Bill Johnson

1984, Sarajevo Winter Olympics. Back when men raced on 225's. Atomic Team Bionic...Ride the red sled. Fast as fuck. That was also the first winter I rode a snowboard. Probably around the same time Bill Johnson won the gold medal. My best friend Bryan Finke scored a board from some hippy Vermont company called Burton. He got the Performer modael, later called the Woody. We used it Portland's Gabriel Park whenever it snowed in town. It was always a race to build and shred booters above the baseball fields before the snow melted. On the weekends we brought it with us up to Timberline and Mt Hood Meadows to fuck around with between skiing. Over the next summer I started working at Round Table Pizza making something like $3.25 an hour and bought myself a Sims 1500 FE PRO. It was the first board with metal edges and p-tex base. I never skied again.