The "Lambo" Index

When I was around 14, 15 years old, every boy I knew had at least two posters on their bedroom wall. Minimum two - maybe more - but at least two. One was a girl; nine times out of ten, it was Cheryl Tiegs or Farah (I, being the one in ten, had neither: I choose Linda Ronstadt. Iconoclastic taste even then.) and the other, the other was a Lamborghini.

The Lambo Countach was - quite simply - the sexiest beast on four wheels. All Italian angles and vents, great, big fat tires and so low that it looked like you had to lie flat to drive it. And the colours! No boring blues or nondescript greys for the Lambo. A Lamborghini was ORANGE or YELLOW or BLACK. (Never red; that was Ferrari.)

The cost of them, too, was part of the allure. Unthinkable money for a car! Unbelievable sums! Eighty thousand dollars!!! In Cranbrook, where a nice family home could be had for $20K, this was so outrageous as to be almost comic! Who had that of money?

The Lambo was every 15 year old boy's dream car... And we all kinda knew it was a dream only. We all had as much chance of owning a Lambo as I had of ever dating Linda. (Although I did hear she had a thing for tall, skinny boys from the Kootneays.)

No one I knew had ever seen a Lambo. Ever. They were the solar eclipse of automobiles: We knew they existed but only through pictures and articles in magazines like "Road & Track".

Two weeks ago, on our way home from the wedding of our eldest child's first babysitter (Jesus, time flies!), I saw three Lamborghinis. In one night. Three different ones. And, today, I saw a Ferrari, four or five Porsches and a turbo Bentley. None of them were vintage; all brand new. And $80K Beemers, Audi's, Lexus and assorted others are everywhere.

Look around you next time you drive down Granville or across the Lions Gate. Count how many $100K plus pieces of rolling metal you see. It is shocking! Aston Martins, Maseratis and the once rare Lambo are now routinely seen on our daily commute.

This city is awash in money. There is more more money in this town than I have EVER seen before. We are in boom times, my friends, boom times. The Lambo Index is way, way up.

Notes from an (ex) Olympic City

It's done. It's over. This evening, I drove home, listening to the Canucks play the Hurricanes ... Maybe it was the Blue Jackets... I don't know who they were playing. I do know it seemed small and sad.

Holy cow, did we go nuts or what!!?

That was the must remarkable 17 days in this city I have ever seen! I'd like to try to articulate some of the feelings I have, so here goes:

1.) Own the Podium - What an unbelievable success. Sign me up for more of that, please. We were, as I understand it, short on our goals for overall medals and we didn't "win" the overall medal count. We sure stomped where it counted, though! Fourteen gold!

And, perhaps more importantly, our athletes, these Olympics, went into competition with self belief and the expectation not just to do well, but to win.

I heard some people say that this was somehow "un-Canadian". I could not disagree more. I was both impressed and very proud to see how the Canadian athletes managed to weave that will to win into their "Canadian-ness". Ashleigh McIvor, Women's Ski Cross Gold Medalist, expressed it as - and I paraphrase - "When I'm not racing, I let people in front of me all the time... When I am racing, though, nobody gets in front of me."

Somehow, all our athletes - they did our country so damm proud - managed to win with grace and humility.

2.) The Americans - Americans don't need an "Own the Podium" programme. That nation, as personified in their athletes, competes like no other. They go hard. I watched 'em. It didn't matter whether they were in 45th place or first: They went hard. We all saw how Kesler tried to get into Booby Luuu's head: No way Canadian would ever do that, not to his captain.

From a Canadian perspective, that driving competitiveness seems more than a little crass and brash. It is, however, why the long dollar is always on the United States. Doesn't matter what shape they're in; they will not accept anything less than first and they'll kill themselves to get there.

3.) That Game, That Goal - Where were you when It went in?

Hockey has a hold us. It transfixes us, it defines us and that game, that game delivered us.

My son, Alex, "watched" part of the third sitting on a chair on our back deck. He said "Dad, every time you yell, the neighborhood yells!"

I told him the whole country was yelling.

And talk about pressure: Mike Babcock, who's face looks like it was hacked out of a boulder from the Canadian Shield, was crying on the bench at the end.

Save a spot in the Hall. Sid's in.

Some other images impressions and images I won't ever forget:

- Jasey-Jay Anderson finally winning his Gold Medal. 34 years old, a wife, two kids and 4 Olympics. He was one of the favorites in Nagano.

- Anja Paerson, racing to a Bronze on the same course where she was thrown 9m into the air for 60m, the day before.

- The utter desolation in Jeremy Wotherspoon's eyes as he sat on a bench in the middle of the Richmond Oval, as he tried to come to terms with the fact that, even as a World Record holder and one of the most accomplished speed skaters of all time, there would always be a hole in his resume.

