While I try to get out on the course 3 or more times a week, Mary also escapes from the inn several times a week to hit the round ball down the fairway as well. While a lot of the men at Killington play locally, each week the ladies go on a field trip to different parts of the state to play in "Ladies State Day" sponsored by the Vermont State Women's Golf Association.

This week, the ladies traveled to Waterbury Vermont to play at the Blush Hill Country Club. The course was a typical rolling Vermont course with a few hills. It was well maintained with some very nice gardens. While being only a 9 hole course, the ladies played alternate tees the second time around to fill out an 18 hole card.

Kudo's go out to Nina for her round at Blush Hill. Nina carded a 92, taking low gross honors for the foresome. They celebrated with an ice cream stop at the Ben and Jerry's factory, just up the street from Blush Hill in Waterbury. Mary enjoyed a strawberry ice cream cone before heading back to Killington.

Where ever you may be, just remember to keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.

In addition to various activities to promote our inn, like the video work from the last post, I have also gotten involved this summer on a start up project in the community dubbed the "Killington Economic Growth Initiative".

The initiative is actually an outgrowth of work developed by Bill Bauer of the Summit Lodge and Chris Karr of the Pickle Barrel night club. Back in March at the Killington Town Meeting, Bill and Chris were able to get an article placed on the town meeting ballot which, in it's simplest incarnation, was to hire an events planner for Killington and pay for this person with a 3 cent increase to local property taxes. The tax item basically made the article a non-starter, but with the sale of the resort by ASC looming in the background in March, the issue of economic development stuck in peoples minds.

In June, the local selectboard raised the issue again, this time calling for a 1% local option tax to be used to fund the initiative. Unfortunately, the initiative had not yet been born, and a group of local citizens, myself included, asked the selectboard to humbly refrain from discussions of taxes to fund development until a plan which required taxes surfaced. From those discussions, a group of citizens were pulled together into an ad-hoc town committee chaired by Bill and Chris to create a plan for economic growth in Killington.

From a simple beginning, the economic growth initiative is starting to take on a life of it's own. A full blown community effort is underway within the Killington Community to collect ideas about growing the local economy. Currently, there are 7 sub-committees formed to investigate various areas. At this point, about 40 people in Killington have gotten actively involved including many local residents, retirees, business owners, selectmen, Powdr Corporation (the new owners of the resort), and the Killington Chamber of Commerce.

I have gotten involved as the chair of the Communications Committee for the initiative. Much of my time has been spent creating a website for the initiative called growkillington.com, creating the "Grow Killington" watering can logo and setting up a chat room for the group to work collaboratively, called 'The Garden".

Oh... and incase you were wondering about the tax discussions, funding for the economic initiative is still an open question. Right now the group is researching various funding avenues including grants from federal, state, and county agencies. We are also looking at how other communities have funded similar initiatives through the creation of non profit foundations. While funding the initiative recommendations via tax mechanisms are not out of the question, the group is heavily invested to fund the initiative through other means. The good news in all of this is that a group of local people have been energized to get involved to help grow the local economy.

If you would like more information about the project, or would like to join the group working the initiative, the website is a good first place to stop to find out more information about what people are working on in town. Where we are still in the exploratory stages, if you are interested in coming on board, now is the time to bring your ideas to the table.

And while I still have your attention, Mary and I have also managed to squeeze in a round or two of golf between raindrops the last couple of days. After all, all work and no play is really not very much fun, especially when you live in the Green Mountains of Vermont at Killington.

Where ever you may be, just remember to keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.

Summer in Killington can be deceptively busy.

During the winter months, when local activity focuses on the mountain, I usually find myself on a pair of skis 4 or 5 days a week. (7 if I am real lucky). Most of this is programmed into our lifestyle. We specifically decided to live and work less than 1 mile from the mountain so we could ski. We are on the hill about 3 hours each day, so in addition to being great recreation, skiing is also very efficient from a time standpoint. Another advantage of living so close to the mountain.

In the summer, it is a little harder. A round of golf runs 4 hours. Add commute time to the course and the requisite lunch after golf, and we find ourselves away from the inn for 6 hours at a time. Not that I am complaining about golf, mind you. It just establishes a different routine in the summer.

What is also interesting about running an inn in Killington is the amount of "office work" that takes place in the summer. One would think that being at a ski resort, one would be able to play all day in the "off season". Of course, there are 2 fallacies to that concept... First, Killington is not a uni-season resort. The inn is still busy (thank god) with guests. Second, and somewhat hidden from view, is that all of the new marketing activity for the coming fall and winter seasons gets done in the summer months. I easily spend whole days programming websites for our businesses, and other clients, during the summer months to promote Killington later in the year.

