Abstract
Mark Cheimalecki, long time member of Boston Mills/Brandywine Ski Patrol, talks about his introduction to skiing in the 1970's,changes in ownership and management of the ski resorts, and the problems of X-treme skiing and snow-boarding. Cheimalecki describes the medical training,duties and procedures used by ski patrol members, as well as the importance of proper training and equipment needed to ski safely. He notes efforts by a group of African-American skiiers to introduce inner city youth to skiing. Other topics include biking in the CVNP, and the dangers of global warming on the environment.
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Interviewee
Cheimalecki, Mark (interviewee)
Interviewer
MacKiegan, Judy (interviewer)
Project
Cuyahoga Valley Project
Date
5-1-2009
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
30 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Mark Cheimalecki Interview, 01 May 2009" (2009). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 518003.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/278
Transcript
Judy MacKeigan [00:00:00] Hi, this is Judy MacKeigan. And today is May 1st, 2009, and I'm going to let Mark give us his name so I don't butcher it.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:00:13] Mark Cheimalecki.
Judy MacKeigan [00:00:14] We're here with Mark Cheimalecki, and I'm going to ask, first of all, when and where were you born?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:00:21] I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 3rd, 1949.
Judy MacKeigan [00:00:26] And you grew up in what part of Cleveland?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:00:28] I grew up in what would be probably, I think it's called the West Park area. It's to the, it's the southeast area of Cleveland. I lived there from the time I was born till I was 13 years old. Then my parents moved to Maple Heights.
Judy MacKeigan [00:00:44] Okay. So schooling. Where did you go to school?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:00:45] I went to Benedictine High School and, well, St. Timothy's grade school, Benedictine High School. And then after that I went to Cleveland State and then Tri-C.
Judy MacKeigan [00:00:58] So definitely a product of the Cleveland parochial schools.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:01:00] Definitely, yeah. Parochial school system and you know, born, bred and raised. [laughs]
Judy MacKeigan [00:01:08] And what is your occupation.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:01:10] Right now I work for the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and I'm a biomedical equipment technician in the Department of Clinical Engineering.
Judy MacKeigan [00:01:19] What does that entail?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:01:19] I maintain repair, troubleshoot, service hospital electronics equipment. And my specialty is patient care equipment. I work with the telemetry monitoring systems in the cardiology units and things like defibrillators, noninvasive blood pressure units, pulse oxymmetries, things of that nature.
Judy MacKeigan [00:02:04] When did you start skiing?
Judy MacKeigan [00:02:05] I started skiing in 1976. My wife and I... I always... I hated winter up until... I figured if I was going to live in Cleveland, I figured I'd better find something to do during the winter. So my wife and I, through a program that was advertised in the Cleveland Plain Dealer called the Learn to Ski Spree, which entailed six lessons on in six weeks, six lessons and, you know, teach you how to ski and went out to Brandywine Ski area and, on Sunday mornings, and learned how to ski.
Judy MacKeigan [00:02:41] So you didn't grow up skiing?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:02:42] No, no. But I will say this. Once I started skiing, I loved it. You know, now I wait for... November, comes around and I'm like, where is the snow? [laughs]
Judy MacKeigan [00:02:59] Which brings me to another question. Your boys grew up skiiing?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:03:02] Yeah, they both grew up skiing, you know, and they carried the sport over. They still ski. Of course, you know, Greg is... I'm a member of the National Ski Patrol, the ski patrol, with probably twenty-nine years, I think this, the season, this past season, the 2008-2009 was my twenty-ninth. And I'm also a ski instructor. And of course, you know, Gregory is a ski instructor, and my older son Scott is also a ski patroller.
Judy MacKeigan [00:03:34] And your wife, did she keep it up?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:03:35] Yes she does. Yes, she does.
Judy MacKeigan [00:03:38] So skiing...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:03:39] She had to to survive.
Judy MacKeigan [00:03:40] Yeah, right! [laughs] Otherwise she'd be like a [inaudible].
Mark Cheimalecki [00:03:45] Yes.
