What could I write about that didn’t come from spending 22 years in South Lake Tahoe? Not a damn thing, to be precise. I miss everything about it: the lack of responsibilities; getting beat up by my sisters; and Rachel, who sat next to me in fifth grade–especially Rachel. It’s impossible not to be nostalgic. Every incident has had a profound effect on my life and that is what makes me who I am. The time I tried to shoot a mosquito bite off my left butt cheek when I was eight–I guess that showed my dad I was an idiot; he had to dig the BB out with tweezers. When I was seventeen and got beat up by three 30-year-old hicks in Oregon–well, that taught me not to get in fights, at least not with people bigger than me. Or when I was sixteen and a carload of five of my friends slid off a road, killing Sandy, Rory, and Casey. That took the innocence out of adolescence, showing me the importance of life and the fact that some of us might not be here tomorrow.

But what’s had an equally profound effect on my life has been the past eleven years I’ve spent snowboarding. In that time I traveled across the world, met new people, got shut down by endless chicks, and had so much fun. I’m 25 now, I’ve got a real job, and live a fairly normal life. Ten years from now I’m sure I’ll still be working in an office, snowboarding on the weekends or on holidays. Who knows what I’ll be remembering then. Maybe it will be the time when all my old friends got together for one final shred, the day I finally moved back to Tahoe, or better yet, both. Age and responsibility has a tendency to make people forget what truly makes them happy. But I won’t let it happen to me, ’cause when I’m 60, I’ll still be acting like I’m fourteen.