- Christine Nesbit's face, twisted into a mask of pain and absolute desire, as she rounded the last corner of her 1000m race.

- Alexander and his brother.

- Bode Miller. Did it his way, without apology or explanation. Best skier I have ever seen.

- The Canadian women, smoking cigars and drinking beer, at center ice. God bless you, ladies. You earned every slug and puff. You sure as hell didn't need to apologize to me.

- Nodar Kumaritashvili. God bless and god speed. I'm too old and he was too young for the "he died doing what he loved" line. Next time I'm in Whistler, I'm leaving something at his memorial.

Notes from an Olympic City

So it's the start of Week 2 and, as I thought it might, Vancouver has gone nuts for our Games. Canada's athletes are doing well - 4th in the medal standings and, perhaps, more to come - and, most importantly, the city is out and enjoying itself; reveling, if you will, with the world watching.

I want to write something about the nature of the elite level of athletic performance we are seeing here. In a small way, I want to answer the question "How good are these people?"

The short answer is very, very, very good. So good that most people can't imagine how good they are. These people are beyond amazing; they are testament to our ability as a species to push ourselves to the very sharpest point of performance.

A case in point: Our family went to watch the Women's Moguls on the first Saturday night of the Games. An Olympic mogul course is about 150m long, 20m wide and has a sustained pitch of around 30%, just slightly less steep than the entrance to some of the steepest runs on Whistler or Blackcomb. These women were completing this beast - in the pouring rain, I must add - in around 30 seconds and they were throwing huge air off two jumps.

I'm a good skier; dare I say, an expert. I can ski any named run on either Blackcomb or Whistler and most of the runs that aren't on the map, too. I can handle myself almost anywhere on the mountain in almost any condition.

These women, though... These women - the worst of these women, the women that finished well, well out of medal contention - these women show me up as the "weekend warrior wannabe" I am. I'd have no chance, not even the slightest, of keeping up with these athletes on a ski hill.

This pointy end of performance is everywhere here: Speed-skaters covering a 1km in 1 minute, from a standing start (Averaging 60km/h over the distance, for the math challenged.), downhill racers catching air, landing and then turning, all at 140km/h... Even the figure skaters (A sport, I must confess, that leaves me flat.) stun we mere mortals with their raw athleticism. It is breathtaking to watch and, right now, that wonder, that beauty, that awesome ability, is concentrated here in Vancouver. It is to weep with joy to behold.

My Predictions

So here's my insanely long, very wanker-ish opinions on what the coming decade will bring: Three parts: One, global, the second technological and the third kinda medical:

1.) Global - If the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the end of the bi-polar world, then the collapse of Lehman Bros in the fall of 2008 marked the end of the uni-polar world. This past decade has been a miserable one for our neighbors to the south. They began the decade as the world's only superpower and are ending it broke, embroiled in two seemingly endless - and pointless - conflicts and, most importantly, their global moral authority has been diminished to almost nil.

The coming decade will mark the United States' gradual return to strength - never bet against them - but it will also mark the emergence of a truly multi-polar world. We all know about the rise of China; the story in the coming decade will be about the economic and political rise of places like India and Brazil.

2.) Technological - Welcome to the 100-billion channel world. Information, information, information everywhere. I'm old enough to remember rotary phones, party lines and 45rpm singles. I am in a near constant state of amazement of how far this digital revolution has come and I can hardly wait to see how far it goes. The coming decade will see something astounding: I have no idea what it will be but I do know I'll be amazed.

3.) Medical - I think the coming decade will see some amazing advances in our understanding of the human brain, not just it's structure but also it's function. I think by decade's end, we will have a much deeper understanding of the role brain chemistry and resulting emotions play in our lives.

As an economist by study and inclination, it was fascinating to me watch stock market collapse in the fall of 2008 completely destroy the economic notion of man as a "rational actor". That was panic, pure and simple, and a new model of economic thought and study is rising from those ashes. This new model tries to model the role emotion has in people's decision making processes. This attempt to integrate the impact of of emotional state into our decision making process is spreading to other disciplines - think marketing - as well.

Of the three things I've mentioned, this is the one that worries me the most. I'm one that believes in the law of unintended consequences. Medical science is advancing in the study brain chemistry to the point that by 2020, we may be able to actually identify "the ghost in the machine"; it may simply be some combination of brain chemistry. This has obvious positive impact in our understanding and treatment of mental illness. The downside - and it's considerable - is that an understanding of why and how emotions are created in our brain and how those emotions incline us to do certain things can lead to the unscrupulous manipulation of our emotional states to achieve a desired outcome. Some weird combination of Strausian philosophy and "Prozac Nation" may be our future.

There you are! There's my thoughts on the decade's end and the coming ten years. What do you think?