Good Ol' Jean Claude- Chris Jones, my dad. I call him that due to his super tight knee style he adopted from emulating Jean Claude Killy. I feel blessed that on a 1970's teacher's salary we still drove to Tahoe or Mammoth annually to have a family ski vacation. As a young father he used ski bum "dirtbag" techniques to squeeze the most skiing a family of four  could get on a budget. He also used his teaching skills to fire me up for life long love and desire for skiing.

My best memory was a President's Day weekend vacation at Mammoth in 1982. I was 11 years old. My dad was helping me work on my parallel Crissy turns off Chair 9, an advanced intermediate area. I had a wide open slope to swing those skis around and pretty soon I didn't need the whole slope to initiate the turn. We had been skiing the same run for a while, so he took me over to an area where there were two rock outcroppings. I remember it being a tight couloir but in reality the rocks were about 20 yards apart. There was no way I was going to drop in with the rocks on the slope...No way. My dad pumped me up, "listen, you can make it through this area in like four turns. You can link four turns can't you?"  I was not feeling confident, but yeah I could link four turns.