Judy MacKeigan [00:03:46] But I noticed that, being out here at Brandywine for all these years, do you think skiing is a family, often a family sport?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:03:54] Yes, it is. I think it is. The boys, when they were five and... Scott started when he was five in Greg, and I hope Scott doesn't hear this, but Greg was a little bit more athletic as a child than Scott. And so he started about three and a half, four, and we would go out there on Sundays and they had a program called Mogel Mites that we put the boys in where they learned how to ski. And my wife and I kind of got to ski for... by ourselves for a couple hours while the boys were in their lessons. And it evolved into the point where the boys didn't want to ski with mom and dad anymore because we were too old and slow. [laughs]
Judy MacKeigan [00:04:43] That would embarrass them. When did you first hear... Well, you told me. The Plain Dealer was where you heard about Brandywine...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:04:51] Mhmm.
Judy MacKeigan [00:04:51] Or did you you grow up knowing that it was out there?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:04:54] Oh, I knew Brandywine was out there, but I never had any interest in it until in '76 with my wife and some friends of ours. Actually it was the the guy that was the best man in our wedding and his sisters. We decided we were going to all learn to ski together, and we did. And...
Judy MacKeigan [00:05:16] So when going to Benedictine, where was that at?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:05:20] Benedictine is located on Martin Luther King Drive and Buckeye Road.
Judy MacKeigan [00:05:26] Do you remember there being a ski club?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:05:28] No, there was...
Judy MacKeigan [00:05:29] There wasn't in high school...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:05:30] No we did not have that at that time, no.
Judy MacKeigan [00:05:33] Do you think there was that other schools maybe?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:05:35] It's possible. I've talked to a lot of people, that's how they got involved in skiing. But we didn't have that had Benedictine and that... I went to Benedictine... I started there in '63, graduated in '67, and Brandywine did... And Boston Mills, I think, were pretty much both in their infancy at that time.
Judy MacKeigan [00:05:54] That's what I was going to say. [crosstalk]
Mark Cheimalecki [00:05:55] It was pretty small. Early '60s, I think they opened up the first hill over at Boston Mills.
Judy MacKeigan [00:06:02] In your years at Brandywine, had you heard any stories of why... What made somebody just get up one day and say I'm going to run a ski resort here here?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:06:10] Mmm, ah... You know, unfortunately, I don't, I don't have that information. You know, I know through my own experiences with the ski patrol, there's a lot of people that I met that are living in this area now that grew up in New England. When I first started on the ski patrol, one of the guys, the old timers, that was still there, a gentleman by the name of Pete Allison, he had patrolled in his college days up in New England and so... I think at Killington, Vermont. And, you know, so I think a lot of that interest from people that were from the eastern part of the country kind of generated here. And they saw, well, it's not... It's not mountains, but, you know, at least it's sliding. [laughs]
Judy MacKeigan [00:07:01] Right. Exactly. Brandywine, Boston Mills are kind of considered, sort of lumped together now.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:07:05] Yeah, right...
Judy MacKeigan [00:07:05] And there were two separate...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:07:07] There were two separate areas, and I believe it was 19... Oh, boy, I can't remember exactly. Eighty-nine, if I'm not mistaken, that Mickey Dover who owned Brandywine Ski Resort sold the sold Brandywine to Arlene and Dick Ludwig who were the owners of Boston Mills and we became one area. Or one, one conglomerate corporation.
Judy MacKeigan [00:07:35] When you started, you started at Brandywine.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:07:37] Yeah, Brandywine.
Judy MacKeigan [00:07:38] Did you go back or forth?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:07:39] No, actually, I skied... For the first two years I skied over at Brandywine pretty much exclusively, and then a friend of mine who I met when I was, after I got out of the Navy in 1972, I met a good friend of mine, Dick O'Herrick, who was on the patrol over at Boston Mills. And we started skiing over at Boston Mills. And through Dick is how I became involved with the ski patrol.
Judy MacKeigan [00:08:06] And did each of them have their own ski patrol?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:08:09] Yes, we had a separate patrol and of course then we, when we combined, that we combined patrols. And actually it is the largest volunteer patrol in the country.
