This is Rick Boucher's website and does NOT cover the depth or breath of his life or activities. It was, more or less, a resume and portfolio of some of his works along with some occasional blog posts. Now lots have changed.
Rick interned as a technical editor, got a job a desktop publisher in a composition department of a government organization, and then became a "professional" desktop publisher for a 200-plus page, full-color monthly trade journal. When the World Wide Web became an application on the Internet he started a grassroots website for the company he worked for knowing the Web would change everything. Eventually he was head-hunted and worked for the big company managing websites, and doing internet/web consulting. But now he's retired. He did that stuff.
Common threads in Rick's endeavors are information publishing, website creation, management, cycling and skiing. Some say he missed his calling to be an educator. He says sharing his passion for and pursuing higher levels of snowsports education and training.
Ski Season Approaches
It’s September, early month. Talking about where to stay doing work. I’ve gave Drees my intention at Crested Butte. I tell folks that ask am I going to work this coming season. Been thinking about ski technique. I’m thinking not going to Rocky Mountain Trainer. I don’t want the pressure as far as my health.…
Common John
John Ford. He is a teacher, writer, copy writer, marketer. Sending out an email Tuesday, that’s every Tuesday. It comes to my inbox, usually about some interesting content about copy writer’s stuff. It’s been a least the last 20 years! Why does he do it? He does it for a living, he writes. Why do…
Another Example
Life existence has cycles. The same things happened before. I’m living in an endless situation where what ever is happening, occurs to me that these things happened to me before. Well now I express my observation, but thinking about them, I realize that I’m growing older. These thing I saw many of them. But I…
One More Time
This is my current state. I’m just being. Have to wait until I tell you.
Karen DuBois
I am so sorry to hear about Karen DuBois. Yesterday, her son, Scott had her life support removed. Karen died on February 24, 2022, at 7:30 pm. Karen had a “massive” stroke on Sunday night or Monday. Rest in the best peace. She was my cousin. Daughter of Shoo (deceased recently, covid) and Papoose. They…
Can You Focus
Can I enter a new stage in my life. Dailed back the instructor thing. The snow is in great condition at Crested Butte. Teaching at Crested Butte on a minimum schedule. The rest of the time I’m spending skiing at Monarch. The snow is in great condition at Monarch. At Monarch I pull up the…
Start Here
Saying what ever I want. No matter what I would say, ever. How can you be so blatantly rough, writing what you’re thinking in your mind can be said how you say it. Now common, can yu really do that? What about that dream, that nightmare, that thoughtful imagery? I wish I ojcull have said…
Here’s Rick
Well here I am! Do you want a reason I’m here? Well never mind. Something, I would have to say, then I can go on. Using the Photo Booth. The picture above. What do you think? I’ll come back later. It’s way too busy right now. Cheers!
Learning a New Way
Here I am. It’s been a long time. I come into WordPress, and I try to find my way around. Just trying stuff I can’t find it. Is it me, or has it been a long time. So, so much has changed things, didn’t it? No writing comes from me hardly anywhere. No form of…
Waning (prev: Add A Title)
Now it begins again. What I was thinking about writing. I haven’t done it for quite sometime. I really don’t know where my mind is at. Desire seems to be down to a waning at what I’m doing. February 20, 2018 was the nite I had a stroke. It was about 10:00pm. Writing now because…
Skiing, …
February 20, 2018 struck me down with a stroke. Eighteen day in hospital. Can you believe you skied last year during my recovery? You went 15 days out of 17 left in the season. You wouldn’t believe it. I could barley talk. I went my first day after I wasn’t even walking. It was all…
Should it be a site?
