It’s not every day that a geezer like me gets a thumbs up from a teenage snowboarder.

Skiing today was epic. Tons of fresh snow, bright blue sky, beer, and balls to the wall. With the wife / kids / job scenario getting up to the hill for a day can be challenging, so when I do make it I don’t screw around.

One of the benefits of being in good shape is that I can do open to close and go hard all day. I stepped off the gondola at 9:00am right when the chairs starting moving and skied up to my car at 4:15pm. Minus lunchtime that was over 6 hours of intense skiing. Because it was a weekday there were hardly any line ups, which made for even more runs. I like leaving everything on the hill, with all the short and fast-twitch muscles fibers in my legs completely vaporized.

My brain damaged buddy was supposed to join me, but he’d been on call until 8:00am that morning and although usually his on-call nights for being a paramedic are quiet, people were being inconsiderate of his forthcoming ski day and he spent much of the night doing paramedic-type shit. Speaking of shit, one of the things he had to do was transport some guy with a bowel obstruction to the city. Yuck.

As a result, my friend had to catch some sleep and we didn’t meet up until lunch. He was holding back a bit because, according to my wife, he shouldn’t have been skiing at all due to the fact that his concussion was less than a month old. I only did a couple of runs through the terrain park because the snow was so awesome, but there is one cliff that offers about twelve foot vertical drop if you really nail it.

My friend and I have done this cliff a number of times in the past and we pulled up to see a bunch of young snowboarders hanging out there. Three were above and one was down below taking pictures. One kid went off the jump and it was pretty lame, he barely got any speed and only dropped about five feet because he barely cleared the lip.

It was time for the old guy to show the whipper-snappers how it’s done.

If I’d been alone I would have hit it pretty hard, but I love an audience and showing up the young fellas, so I went flying off the cliff at top speed and sailed a long ways through the air before finally making contact with the snow again. The drop must have been fifteen feet and even landing in a bunch of soft powder I felt my knees and spine compress. I still landed it though. It’s good to be tough.

The kid taking the pictures gave me a thumbs up and said, “Live fast and die awesome, man. That was sick.”

A 40-year old guy did something a teenager thought was sick. I guess that’s a good thing. His comments did get me thinking, and I really wouldn’t mind “dying awesome.” However, I need to amend his maxim to: live fast, live long, die awesome. That’s what I want.

I try not to take stupid risks because I’d really rather not die young. The fact that I landed the cliff shows that I had the skills to do it. If it had been a 25 foot drop I wouldn’t have touched it. I’m a far cry from Warren Miller material, no matter how good I think I am.

I would imagine that eventually I’m going to have to slow down, but not yet. My knees are holding up just fine and the low back isn’t doing too badly either. Maybe I’ll still be skiing when I’m in my nineties. Maybe I’ll have a "senior moment" and accidentally ski off a really big cliff.

Maybe I’ll die awesome.