I hate flying and can’t count the times people have pointed out to me that it’s safer than driving. I’m sure that’s true, just like I’m sure this article that points out it’s safer to ride a chairlift than it is to drive is also true. Last week a 7-year-old died in a tragic chairlift accident in Lake Tahoe, and on the heels of that sad story I read this one.

Each year, there are 40,000 car deaths in the U.S. In New York City alone, there’s more than one fatality every day. When someone tells you, “this is safer than driving,” it’s not saying much. Since 1973 there have been only 12 deaths attributed to ski lift accidents. It’s quite safe. Yes, you are much more likely to die driving to the resort than you are riding the lifts. Do ski lifts require tighter regulations? No. Do cars? Yes. Though I suspect it will be easier for the government to pass ski lift regulations than car regulations.

The endurance formula works because caffeine increases the number of fatty acids in the blood, preserving the carbs in the blood and burning the fat instead, allowing you to go longer. But this isn’t what you need in the gym. Instead, researchers have found that caffeine limits the buildup of a substance called adenosine, a chemical that blunts the power of muscles during exercise by weakening the force of a contraction. But (you knew there was a but, right?) there’s a lot they don’t know. For instance for this study subjects were buzzing on the equivalent of FIVE cups of coffee, and whether the same, er, boosting would happen on less caffeine isn’t clear.

While ski resorts in the west deal with a bit of a drought, the ski resorts on the East Coast are still mowing their lawns. Unseasonably warm temperatures have been fantastic for cyclists tearing up and down the resorts, but I’m sure the resort owners would prefer to fire up their millions in new chairlifts in snowmaking equipment. One day in the not too distant future January will be considered early season on the East Coast.

Ahh, the indignity of coach. Your knees dig into the seatback in front of you while passive-aggressive war for the elbow rest rages. One New Zealand airline is seeking to improve coach class by turning their 3-person seats into ‘cuddle couches.’ The idea is that a couple buys all three seats for $500 to $800 more and then all three elbow rests pop up for a lie-flat couch you can ‘cuddle’ on. Solo travelers and people who don’t buy the third seat meanwhile will have to endure even less legroom, as the couches take up more space and seatbacks have been pushed even closer to your knees. The stakes of having an attractive stranger take the seat next to you have never been higher.

College campuses are smaller and more self-contained than cities, but are only now figuring out bike sharing, AFTER cities have implemented programs. Bike theft and lack of decent bicycle storage have often been cited as reasons many students forgo owning their own bikes and commuting to or across campus, and scheduling constraints can also play a role, but universities as varied as Cornell in Ithaca, New York, to Washington State in Spokane and Stanford in Palo Alto are now putting more work into share programs, where students pay a small fee and can ride to various lock stations, many of them within the community, not just on campus.

That’s because it was declared all but extinct. The only place you’d see an “Atlantic” salmon was at a fish farm. But in Maine, they’re seeing them, finally, in the wild again. For the count this past fall more than 3,100 salmon returned to the Penobscot River, the most since 1986, and nearly 200 ascended the Narraguagus River, up from the low two digits just a decade ago. This is the first good news after years of conservation efforts that had little return on investment. Now, with fish finally coming back to stocked nesting grounds, and with dam removals to follow the fingers-crossed hope is that fish stocks may eventually stabilize, though there’s still a very long way to go.

The governor of Montana is seeking to gain access to the way his state manages bison in Yellowstone National Park, and in his mad quest no one is spared. He wants to allow some of the non-disease bison to be moved to land the state controls, and he wants to allow some hunting of disease animals in the park. Montana officials have held up shipments of tens of thousands of trout eggs bound for hatcheries outside the state until he gets his way. If he doesn’t, the trout eggs get it (they die unless delivered by Jan 2). This high stakes game of trout eggs brinkmanship is a test to see who blinks first, and all signs point to the madman in office letting the eggs go to waste.

via Moldy Chum

In the vast churn of the new and the now, that’s an eternity. And yet Evan Orensten’s Red Wings just went back to Red Wing, Minnesota, to their birthplace, for a little spa treatment. For $95, including shipping, Orensten had them resoled, buffed, relaced, and given the TLC he never bothered to show them through 13 years of abuse. And they’re fine. Good as new. Really, better, because they fit him like the perfectly broken-in gloves that they’ve become over the course of his ownership. Yeah, a pair of new, 8146-style Red Wings cost $200, and now he’s spent $295, total. But think how much you’ve spent on boots in 13 years and the math makes a lot of sense, especially for made-in-the-U.S.A. boots by a company that will fix them up again for a lifetime.

On New Year’s Day 24 off-duty police will be driving along I-70 between 45-55mph with their lights on. Is this some kind of DUI snare to pull in hungover skiers on their way to the resorts? No, they’re pace cars that CDOT is running up and down the highway to try to promote traffic flow. Their goal is to get traffic to move at a more uniform speed to lessen the drag on drivers headed to the resorts. They tested it this summer and declared it a success, though I suspect that not many skiers were on the roads at that time. Pace cars are now part of the resort experience? It’s no wonder so many more people are heading into the backcountry.