You should know if you are contemplating a web site if I took it upon myself if doing it without pay. Now what if I build something nice. There’s a real whole that’s not filling a real need. What happened to ski school’s web site? We had a whole bunch of web site info available.…
From Another Century
Words from a Dylan song, “Something There is About You” are in the title of this post. I happen to be listening to Pandora Radio my alternative country station. Would a person from a previous century tell the difference in time by just standing in one place and observing? Here I go with questions again.…
CS1: Gateway to Excellence
It may seem silly to think that improving your teaching skills with children can help you to become a better skier/rider, instructor/coach, individual/citizen, supervisor/staff member. You may have heard an instructor or two say, “I’d much rather teach adults.” Our personalities and world views are pretty much formed by the time we’re 10 years old.…
Elements of a good PSIA bio
While clearing notes of scrap papers on my desk I found a list I’d jotted down referring to what makes a good biography in the ski industry. Here they are: Be eternally grateful to someone for their inspiration. Encourage people to take lessons and offer a guarantee. Have other “cool” activities that you do. Talk…
Getting Folks Into An Athletic Stance
This is probably one the hardest and most important skills that needs to be developed in skiers. If they are not in an athletic stance then they just will not be able to keep up with their skis. In other words their center of mass (their balance) will be behind their base of support (their…
Thoughts on Being Inspirational
You may have seen the PSIA/AASI posters that encourage us to inspire. Sounds good, but what does it mean? Why should we even care about inspiring others? Isn’t it enough to just enjoy what we’re doing? Or, “Hey I’m just trying to have fun!” Let’s say we do look at being inspirational from a selfish…
Got Captured
Ha! They caught me on video. Now This is Colorado did a promo about Monarch’s opening day. I don’t even remember when the shot of me saying it’s great was taken. The only reason I saw it was because my daughter Rikki shared it on her FB feed.
Attention idea for article
I’m reading “Attention and Motor Skill Learning,” by Gabriele Wulf. So far I’m seeing that many studies have been done that suggest one’s attention affects motor skill learning, performance, and retention and shows that relevant external foci generally improves these three compared to internal foci. As I’ve been playing around with trying to figure out…
Attention and Performance
Thinking about the movements needed for high performance can actually be a detriment to high performance. Depending on the skill level of an athlete, thinking about how to move to perform a task will likely result in stiff, slow movement patterns. Many high performance skills rely on smooth, fluid, and quick movement patterns. An athlete…
PSIA-RM Fall Training 2017
All signed up for the upcoming fall training in Breckenridge, November 12 to 14th. It’s an excellent opportunity to meet lots of folks in our division. Rub shoulders with my counterparts from other areas. It’s been a broadening experience every time I’ve gone. I think I’ve been about 10 times over the years. I believe…
On Monarch’s Season Pass Page
Well corporate is using my image again on their season pass information page. Stole this from their website. I think I look fat in this picture.
A Cool Learning Tool?
Just read an article in WIRED, RHETT ALLAIN “The best way to test students? Make them explain it on video.” It’s about how this physics teacher uses videos, that students create and submit, to test their depth of knowledge and help to learn. What a great idea! We talk about having measurable objectives in our snowsports…
Phase Terminology
Heard someone call the end of a turn an “exit.” Psycho-linguistically, that may be a more effective way of labeling the end phase of a turn. Describing the start and ends of turns as “entries” and “exits” may at times be better, especially during coaching instruction. I know people use “shaping phase” a lot to…
70 Miler with Susan
Susan wanted to ride her bike 70 miles before her 70th birthday. So she’s been training for it. I’ve been encouraging her to go for it. The distance is not that big a deal to me as I’ve ridden lots of long distance rides. But to Susan 70 miles seems (seemed) like a long ways.…
Flexion or Extension or Both
I participated in a task during a Precision Skiing clinic last year at Vail. I believe the clinician was Jennifer Simpson. Anyway the task was to initiate one set of turns, like all the right hand turns, using extension and all the left turns using flexion. Then switch sets. Aside from feeling the differences, it’s…
On Blogging and Just Writing
It’s feels like it has been a couple years at least since I’ve made a “blog” post here. I have various sites in which I create content. Multiple sites have evolved focused on specific topics rather than one blog/website where in the content is separated by categories. Unfortunately this blog has not had many entries…
Test No. Eight
You said Still working on the design of this form and the results page. The posts from this form go to a single page where I can view them in the future. I want to change myself. I will do this by purposefully disciplining myself to positive, gainful activities. This form will help with that.…
Riding season has begun
I’ve got in 90 miles so far this week. Hopefully get a few more tomorrow to get more than 100. That’s been my goal the last couple of years during riding season is to get at least 100 per week. Here is an embed from Strava on a fun ride I took on a windy…
This is test number seven
You said You want to: I want to work on getting a great client that will develop a relationship with for years to come. You want to change and how: I want to change someone’s mind about how much they need me. I want to change them by educating them to why they need me.…
Susan’s Hit Nose Incident
Put together this quick slide show of Susan getting hit in the nose by Simon while we were trying to do selfies. So it’s Henry, Karen, Simon, and Susan sitting on the bench and me taking the pics.