Judy MacKeigan [00:08:20] And what does a ski patrol do?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:08:21] Well, basically, my job is to go around... I ski... When I see somebody down, I go up to them and I've asked them, you know, I approach them. I introduce myself as a member of the Boston Mills Ski Patrol and ask them if they're OK and if I can help them out. And if they say yes and they're hurt, we take it from there. We are trained and the training I received, which is called outdoor emergency care, I'm kind of the equivalent of a basic EMT, okay? And it's a two-year program. Of course, it has evolved since I went through it. But right now, it's a nine-month program where you go through an outdoor emergency care class that is set up by the national ski patrol through... And they have medical advisers that, you know, set up the curriculum. You are trained in CPR, you're trained in, you know, splinting breaks, you know, broken bones, stopping bleeding. We're trained in how to handle cardiac situations. We're trained in what to do if somebody's having, say, severe diabetic problems, you know, as an insulin dependent person or if they are diabetic, you know, oxygen administration, a lot of, a lot of stuff and...
Judy MacKeigan [00:10:01] And what are you licensed in? License is not the word. You know what I'm saying?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:10:03] OK, we are pretty much licensed... We are a first care provider, a first look provider. And what my scope of coverage or my scope of care would involve would be, you know, if a person has gone into cardiac arrest, I have learned what they call advanced life support for the basic rescuer. I know how to start, you know, use, do CPR, use an automated defibrillator. I can start an airway, although I'd rather not if I have to give you my choice, you know, splinting up breaks, securing them. We get into a situation, where we're in a situation if we're... We carry radios on the hill. And if I'm in a situation where I think, OK, this is what we call a trauma injury, somebody has hurt their back. You know, somebody, you come up to somebody and they say, I my hands and feet feel tingly. We have protocols, where, OK, we put them on a backboard, we secure them, and then we call the rescue squad and get the professionals, get them in, get them out as fast as we can to the point where we get them to professional care immediately, if not sooner.
Judy MacKeigan [00:11:23] So I'm just trying to picture this because of I'm thinking an EMT of course is equipped to handle it.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:11:26] Right, yeah.
Judy MacKeigan [00:11:28] So you're skiing.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:11:29] Right, OK. And I, and I carry a pack that has, you know, gauze, bandages, splints, stuff like that for real critical care because we're such a small area. I call down to our hut, I can get oxygen on the hill real quick. I can get the automatic defibrillator on the hill real quick. Things what we call a traction splint, because that traction splint, if somebody would break what they call the long bone of the leg, the femur, you have to put them in a traction splint to prevent that, because the muscle in your thigh is so, so big and powerful, your traction splint would go and prevent that muscle from spasming, which would actually prevent, could prevent the bone from becoming a compound fracture where the bone drives up through the leg, you know.
Judy MacKeigan [00:12:25] Okay, so there's a lot I didn't know. [inaudible].
Mark Cheimalecki [00:12:26] And then. Yeah, and then, then after that, it's like you said, we're skiing. So we're trained in skiing proficiency and how to bring a person down a loaded sled down the hill under all conditions safely, getting that person and yourself down safely on skis.
Judy MacKeigan [00:12:45] It makes it all sound like skiing is really dangerous and scary.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:12:52] It can be if you don't get over your head, if you take, if you don't let your friends take you and say, oh, you can handle this and take you someplace where you're not comfortable skiing, you know, if you take lessons from a professional instructor and you learn how to ski properly and then you follow that progression to the point where, you know, you have to push the envelope a little bit if you want to keep going. But if you want to ski where you're comfortable, it's the person that I think that, A, lets his friends or talk them into skiing someplace where they're not qualified to or be, you know, says I can handle this...
