ICR conference in Orlando; More from the Consumer Electronics Show; Elon Musk's Boring Company; Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 phone; Brunswick boat; Massage chair; Skiing at Snowbird; The best $148 I ever spent

1) Last night I flew to Orlando to attend the annual ICR conference today and tomorrow, where more than 200 consumer, retail, and restaurant companies will present. I always attend because it's a very efficient way to catch up on companies I follow and learn about new ones. I'll share highlights in my upcoming e-mails.

2) Somewhat related to all of the electric vehicles I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show ("CES") in Las Vegas, which I wrote about in Friday's e-mail, I also experienced another project by Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk: a transportation system run by his Boring Company.

CES is so huge that it can take half an hour or more to walk from one end to the other, so the Las Vegas tourism bureau paid the Boring Company a reported $50 million to drill tunnels under the convention center and operate a fleet of 70 Tesla Model 3 cars to whisk attendees around.

After taking an escalator underground, I entered this cool cavern and was quickly guided to a waiting car...

Within moments, I was entering this tunnel and, a few minutes later, arrived at the other end of the convention center...

Unlike last year, when the system was plagued by traffic jams (see: Two Underwhelming Elon Musk Projects on Display at CES), everything worked smoothly, but it would be hard for me to think of a less efficient method of transportation.

Rather than autonomous cars, which one might expect given the highly controlled environment and Musk regularly championing "full self-driving" and robotaxis, each car had a driver – and often (as in my case) only one passenger.

And why cars rather than a monorail system like the ones so ubiquitous at airports?

It was cool... but it made absolutely no sense.

3) One of the reasons I come to CES every year is to get an advance look at technologies that will soon go mainstream.

For example, four years ago I took this photo of a Samsung Electronics concept phone that had a regular screen on the front but could then unfold and give the user a spectacular, massive screen nearly the size of an iPad mini:

As someone who spends hours a day reading on my phone, I remember having serious gadget envy.

Well, last month when my Samsung S21 Ultra started having charging issues, I bought the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 – and I'm in love! Even though my old phone is now working fine, I'll never switch back.

Here's what the Fold 4 looks like closed:

This is fine for quickly checking my e-mails and messages, the weather, etc. – and I actually prefer typing on the narrower screen – but most of the time I open it to read or watch content:

Trust me, it's simply magnificent – truly mind blowing!

That said, there are two main drawbacks...

First, it's wildly expensive at $1,800. But given how much I use my phone, I'm willing to pay up for the best – ditto for my computer, a Microsoft (MSFT) Surface Book 3, with a detachable 15" touchscreen and docking station so I can use it with a full-size monitor and keyboard in my home office.

Second, two different repair shops told me that after months of usage, they see a lot of these phones come in with broken hinges, cracking screens, and other problems – and that they're difficult if not impossible to repair – so I made sure that when I bought the phone at Best Buy (BBY), I could return it.

But after three weeks, I love it so much that I'm willing to take the risk, though I did buy insurance (after researching it, I bought AKKO's).

When I asked the rep at the Samsung booth at CES about problems with the phone, he said the newest Fold 4 model is more reliable and that the company's warranty will cover any problems. I hope so!

Here's a picture he took of me in front of a wall of Samsung smart watches:

4) Boat and marine engine maker Brunswick (BC) had an impressive booth, highlighted by this cool-looking Sea Ray boat:

It's powered by two 600hp Mercury outboard engines:

The little 17-foot Four Winns boat at my family's house on Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire doesn't hold a candle to the Sea Ray – but at least it fits in our boathouse!

I'm going to take a closer look at Brunswick. BC shares plunged to around $35 during the COVID crash, then spiked to over $115 in May 2021, and now, with recession fears looming, have pulled back to close Friday at $76.81. At that price, the stock is trading at 1.2 times revenue, 6.4 times EV/EBIDTA, and 9.1 times trailing earnings – all reasonable multiples.

5) I'm convinced that one of the reasons I've avoided injuries despite doing a lot of things that really stress my 56-year-old body – like the 24-hour World's Toughest Mudder – is that I get 75 minutes of shiatsu massage every week at an old-school establishment called Salon de Tokyo on 57th Street in New York.

But if I didn't have easy access to a massage parlor, I'd seriously consider buying one of these massage chairs:

There were at least a half-dozen vendors at CES, with models ranging in price from $4,400 to well over $10,000. I only had time to try two, so I can't recommend any specific model, but I was impressed with the experience...

6) Speaking of stressing my body, my legs are jelly after my first two days of skiing this winter at Snowbird, which is about a 45-minute drive from the Salt Lake City airport in Utah.

It's a leg burner of a mountain under normal conditions, and even more so right now thanks to the 25 feet of snow it's gotten already this winter – so much that the road up to Snowbird has been closed on and off for the past week, as has the entire Mineral Basin back bowl of the resort.

But my timing was perfect. After flying home from Antarctica on Wednesday morning and attending CES in Las Vegas on Thursday and Friday, I landed in Salt Lake City on Friday night and fortunately the road was open, so the shuttle I booked took me straight to the Cliff Lodge at Snowbird.

I hit the slopes as soon as the lifts opened at 9 a.m. on Saturday and did a half-dozen laps off the Peruvian chair until I was joined by my old friend Mike Billings, who lives locally (on the left in the photo below), along with his friend Mike P., and his college friend Jeff (on the right in the photo), who, totally randomly, he ran into in the parking lot.

They soon opened Mineral Basin for the first time in a week, so we headed over there and found a lot of fresh powder to ski for a few hours. The weather couldn't have been better – mostly sunny and high 30s in the morning, going into the 40s in the afternoon.

It was cloudier and windier yesterday with fewer fresh tracks, but it was still an awesome day.

Here's a 45-second video of three clips: me then Mike P. skiing down a steep slope under the chairlift at the top of the Mineral Basin lift, then one I took of Mike P. skiing down one of the Gad Chutes off the Cirque Traverse. As you can see, he's a much better skier than I am!

With all the powder and great weather, the mountain was packed both Saturday and Sunday, so we paid for a Fast Pass, a new program Snowbird launched this year, whereby you pay $74 per day to cut right to the front of every line.

It was the best $148 I ever spent, as the lines were often 30 minutes and at one point reached a full hour at the Mineral Basin lift on Saturday. To my surprise, of the few thousand skiers I saw standing in long lines over the weekend, fewer than a half dozen were in the Fast Pass lines. As a result, I estimate that we got twice as many runs in!

Mike B. dropped me off at the airport yesterday afternoon, keeping all of my ski gear because Susan and I are flying back in two weeks to ski Deer Valley for five days.

I'll be home tomorrow night after a truly ridiculous (even for me!) amount of traveling: I have only spent two nights at home since I left for Fiji on December 8...

Best regards,

Whitney

P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com.