All Mountain Performance
I copied a list of topics from possible Rocky Mountain Trainer clinics and inserted them into a previous post. I said they would make great topics to write about and would be most useful to me in the future. So here it goes, first topic is All Mountain Performance. What do I know about AMP?…
Writing My Own Epitaph
Long ago at a business meeting, an inspirational speaker talked about solving problems if you don’t like setting goals. Most of the talk is lost to my recollection, but there was a point that has stuck with me over the years. The point was that if you want to live a fulfilling life you should…
Topic Ideas
Here I am again trying to write. It would help if I had a focus on what I want to write about. They say, and I agree, writing can help to iron out feelings, clarity, or expertise on a given topic. In my morning haze between sleep and awakeness I had this thought, why not…
Cool Description
I saw this description of what a ski instructor does on Kevin Fay’s LinkedIn resume: Personalized method of instruction/coaching tempered by care and understanding for the needs of clients, our profession and my employer. The lifestyle has provided me with the physical skiing skills needed to be an efficacious demonstrator and a robust lesson producer-…
Got a New Mac
I’m blown away at how this new machine feels. I’ve still got a ways to go in finding things, but I’m sure liking it so far. Sleek and simple. The whole idea is to get my creative juices flowing again. I know from experience that most creatives use a mac to do their work. Secondly…
Order of Posts
I’m thinking that one of the reasons I don’t post to my blogs is that I’m ascending and the default view of posts in my blogs is descending. In other words I want to write like a book where the reader starts at my oldest entries and reads toward the newest. A characteristic of blogs…
Commitment to Write
It’s always at the back of my mind. I want to write. I read a short article somewhere this morning about the benefits of writing. I know the benefits. Then the article talked about how to make it a habit. I already know how. The answer is to write. Just do it. With so many…
Lots Happened
A lot has happened over the winter. I’ve completed my final day of commitment to ski school and there are three days remaining in Monarch’s season. I’ve got lots of pictures, lots of names of students, lots of experiences. I’m sorry I have not kept up with this blog. Seems once I start getting busy…
Fun With Gunnar
Got to ski with one of my favorite students, Gunnar, yesterday. As far as his technique goes we’re working on getting him to use his legs more to initiate and steer his turns. He has a tendency to swing his shoulders to get his skis to start turning and so he ends up using primarily…
A-Framing
I’ve been told recently that I am “a-framing” in my skiing. At first I thought that it’s still early season and I happen to be unnecessarily outside ski dominant. I blame it on old learned habits where I am pressure biased, counter rotated, and predominately skiing one leg at a time. Or you could simply…
Cassandra
Cassandra “Cassy” M. is a really great student that I get to be with for at least 5 three hour lessons, hopefully more. Her dad requested me for all the lessons, which makes it all even more special. Our first was on the 27th. She’s 9, from Denver. She and her family stay in Buena…
Christine, Heidi
Christine B. is a nurse in Colorado Springs. She signed up for a Level 1 Group lesson on Nov. 27th. Heidi is a new instructor at Monarch this year and was allowed (asked) to “shadow” this lesson. The lesson began at 9 am and was scheduled to last 1 hour and 45 minutes. Christine is…
My First Official Guest of the Year
Monarch Mountain opened yesterday. The snow is a little thin but in pretty good shape. Had my first student of this season yesterday in a private lesson. Melissa P. is a student in Ft Collins. She’s from Pueblo, Colorado. She very excited to get going on her brand new ski, boots, and poles that she…
Attended PSIA Fall Training
Had the opportunity to attend PSIA-RM-AASI Fall Training in Breckenridge last week. Clinics I attended on day one: Movement Analysis Applications, Area Representative lunch (sort of), Coaching Exam Maneuvers, 2010-2011 Exam Process clinics. Day two clinics I attended: Personal Riding Improvement in the morning, Progression Building in the afternoon. All in all it involved a lot…
Two Fundamental Models to Teaching Well
Two models found in PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors Association) Rocky Mountain Division, are the Teaching Model and the Guest Centered Teaching (GCT) Concept. These should be ingrained in every instructor in all they do. They should be second nature to how they conduct snowsports instruction. Overlayed on the graphic example of the GCT model below is…
Monarch Ski & Ride School’s Guest Survey
