Dear Friends,

It is another couple of weeks until the solstice and the days start getting longer again. Up here in the North Country, the days are pretty short right now. The mild weather continued this week so I was able to ride in December for the first time, but it snowed a bit last night and the temperatures are starting to drop again.

This year’s hottest gift by far is the iPad, and we have been restocking daily to make sure we have plenty for the holidays. For many people, the iPad 2 is all the computing power that they need, and the rich content available in Apple’s App Store and iTunes Store makes the iPad almost indispensable these days. I’d say the iPhone and the iPod touch, both using Apple’s iOS 5, are next in line all and then come the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. We have some great deals coming on the previous version of the 11-inch MacBook Air, so stay tuned for those very soon.

I am very proud to announce that within a few weeks all of the electricity for our S. Burlington store and a percentage of our electrical usage at our Waitsfield headquarters will be powered by the sun. Well, I guess just about any power source is ultimately solar in nature, but in this case we will be installing a series of solar trackers manufactured by our friends over at All Earth Renewables. Ten of these arrays will be installed in the field next to our warehouse, converting sunlight directly into electricity. I was very active in the renewable energy field for many years in the ’70s and ’80s, and it is particularly pleasing to me that we can now install photovoltaics, generate power and, utilizing group net metering, provide all of the power to our flagship store. We will post pictures as the installation progresses. This is yet another initiative for the Planet portion of our commitment to measuring our success by the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit.