify the band, AJ And The Shapes, and I think, I wonder if they have an album out, or if they have some stuff online? I’ll have to look. Then I think, interesting there was only one skier in the vid, since we had discussed the fact that it was a skier’s mountain as part of our pre-observation discussion. Then Adam says something like, “I can’t believe there was only one skier, and he was wearing fat boards.”

And I ask something like, “Why do you suppose that is?”

And he says, “They must be trying to attract the snowboarding crowd.” or something like that—I did not record our conversation.

And I said something like, “Well yeah, there are more boarders every year, it makes sense.”

And he said something like, “Yeah, and they want to attract more business.”

“Can’t blame them.” I reply—again, this is reconstruction, not a litteral rendition of the conversation.

“No, so how are we going to do the write ups?”

“Well, we can do it one of two ways, either we can write it up, email it to each other, and then post it. Or we can each write it up and post it, then each reply to the other’s post in detail. I don’t really care which, but since De Vries likes the net, and since that would be a more honest way to go about it, I think that I’d go with writing it up seperately and commenting seperately.” or something to that effect.

“OK, sounds cool to me.”

“I’ll try to get it done before class time, I said, and reply to yours as soon as it goes up if I can.”

Then my brother-in-law came out and said something about going to get my daughter, and the phone rang and it was my wife telling me that the kid had had a really bad day at school, had effectively been tortured by some classmates, and I get even more distracted than I already was by my own students continuing to post massive amounts of stuff to the blackboard, and the fact that I had not yet written the poem that I was supposed to post, or replied to the poems of my classmates in my poetry writing class, and kind of ushered Adam out to his car, just before five, and we agreed that we’d each do the write up and comment online. Then, awhile later we spoke on the phone, and we were both having problems figuring out how to navigate the class board, and how to find the right way to post as authors, Adam figured it out first because I had been signed in for a week, so had not seen the dashboard. So I signed out, signed into the dashboard, Posted a brief, “So that’s why I couldn’t figure it out.” post, then my Brother in law got home with my daughter, and a drawer slide for the kitchen.

Well, I didn’t get it done before class time, and I didn’t get back to it last night between cooking dinner for eight (my son’s girlfriend and another friend of theirs were here), and then I got started replying to all those pesky student posts, took my temperature at 9:30pm, still over a hundred, and emailed those pesky students to say that they needed to do the work, but that they didn’t have to go to class this morning, we would do Wed. on blackboard, then I replied to a couple more student posts, realized it was already midnight, I was still sick, and I had to go to bed.

The thing about ethnography is that it as much about the observers, and the conditions, as it is about the thing observed. None of them can be removed from the matrix, and it is both counter productive and futile to try. So this is my observation on the process of observing the Kirkwood daily ski video with Adam. It was fun to watch, fun to write, and we discovered that Kirkwood is not just focusing on skiers anymore. Now I need to get back to those pesky students postings.

Thank You.