Here is another way to rate an instructor. This document is handed to all guests that sign up for a ski/ride booking at Monarch Mountain. It asks the guests to rate their satisfaction with our school and their instructor on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 meaning strongly agree)to statements. Here are the statements:…
How To Rate A Ski Instructor
PSIA (Professional Ski Instructors Association) has established standards for ski instructors in the industry. There are currently three levels of ski instructor certification in the U.S. At cert exams, a system of scoring three specific skill categories is used by examiners to ultimately determine if a candidate has reached the level of standards (actual current Level III Scorecard here).…
New Business Card
Just got my new cards from VistaPrint. Not quite sure what I think about ’em yet. Even though I designed it myself, I have to see what people’s reaction to them is. I think they may be too “busy” or too hard to read. I was vasilating between blue or black background. Black would have…
Asking Guests to Request Me
In yesterday’s afternoon rehire session on MA (movement analysis), near the end we talked about how to encourage guests to return for more coaching. I feel like I kind of went off in left field talking about developing a relationship with the client and stuff. What I should have said was that, bottom line, the…
New Zealand Ski Instructors Association Manuvers
Ran across this today. I thought it was worth posting here. I want to learn to talk like that. Perhaps the best way would be to work down under next summer. Or . . . maybe I can get my good friend Hayden Melsop to teach me fly fishing and I can learn how to…
Pic of nothing
Just another stupid picture I took while messing around.
The Tight Collar: The New Science of Choking Under Pressure | Wired Science
via wired.com Here’s an article about a topic I mentioned in a previous post that referenced a 10 year old article. This one in wired is from September 2010 Wired.com. Very interesting discussion on the thought processes going on in athletic situations. Seems there is a “working memory” that if clogged with, or occupied by,…
Choke or Panic? Implicit or Explicit Learning?
Ran across an interesting article from the New Yorker today (see it here). It’s kind of long, but so are most New Yorker articles. The subject of the article is why athletes/professionals sometimes fail under pressure. This post is so I can reference the article later and reference it to other topics. It’s over 10…
Fixed Gear Cycling and Skiing
A concept I’ve been exploring for a while is how fixie riding can improve skiing. I intend to expound the following, but for now I just want to get ’em down somewhere before they are lost to damaged brain cells or whatever. Overall Fitness Spinning improves leg speed, thus improves quickness on snow. Pressure Control…
PSIA Lexicon
Alpine Description Words The following descriptions are copied from the PSIA-RM demos found on www.vimeo.com. These are just the words imprinted on the skiing demos. They can also be found in a PDF document called Skiing Standards IDP (instructor development pathway), and they’re broken down into ski/body performance. The PDF contains the standards for all…
Slowly But Surely
I’ve been putting in more miles on my bicycles lately. I subscribed to a web service called the dailymile. The site has helped motivate me somewhat. It’s cool to see how many calories you’ve burned and how many miles you’ve put in over the weeks. It keeps track of your routes which is cool too.…
Planning a Trip to Northeast
Susan and I are looking at the possibility of riding GeeGee to Northern Maine (Ft. Kent) and swinging back down south a little through Connecticut to see my family. I have lots of relatives in Northern Maine that I have not seen in decades and I’d love to visit my mom and sisters whom I…
Attained Level III
Passed Level III exam on my second try this year. My first attempt was in late April, the second on March 30 and 31. I only needed to take the Teaching and Movement Analysis days. I believe going through the exam process has been one of the most challenging goals in my life. Reaching full-cert…
Miller's Car in a Blogspot Post http://bit.ly/74WlNk
I saw our Guest Services Manager's (Miller's) car in the Monarch parking lot in a blog posted by Arron Dodds' Life on the Road. The article's not bad either: http://bit.ly/5JmmFw.
PSIA Wedge Christie Video
PSIA-RM Wedge Christie from PSIA-RM on Vimeo.
Looking west & looking at Susan
See and download the full gallery on posterous Rick
My Skis on top of Continental Divide
Left ski is in the eastern slope right is on the western slope. Beautiful day at Monarch. Not many people but lots of great snow and open runs! What a great office space for work.
Skiing with Gunnar again!
Gunnar and I are focusing on leg rotation today. He’s got a roller blading background. Awesome! I’m the lucky one.