Judy MacKeigan [00:13:34] I mean the big spectacular accidents you hear about in the news involving celebrities, like the Kennedys, that happened recently...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:13:43] Denise Richards. Yeah, Denise Richards. You know, unfortunately, from from what I understand, that, when she took the fall, it sounded like such a almost freak... Because she was on a beginner hill. I personally wear a helmet, you know, to keep... And I advise everybody to wear a helmet, you know, because of the fact of, you know, the brain injury is so critical. You know, getting your bells rung can really cause a lot of damage. No, if she would have been wearing a helmet, I don't know if it would have helped her. Possibly the Kennedys, the Kennedy, and possibly Sonny Bono. If they would have been wearing helmets, they might have been able to at least maybe not walk away from it, but survive it.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:14:29] And you hear about them, of course, because they're celebrities, so I imagine there are other injuries, but there's also thousands of people skiing everywhere around the world with their ski tihngs each year. And I know some people that are in their 70s and 80s that still ski, so I think it must, there must be something about it that's drawing people.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:14:52] I had a friend and unfortunately he passed away several years ago, his name was Gunther Sprockoff. He was from Germany and he had been skiing well into his 80s. And he was my hero because he just skied very beautifully for a man that was 80, gracefully, and he was what we call a European skier. And he, and you could tell the way, his stance and the way he skied, you could tell he was trained in Europe.
Judy MacKeigan [00:15:25] Has there been a change, do you think, in who skis? Skiing, obviously, in my mind, at least in a lot of people, is very white middle-class or upper-class sport. In this area we have a large community of African Americans, we have a large community of ethnic minorities, of newer immigrants. Do you see any increase in possibly in people who are skiing?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:15:58] Because, unfortunately, skiing is expensive. It's an expensive sport. The average person, unless they're you know, they have the opportunity to come with a club, a high school student that can come with a club that defers the cost or, you know, somebody that has a... Like in my instance, you know, I go out there basically skiing for free, you know. [crosstalk] You know, but. Yeah, but there is an organization here called the Inner City Ski Bums, who are a group of African American skiers that, and I know several of them, a few of them were on the patrol. A few of them are trainers or instructors at the area that... They do bring inner-city school kids out and introduce them to skiing. So, yes, it is predominantly a white middle-class sport, but I think that's basically an economic issue. [crosstalk] Then more, more of anything else. I mean, there there are there are, you know, to say, well, African Americans are excluded. I don't think so. Simply because I know a lot of white Americans that can't afford it. And a lot of people don't like winter. [laughs].
Judy MacKeigan [00:17:15] Or heights.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:17:15] Or heights, yeah.
Judy MacKeigan [00:17:21] Two pieces of wood on my feet and falling down a hill. No.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:17:25] Controlled fall. [laughs]
Judy MacKeigan [00:17:28] I know yes. Well, it also takes a bit of grace, more than I have. But back to the ownership changes at the Mill. Or at Boston Mills Brandywine. Grady[?] mentioned to me that, I guess it's now falling under the auspices of Peak 'n' Peek?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:17:45] No. Peak resorts, which is a large corporation that owns several ski areas throughout the country. They own an area up in Killing[ton], or Vermont. They own another area in southern Ohio. They own a couple of areas. One, I believe is in Missouri. They own several areas and it's got corporate. You know, the whole atmosphere has gotten corporate in the way we handle things, whereas under the Ludwigs, it was kind of a little bit more than a mom and pop. But, you know, it was really nice because, you know, we, Dick and Earlene would walk through the lodge and we'd see them and they knew everybody. They'd talk to you and how's things going? And right now, we're the only thing we have there is a manager who's a corporate, you know, employee. So it's... It has it's good points and its bad points.
Judy MacKeigan [00:18:42] So it's sort of just part of the bigger trend in America where all kinds of things have gone corporate.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:18:44] Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's I guess you could say it's gone the way of the mom and pop grocery store as a comparison, you know, you just, they just can't afford to keep, compete with the big guys and, you know, be a private owner and plus liability insurance and stuff like that for anything like this, because we're such a litigious society that it's really... You've really got to have, you know, some corporate power behind you to run and run an operation like that.
Judy MacKeigan [00:19:18] When you say that's constant changes, is that related to things? Just a chain of command type thing?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:19:24] Chain of command, the way procedures we have, you know, things we have to follow, the way... One of the things that I personally don't care for is they're using us as policemen, as a patrol or as a policeman. And I'm not trained in, you know, crowd-control tactics or things like that. And we, you know, I can help people that are hurt, but... And I'd rather do that than have to confront a bunch of teenage kids that are riding their snowboards very recklessly and have to tell them to cut it out because there's automatically a confrontational situation there.
Judy MacKeigan [00:20:12] So that wasn't something that was part of being on ski patrol?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:20:15] Not at the beginning. Not when I started out but now it's evolving into that.
