Once again Bishop with a great thread.
I don't know if I ever actually dreamed of being a big "pro" X-games type skier when I was young. I always just looked up to style skiers like Pollard, Brandon Becker, Andy Mahre, Pep. I remember watching War or the Hit List or something where Andy does a fucking HUGE flat 5 safety over this giant kicker in Whistler and he's getting filmed by a heli that's like right alongside him and I thought "god damn I'm going to go do that." So I moved from Tahoe to Colorado, skied hard on the Summit County park scene for a few years, made some awesome friends, some great memories. Blew both my knees and my shoulder AC ligament, got a few concussions, every injury was either filming or competing.
And it's crazy when you're already struggling to keep up with the ridiculous levels of progression in this sport, on that scene, and then you get hurt. It's so hard to come back unless you are just hell-bent on being a pro skier. To put it in perspective, when I left, Andreas had won X-games with no doubles in his run, most guys were just then learning switch doubles for movies and everyone was still jerking it to "afterbang". I was out for a season. When I came back, the guys at Keystone were doing doubles all 4 ways, with grabs. "Afterbang" had turned into that kind of steeze where you can't tell if the guy is awake or not. Oh and some of the "guys" that are doing all this gangster ass shit? They're like 15 and still have braces.
That was like 4-5 years ago. In the time that I'd spent rehabbing my knee, my grades had come up, I took the LSAT, went to law school. I do relatively enjoyable, challenging work for 60+ hours a week, make decent money. My knees still kinda hurt and I'll probably have arthritis or tendonitis or some shit. I skied like 110+ days a year for 5 years. I skied like 8-9 days last year. But man I still watch every top-rated edit on here, I still keep up with my friends out west, I still buy movies. I can still cruise the parks with some steeze, do some corks and rodeos and stuff. Shit, I still post on NS from time to time.
My point is that I'll be a weekend warrior at best, and hopefully my job allows me to afford more shred every year. I will never ever get paid to ski or anything. But you know what? I still dream about being a pro skier and riding every day, filming, competing. That shit doesn't ever get out of your system.