Twas a beautiful day on the mountain at Sierra at Tahoe ski resort. Temperatures hovered around 45 degrees. Put my new skis to the test. Well, they are new to me. I bought them at Play it Again Sports in Orangevale. $900 Volkl skis for $100. That is how I roll these days: the bargain bin. My son and I made a day of it.

I grew up on that mountain. I even worked there as a ski lift operator during high school. Times have changed so much since I was a kid. When I was young, people wore mostly jeans, jackets or neoprene. These days it’s all designer snowboard wear. Most of the kids out there look like Shaun White. The interesting thing is, a lot of them are really bad. I witnessed multiple painful wipeouts. Kids trying to do snowboard tricks they see on ESPN. Not good.

I stick to skiing. Turns out skiers are an endangered species these days. When I was in a lift line some totally rad snowboarder dude said to his girlfriend [just loud enough so I could hear], “Skiing is so easy. Anyone can ski. Snowboarding takes skill.” My son, a snowboarder, would agree. Me, not so much. I thought to myself, “Well…   you haven’t seen ME ski!” That was of course on the first run, long before my 42 years caught up to me at 3pm. Getting old hurts.

Skiing/boarding is a great way to spend quality time with your kids. The teaching moments are plentiful. The metaphors endless. Today my son and I talked about all sorts of stuff like perseverance, balance, working through the pain, being prepared for adverse weather, conditioning, pacing yourself,  peripheral vision, and all sort of other stuff. He’s still at that age where he listens to me .. a little.   Good thing he forgot his iPod in the car.. good thing for Dad, that is.