Judy MacKeigan [00:20:20] Do you think it's because... Is this just a corporate thing? Or is this because of changing problems, issues that didn't occur? I can't believe that teenagers didn't get confrontational 20, 30 years ago when I was a teenager.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:20:31] Well, yeah...
Judy MacKeigan [00:20:34] I was a teenager and I knew confrontational teenagers.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:20:35] But I think it has to do with a lot of authority that they're... I think, you know, teenagers are more willing to confront the authority than people from my generation were. And I'm not saying that we weren't, you know, know-it-all punks, you know. You know, because we were! It comes with being a teenager. Then on a side note, there's times where, you know, I think Gregory was lucky to live to be 21! [laughs]
Judy MacKeigan [00:21:06] Well, yeah, I guess we all are.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:21:06] But...
Judy MacKeigan [00:21:08] Well, and I think it's the extreme sport atmosphere.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:21:10] That to me has done a lot of damage to the sport of skiing, because in my opinion, they... The people that do that are the younger... Pretty much males. [crosstalk] Younger males. Yeah. They're bulletproof. They're never going to die. So the industry, to keep that segment, has kind of catered to that portion of the skiing industry. There's a very famous filmmaker, ski film maker, called Warren Miller, named Warren Miller, and all his movies, and he comes out with a new movie every ski season, and all his new movies are, in the last five or six years, have all based and based on extreme skiing, you know, jumping off the cliffs and, you know, picture yourself doing 720s in the air and stuff like that. And the problem I see is the fact that you get the old duffer like me who just wants to go out there and cruise, they're kind of ignoring that part of the skiing population nowadays. But in the long run, the people like that who evolve into the, you know, person that comes out just to ski are the people that are going to stay with the sport. These guys are either going to give it up or they're going to be too broken up to do it anymore. I mean, eventually you get to a point where your body says, uh-uh. I can't I can only take so many falls on my back before, you know, you have arthritis and other problems. And I think that is... Plus the attitude. When Burton invented the snowboard, there are still several areas in the country that will not allow snowboards, several big areas out west because they don't want clientèle it brings, and when... In fact, Burton, several years after he incorporated and started selling, mass-producing snowboards, their corporate Burton corporation went about to try and clean the industry up because snowboarding had a really bad reputation, which now, you know, and the person that snowboarded and things like that. I know a lot of snowboarders. They're great people. I'm not saying that they are bad, but there's... There was reasons why, you know, they did acquire that rap. The snowboarders acquired... And extreme skiers have acquired that reputation.
Judy MacKeigan [00:23:32] [inaudible] You didn't like winter, so I would assume you liked getting out in the summer...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:23:42] Oh, yeah.
Judy MacKeigan [00:23:43] So you do you use the Cuyahoga Valley National Park area in the summer?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:23:47] Yes, we do.
Judy MacKeigan [00:23:48] In the summer?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:23:48] Yeah. Yes, we do.
Judy MacKeigan [00:23:49] What do you do out there?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:23:50] I bike quite a bit in the park. I do a lot of the bike trails, the trail that they've... The Towpath trail, the old canal? Right along the canal, I've done that where I've gone from... And actually where we started was part of the Cleveland Metroparks since they put that extension on, it's a new part of that that goes along the Cuyahoga River through the Cuyahoga Valley, what used to be the old Industrial Valley portion of it. We've gone from Harvard Road to Akron, practically, riding our bikes, my son and I.
Judy MacKeigan [00:24:28] That's great. Did you do that growing? Do you remember going down into the Valley?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:24:29] No, not so much growing up. Not so much growing up.
Judy MacKeigan [00:24:34] Because you were in Maple Heights...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:24:34] Yeah. Yeah. We were in Maple Heights and Cleveland and everything like that.
Judy MacKeigan [00:24:38] I mean the Metroparks were around but of course the Cuyahoga Valley National Park didn't exist as such even as a recreation area until '74.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:24:43] Right.
Judy MacKeigan [00:24:44] But yeah, for what we've been trying to find out in these interviews, you know, what people did in that area before it was the park, well the ski resorts were there...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:24:54] Ski resorts were there, right, uh-huh.
