Stolen Snowboard Day

The kiddo and I had a surprise snowboard day yesterday - a surprise both because there's still snow, and because we could get tickets at the last minute. So we had a "boy's day," which means no warm ups - just going right onto the black diamonds - eating candy and chicken fingers for lunch, and letting him ride alone up the chairlift whenever he wanted, which turned out to be about half the runs.

Heck, if I didn't hustle to get into the chair behind him, he'd be most of the way down the mountain before I got off the lift. I remember doing that to my parents, and them telling me to wait for them all the time. I didn't do that. I just booked it to catch up.

I don't want him to lose his stoke for being on a board; I remember, clearly, losing mine for skis when, after pushing to make it as a big-time racer, I figured out that I was just too small for gravity to help me enough. Because I had gotten to the point where the race was all there was, I burned out and switched to telemarking, which doesn't really have races.

So we go out without pressure, and just have fun. When it stops being fun, we take a break.

People say that pressure makes diamonds to help justify unreasonable deadlines. I've always thought that pressure mostly causes explosions.

Originally published on LinkedIn in mid-March 2021.