McKenna the roller blader
McKenna has lots of roller blade experience that translated very well to skiing. She had never skied before, but was very excited to be able to ski with her friends and family. McKenna told me that her family has chosen not to have a television or video games in their household. So I asked her…
Carol on Pano
Happy Thanksgiving! Second day teaching at Monarch Mountain. Looking forward to another great day. Rick
Gunnar gettin on pioneer lift
Who who! Here we go!! Rick
Decided to go to Amy's birthday party
Good times !!! Rick
Commented on Denver Westword
Made comment on the site mentioned in the title above. Mentioned Monarch Ski Guide. Thanked them for the Monarch mention and said look up RickyB if you want someone to show you where the really good powder stashes are at Monarch.
sends post to RickyB's blog
test test test Posted via email
Test Post to Blog Named Rick Boucher
Still another test of Posterous. Posted via email
Winter's Coming
Really looking forward to getting on the slopes again this year. Posted via email
Humbled
Was just looking at Bill Donavan’s website called the Dangerous Collective. IMO it’s an awesome site. Very focused, great graphics, great people. Wish I could be one of their partners. Probably wouldn’t be hard to contact Bill . . . and just ask what the possibilities are.
Movement analysis
The 09-10 season is almost upon us. This is going to be the year that I finally finish my level III certification. Only have to pass the Movement Anaylsis and Teaching segments. Really they go hand in hand. One is very much like the other. If you think about it, how can you properly teach…
One We’re Planning, Las Vegas!!
Here is a trip we are planning for later this month. Interbike (worlds largest bicycle industry trade show (www.trackbikes.com)) is one of our favs so just thought we’d make a trip on GeeGee out of it. This is how we’re planning on getting there. Not sure yet which way we’re gonna take to get back.…
Stuff that doesn't fit anywhere
This uncategorized section is where stuff goes that I don’t know where else to put it. It will also hold on to stuff that will eventually be moved to one of the other categories.
Deep stuff
This is the category where I think I’ll share deep thoughts about life. Why we’re here, things that make me happy, things that upset me, things I wonder about. I’ll try not to make it too personal. Probably have to be careful in this section.
Trackbikes.com
I’ve got a domain name and site that I’ve had for quite sometime. It’s gone through some variations over the years. Currently it is in a state of transition. I’m still not sure what I want to do with it, but one thing is for sure, the domain name gets a lot of traffic just…
Rikki is going to collegiate nationals
My daughter Rikki is going to collegiate nationals next week! She recently started school at Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado. I told her she should get involved as much as she can in campus life, find others with similar interests to help her make her college experience a lifetime fulfilling experience. She got…
Web Design
I’ve worked as a web developer for quite sometime. In recent years I’ve considered myself more of a web contractor. These days it takes a number of specialized skills to develop a truly professional company website. As such I’ve found myself bringing together subcontractors as well as building complete sites from scratch. Many people are…
Saratoga Hot Springs
The water here is very hot, at one end too hot to enter. We sat in the hot water for a few minutes then went over to sit in the North Platt River.
Day One: Salida to Saratogo, WY
263 miles; five hours in the saddle; warm and dry with very little wind; CO hwys 9, 14 and 123, WY hwys 230 and 130. At the moment we’re sitting in our “suite” at the Sand and Sage Motel. We were upgraded without our knowledge from an double bed room to a queen size bed…
Check Our Garden Just Before We Leave
Hopefully the nice folks staying at our house will remember to turn on the water ;). I took these shots to compare how much it will grow while we’re gone. We’re all packed up reduced to the available space on GeeGee!
Waiting to be loaded
Here she is, GeeGee. We call her this because when we first saw her we kept saying, “Gee, Gee.” Today has been a wirl wind of preparation. Cleaning, packing, unpacking, repacking trying to get down to as minimal bulk as possible. Everything going into the “trunk” is stuff we do not need immediate access to.…
Image of Photo and Caption
Cool picture of me appeared in The Mountain Mail yesterday. The powder has been awesome at Monarch. Eric Ramsey has been taking pictures and I’m very happy to go along. This one ended up on 9 News and in the local paper. I think he likes how I can ski right at him without hitting…
I'm In An Article!
Last week I was asked to teach a lesson for marketing purposes. Our marketing director had arranged the lesson for a writer that writes for the Rocky Mountain News. Here is a link to the article as it appeard in an online journal called Real Vail. Click here. I really enjoyed meeting Luis and Patrina.…