Judy MacKeigan [00:24:59] But the biking, I don't think...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:24:59] Yeah, well, a lot of people bike down there, I believe, just because it was so, you know, it was open and there was probably a lot less traffic than on the roads that were, that went through the Valley. But since they've, you know, created the Valley National Park, they've closed off a lot of roads. And I think they've opened it up to that type of recreation for the area people in this, in this area.
Judy MacKeigan [00:25:23] Well, and a lot of it was private property.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:25:24] Right. Right. You know.
Judy MacKeigan [00:25:27] Do your parents... Werethey from Cleveland originally?
Mark Cheimalecki [00:25:30] Yes. Yes. They're born and bred in Cleveland, too,
Judy MacKeigan [00:25:34] Because I know my grandparents would used to... When I was a little girl, I can vaguely remember getting in the car and going down to the Valley, taking a drive. I had no idea what they were talking about. But because they were from south of Cleveland, it was kind of right on the edge where they grew up.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:25:48] Well, my dad tells stories, has told me stories about a friend of his that he grew up with. And before the... Before and after the Second World War, this guy raised coon hunting dogs. And he would, they would go down into the Valley and run their coon hunting dogs in the Valley along there and everything like that.
Judy MacKeigan [00:26:13] So that's interesrting. That's a new story I hadn't heard before. And any thoughts on what it means to have a national park right in our backyard? Which most people don't seem to recognize.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:26:25] You know, it's funny because I... Can I am step back? Are you still going to be able to hear me on the microphone?
Judy MacKeigan [00:26:31] Yep.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:26:32] OK. Working at the clinic, we get a lot of people in our job, we get a lot of sales reps and service reps from all over the country. And the people that out west, from out west, have this real kind of, you know, image of Cleveland that there's, you know, it's just a big tame city and everything like that. And they talk about, well, they're out in the wilderness and the Rocky Mountains. And you know, you say, OK, yeah, but like a fifteen-minute drive from my house and there is a wilderness, you know, that I have that I can go down into and I can get lost in, you know, literally get lost, you know. In fact, I talked to one of the park rangers when they were constructing and of course, like I said, it's part of the Metroparks, but when they were building that new section of the park, when they were cutting the trail through along by Harvard Road and everything like that, they found deer stands where local inhabitants were poaching deer in the park, you know, or what became became the park in that wooded area. And, you know, you think, well, OK, and this is in the middle of a large industrial area of our city. So, yeah, we've got this. And I think it's such a plus, you know, to just, just to be able to go down there and see, you know, things that you don't normally see. I've ridden my bike, and you're riding along, and especially the spring when the geese lay their eggs and they first hatch and you've got these huge geese coming onto the trail hissing at you because you're near their goslings, you know? [crosstalk] You know, you've got... Yeah, you've got to be careful riding down there. You come around the bend and also you've got four deer cutting across the trail and they all outweigh you, you know, and I'm a pretty big guy. [laughs]
Judy MacKeigan [00:28:29] That's true. Yeah. I agree. Any last thoughts on either the skiing or other activities or...
Mark Cheimalecki [00:28:41] Well, I guess kind of an editorial sense that I'm a firm believer in global warming, what is happening to the planet, and I hope there is some way to cut it out because I'm seeing my ski season, you know, get cut shorter and shorter. Of course, I know there's a lot of people that say "Good!" But it just isn't natural to have 70 degrees in December and then all of a sudden, you know, in April, you have a blizzard, you know?
Judy MacKeigan [00:29:15] I agree. Well, and in areas like the park, that's part of the [inaudible]. The more areas like that we have the better.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:29:19] And you look at that park and just the trees that are down there and they've got to be sucking a lot of the CO2 out of the atmosphere. But I'm also noticing that there's a lot more dead trees lying on the ground now in the last couple of years than I've ever noticed before. And it seems like I'm looking up at leaves that are that are dying sooner in the fall than normal. So I think if anybody disbelieves in that, then they should go down into that park and, you know, learn about the ecology.
Judy MacKeigan [00:29:53] Absolutely. I agree. Okay, well thank you for this.
Mark Cheimalecki [00:29:54] Quite welcome. I enjoyed this.
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