One of the projects I have been working on of late is the integration of video onto websites. Mary and I do joint marketing with several other properties in Killington under the banner Killington Country Inns. The website, www.killingtoncountryinns.com has been used for the last several years as a landing site with various search engine pay per click programs. Last fall, a group of us worked on a project with the Killington Chamber of Commerce and a Fox television station serving the Boston area to produce a 30 minute program about Killington. One of my summer projects was to take the video that was produced, chop it up, and create 30 second clips for the inns of Killington Country Inns.

At face value, it seemed like a pretty straight forward project, given the rise of video on the web. (They tell me Youtube is a popular website after all.) In reality, it is just a little more complicated than it all seems.

The process of starting with a video source on a DVD to creating a 30 second flash video clip for the web is not really documented in any one place. Google helps, but you still need to sort through the pieces, that is of course unless you want to spend thousands of dollars for various packaged video programs. But, I do all my development work on an Apple PowerMAC and here is where the MAC shines. Buried in the middle of Mac OS X is a very good implementation of the Unix Operating System. I was able to download 3 different open source programs to do all of the work. (One to convert the DVD to MP4 so I could do edits in IMovie; one to convert the edited MP4 to Flash Video, and one to add Flash Video Metadata.) Part of the result you see above in a video clip on Birch Ridge, built into this page by a feed from killingtoncountryinns.com.

I made four video's in total for this project. Feel free to browse over to www.killingtoncountryinns.com to see them all if you are interested.

With this project done, the queue has been filled with others. Later on, I will tell you about the work that is taking place on the Killington Economic Growth Initiative....but that is for another day.

Keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.

Over the last couple of weeks, Mary and I have partaken of the ritualistic exercise many people do from time to time: We went new car shopping. Mary's 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee was making dying noises. It was time.

After our experience driving a little car during our Irish vacation, Mary set 2 criteria for her new car...30 miles per gallon and under $20K. I did a quick search on Edmunds and came up with 105 different cars that met that criteria. And of course, in her best operational management style, Mary needed to drive all of them. We drove Jeeps, Toyotas, Hondas, Chevy's, Fords, Dodge; if they was a car dealership within 100 miles of the inn, we drove their cars.

Mary took delivery over the weekend of a new silver Dodge Caliper. It is a nice (on the small side) mid sized car which met Mary's goals. Front wheel drive, a responsive stick shift, and plenty of room inside for the ever present golf bags or skis.

Mary's Jeep lasted 13 years. How many the Dodge will last is anyones guess. So it goes.

Congratulations go our to Dick and Noel Gluck, all of the participants, and the sponsors of Team Killington. Dick and Noel announced yesterday afternoon at a barbecue at their home for this years VT NH "Race for the Cure" Team Killington "Runners" that this years efforts raised over $10,000 for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Great Job!

Thank you Dick and Noel for organizing the Killington community to support the effort to fight breast cancer.

It has been a while since my last post. I have been pretty much in hiding for the last 10 days, victimized by a summer cold that turned into a nasty sinus infection. Yeck. But the good doctors at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Hanover New Hampshire gave me some antibiotics and everything seems on the mend.

Last week I actually had 5 rounds of golf scheduled. I succeeded in only playing 2. It was that kind of week. Yesterday, I made it back down to Green Mountain National Golf Course for the Tuesday morning mens quota league. It was not a good day. The picture of my ball snuggled up to a tree on the 9th hole sums up the how the round went...so it goes.

But golf is one of those things, you take the bad with the good. The next shot offers the chance for improvement. The next hole offers a host of new opportunities. The next round is filled with promise and great expectations. And the antibiotics are working...and the sun is out..hmmm...I feel a round of golf coming on...

Keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.

Contribution made to "Team Killington" and the "Race for the Cure"

Innkeepers Bill Vines and Mary Furlong of the Birch Ridge Inn at Killington are proud to donate the proceeds from the first Birch Ridge Sunday Brunch of the 2007 summer season to "Team Killington" and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Each year, local residents Dick and Noel Gluck organize other Killington area residents and guests to form "Team Killington" to participate in the Vermont "Race for the Cure" to raise funds for the Komen foundation. Killington area businesses are enlisted to contribute to the effort by pledging support to the runners trekking down to Manchester for the "Race".

This year, the innkeepers at the Birch Ridge Inn, Bill and Mary, were happy to provided Dick and Noel with a check for $613.45 raised at the benefit brunch held on July 1st. The money will be donated in "Team Killington's" name to the Komen Foundation in conjunction with the 2007 Vermont/New Hampshire "Race for the Cure". This years race takes place in Manchester Vermont on July 29th.