This morning, instead of my usual routine of writing alongside a cup of coffee, I decided to finally edit all of the skiing and snowboarding footage that I took last month in Park City, Utah. Click here for the final cut.

Compared to the video we did for Jackson Hole, I don’t like the selfie perspective as much. It doesn’t show enough of the person. This time we used the Go Pro 3-way arm, but in Jackson we used a plastic tube that I think was used for a beer funnel before that. Next year we’ll go back to that.

Video is a lot of fun and I would love to figure out a way to incorporate more of it into this blog. But that’s a far bigger time commitment and I am not prepared to allocate resources to that. I write every day. That’s my thing.

I am, however, not ignorant to what’s happening in the world of video blogging. And I think there are lots of opportunities for businesses who have the resources to allocate towards projects like this.

Take for instance this vlog by New York video guy Casey Neistat. It’s probably the best piece of marketing that the Phantom 4 drone could have asked for. It’s authentic. I watched it and now I want one. Take my money. 

(Note to city geeks: It’s worth watching just for the drone aerials of Cape Town, South Africa.)

To my knowledge, I don’t think people are doing anything like this in the real estate business. But eventually it will happen. Because people are becoming increasingly immune to your typical marketing pieces.

I am leaving this morning for my annual retreat to the mountains. This year we are going to Park City, Utah, which we decided to do about a year ago.

The reason we chose this particular place is because Vail Resorts spent $50 million over the offseason to merge Park City Mountain Resort with the neighboring Canyons Resort. 

There’s now a mountain-to-mountain gondola and 7,300 acres of skiable area across the two resorts, which makes it the largest ski resort in the United States. And that’s why, this month, the New York Times named it one of the 52 places you need to visit in 2016. 

But it’s not all puppy dogs and ice cream. What kickstarted this transformation was that the previous operator of Park City, Powdr Corporation, actually forgot to renew its sweetheart land lease.

So if you’re at all interested in skiing, snowboarding, real estate, and/or lawsuits, you might be interested in what happened here. Curbed did a summary of the battle last year. It was big news in the ski world.

Image via the New York Times

Two of my favorite things are snowboarding and cities. 

So the 4K GoPro video below, called Japan Snow - The Search for Perfection, really does it for me. 

The video is the journey of two GoPro athletes as they go from Tokyo to Hakuba (a village near Nagano, host of the 1998 Winter Olympics) to the northern island of Hokkaido in search of untracked powder. If you’re a snowboarder or skier, you’ll of course appreciate that journey.

For you urbanists, the city shots are incredible. I also love how they describe Tokyo as a “sophisticated web of innovation and tradition.” I often describe Tokyo in a similar way, but I like their wording better.

Make sure you full screen this video and turn on your sound. It’s about 14 minutes short. Enjoy.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpXHoDKL64?rel=0&w=560&h=315]