Ira Riklis – My Skiing Notes

Ira Riklis

So I have been searching quite a bit for local businesses contact info on Google more so than the phone book anymore. Anyway, one of the sites that I keep going back to is Hotfrog.com. Great little site if you need good quick info on any of the local stores you like to go to. I actually created my own profile there, you can see my profile here, Ira Riklis.

Seems more and more of these local directories are popping up it is now a matter of, “who will emerge as the new yellow pages.” Right now, my bet is hotfrog.

Splendid at the Chateau

Dress Attire: Casual Elegant

Location: 17 Chateau Lane, Avon, CO 81620

Phone: 970.845.8808

Website: www.splendidobeavercreek.com

This is the most elegant setting of a restaurant in Vail (actually, in Beaver Creek). The Views are breathtaking and the restaurant and hotel are stunning. Ask for a table by a window. The food is traditional and creative. This is the place we go every trip for our “fine dining” experience.

Larkspur

Dress Attire: Casual Elegant

Location: 458 Vail Valley Dr, Vail, CO 81657

Phone: 970.754.8050

Website: www.larkspurvail.com

On the extreme eastern side of Vail Village. Very expensive, stuffy service, but really great food and excellent wine list (sometimes that even is enough to make up for the obnoxious service). REALLY don’t want to show up here with small children.

Today we’re starting a new series where Ira reviews restaurants he knows well. Most are in the Vail, Colo. region. Here’s the first:

Sweet Basil

Dress Attire: Casual elegant

Location: 193 Gore Creek, Vail, CO 81657

Phone: 970.476.0125

Website: www.sweetbasil-vail.com

Ira says: Located in Vail Village, nouvelle cuisine, friendly service, expensive. A Riklis family first choice (especially Diana). Might want to go here without small children, but we’ve done it and lived to tell the tale. They are child friendly.

While we’re pretty sure this isn’t Ira, here is a picture of an old-time rope tow used to bring skiers up a hill:

For more information about some of Ira’s other interests, look at Ira Riklis articles on awareness.

There has also been interest in Ira’s love of Burt bindings, so we wanted to show a photo of them during Ira’s skiing time.

For more information about some of Ira’s other interests, look at Ira Riklis articles on awareness.

A lot of respondents have asked about Ira Riklis’ AMC Pacer. While he says no actual photos exist, we have supplied this contemporary ad for the fabled vehicle:

In an earlier post, Ira Riklis mentioned Hotel Gasthof Gramshammer in Vail. Ira Riklis kindly forwarded to us a picture from his collection:

Photo courtesy of Ira Riklis

Ira Riklis continues discussing the seemingly lost art of courtesy on the ski slopes

Let’s for a moment give this other skier the benefit of the doubt and suppose that he, quite mistakenly, thought that he had the right of way and that I had been in the wrong. Even then, the correct thing to do is to inquire as to how I’m doing? Am I injured? Do I need assistance? Should they call for the ski patrol and a toboggan?

None of this occurred to this person who yelled out his insult, flipped me the bird, and then skied off. I certainly wasn’t going to get an apology from this person for causing me to take a hard fall, but you would think that simple courtesy and concern for another person would dictate that he ascertain that I’m alright before he skis away.

So, in conclusion, it is important that all skiers and snowboarders know the rules of the road, exercise courtesy and caution, and that is still not enough to protect you from a wild, crazy and inconsiderate person. It is necessary to ski defensively as well. My usual approach to skiing obviates this problem because I’m usually on the slopes when they are empty and off the slopes when they are crowded.

Ira Riklis continues discussing the seemingly lost art of courtesy on the ski slopes

As I’m in a short traverse within the funnel, I notice out of the corner of my eye a skier barreling at me at high speed from above and to my left. It is obvious that unless one or both of us makes a tight turn away, we are about to prove the first rule of physics, two solid bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time; and there will be pain! As I am an expert skier, I am able to immediately turn hard to my right and avoid hitting this other skier. However, the turn was too tight, my speed too high, the terrain too steep and the conditions too hard packed for my skis to hold their carve.

I go down and hit hard against the hard packed snow. Thank God I was wearing a helmet because my head hit particularly hard. I skidded along the hard pack snow for some distance until I came to a stop. I lay there for a short while, I have no concept of how long, until my head cleared enough to think. I was clearly bruised, but was anything broken?

Once I took inventory to see if I had broken any body part, found that I was still intact, I finally lifted up my head to look around. Below me on the slope I could see that the other skier had come to a stop. When he saw my head come up, he called out to me. “Hey A*****E, watch where you’re skiing!”