Shribman: What if you had the power to change skiing?

Bluebird days on the slopes are dream material. (Jag_cz/Getty Images)

Now for the latest episode of “If I Ruled the (Skiing) World.”

Well, if I really did rule the skiing world, things would be a lot better. Not to sound like a president delivering an inaugural address — and in my other incarnation, a political reporter and columnist, I have heard more inaugural addresses than I’d like to count — here are the ways I would change skiing:

A requirement that ski areas have clocks in prominent places.

Yes, I know there are many ways of telling what time it is — old-fashioned watches, smart watches, cell phones, asking the guy sitting beside you on the chair lift — but one of the rituals of a day at the mountain is breaking away from your ski partner and setting a time to meet at the lift line, or at the top of one of the back bowls, or in the lodge, or at the car when the day’s done. But when temperatures dip below freezing, or when your parka’s caked with snow, the last thing you want to do is to roll up your sleeve and check the time or pull out your cell phone. Pick up a few $12.95 clocks at Wal-Mart and hang them near the chairlift.

An executive order banning skiers from wearing football or hockey numbered jerseys.

Mixing sports — wearing a Tom Brady uniform jersey, to choose a particularly odious and frequent phenomenon on the slopes — is like mixing metaphors: You shouldn’t do it. It is particularly ridiculous when skiers sport a Miami Dolphins uniform in the lift line. Tua Tagovailoa is not a skier role model; he was born in Hawaii, went to college in Alabama, and is always getting injured. Aqua, orange and blue are not winter colors; they belong at Boynton Beach, not Bretton Woods. Wear a blue ski parka like mature people do.

Special tax credits for struggling ski areas, particularly small ones.

Everybody else is getting tax relief these days, so why not the little local areas where the ski ticket prices are in double digits, not triple digits, and where you likely are to find someone’s old couch in the lodge. Whatever you think of the president, it is a shame he lives at Mar-a-Lago instead of in Pinkham Notch — just as it was a shame that the last president had a beach house instead of a ski house. The tax code would be a lot better off with a skiing president. Where have you gone, Gerald Ford? Ski Nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

A ban on extortionate prices in ski cafeterias.

When did restaurants in ski resorts become the long-lost cousins of airport food outlets? Everyone knows the ideal ski lunch is a cup of soup or chili, maybe a decent roll, and a drink, and it should cost no more than $10. If you want a fancy meal, go downtown or become a golfer. Otherwise food prices should match prices at the nearest diner, where the meals taste better anyway.

Allow skiers to get to the lift without risking a heart attack.

I can name a half-dozen ski areas where the greatest exertion of the entire day comes from lugging your skis from the lodge to the lift. Often there are stairs, and usually they are icy. Either build the lodge in a better place or provide a Magic Carpet to the lift line. Or have a coronary unit on site. The Magic Carpet’s probably a better bet.

Stop lying about how many trails you have.

In the old days, the lying was about the conditions. You had to know the code to survive: “Hard packed” meant impenetrable ice. “Spring conditions” meant slush and bare spots. Now the Big Lie is in the number of trails. This is skiing’s equivalent of grade inflation. The teeny traverse between one half of an upper portion of a trail to a lower portion of another trail is not an excuse to count the trail and the traverse as five separate trails. It is two: One trail with two halves, another trail with two halves, and a traverse about the length of an average Derrick Henry run.

Find that guy who used to ski around with a huge backpack that dispensed (for free) hot chocolate and bring him back to the slopes.

I haven’t seen that fellow for years. Maybe he’s at your favorite baseball stadium wearing a stupid outfit and running around the outfield at the end of the fifth inning — I’m thinking of the fools dressed up as sausage racers in Milwaukee, as dead president racers in Washington, and as pierogi racers in Pittsburgh. Maybe the hot chocolate guy just grew up and listened to his parents who told him to get an adult job like everyone else in his college class. In any case, he was worth a laugh and a quick warm-up. Let’s find him, get that outfit out of the steamer trunk, suit him up, and get him out there again.