For those expecting an interesting character, I am afraid the sad fact is that I am a year old chemical engineer / computer nerd who makes Dilbert look like a man about town. However I do have the good fortune to live with my wife and two children at the base of a ski hill in the middle of the Canadian Rockies and for many years did unofficial ski reports about the area on what has proved to be a surprisingly popular website.

What allows us to live and play in such a nice spot is that I was fortunate enough to be able to 'retire' in 1992 at the age of 40. How we came to be able to do that is a rather dull story, but the fact we actually did it probably lies with our discovery of the Elk Valley life style, after we purchased our house in Fernie in 1989. To us it became apparent that after a certain point, time was much more precious than money and many ofthe folks in the valley enjoyed a far better quality of life than supposedly much 'richer' executives in the city. Having young kids, Tara was born in 1991 when Davin was 4, made the decision all that much easier.

Most people assume that I must have a lot of time on my hands or even be bored much of the time. I even suspected that might be the way it would turn out, but it has proved to be far from the truth. In fact there always seem to more interesting things to do than I have time for.