Sometimes our weekends can be about catching up on life, rather than doing things that are out of the ordinary. As adults we do whatever we couldn’t get done during the week on the weekends. Shopping. Brunch with friends. Reading the paper. Watching the game. My weekends for the past 8 months have been filled with spending time with my wife and baby son. Aside from a lackluster winter, I barely went snowboarding… that changed this last weekend in New York.
I usually bounce around on program days and don’t stick with one kid, but this time I wanted to do it differently. I played Snow Mentor to a 14 Year old boy in our program.
I found it hard to believe that he was 7 years old when Stoked started! He had gone riding with us 5 times this season. He is a freshman in high school, loves building skateboards in our after-school program, and was good enough to be riding blue trails at Belleayre Mountain.
The bus activity included reflection, storytelling, and writing down our goals for next year. It was an amazing day.
My highlights include:
- Taking him down almost every black diamond hill on the mountain
- Teaching him a bit about fearlessness by showing him first
- The chair lift conversations and talking about life
- Losing him before lunch (Snow Mentor rookie mistake #1)
I always get bogged down raising money and thinking about how to keep the lights on at Stoked that I sometimes lose sight of who we’re working for. It was motivating to see how far we have come in seven years. Check out a few more pics from our day.
