Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 305

Yesterday, my knee started acting up again on the mountain. It (sometimes they) has a tendency of doing that. Supposedly it's my IT (iliotibial) band. But I'm not exactly sure. So I had a low-impact snowboarding day and a high-impact aprés ski day, instead. However, when I was training with Noah Mandel last winter, one of the things that he suggested was rotating my snowboard binding to take some of the pressure off of the side of my knee and move it toward the front. So I did that. I rotated it exactly 3 degrees. And then today, I had one of my best days on the mountain. Sometimes all it takes in life is 3 degrees.

There are a number of ways to evaluate a good après ski spot. There's the food. The drinks. The views/sun exposure. The overall atmosphere. And the simple test of: Am I having fun here? But another important telltale sign is the tables. Yes, the tables. What you want to do is inspect their structural integrity. If they were carefully engineered for dancing upon, then bingo -- you're more than likely at a good après ski spot. And it probably means that at some point in the afternoon or evening, you are going to end up on top of one of them. See above video. If you happen find yourself in this fortunate situation, then there's no better place than one of the locations of La Folie Douce . I have been to a number of mountains, and I can confidently say that, so far, nothing comes even remotely close. Their tables are robustly engineered.