I know this

"So, do I just ride straight off the jump?"

"Umm.. the way you asked that question makes me worry."

It's 2:45 P.M. I know this as the time when the teams clear out of the terrain park and the only people left are the ones who spent the whole day trying to get up the courage to hit the jumps.

They're noobs, goobs, gapers, the inexperienced, whatever you want to call them.

"If you try to balance over the center of your snowboard and ride your toe edge just slightly, then pop off the lip, you'll do much better."

That's me trying to talk some sense into this poor kid who is almost certainly half my age.

The first guy hits the jump, does a straight air with a grab, and these people are losing their minds over it.

You've gotta understand why they would wait all day to hit this jump. During normal hours, the run up to the jump is packed full of kids on the teams lining up to hit the thing in this long train of skis and snowboards.

It is incredibly intimidating if you're new to the sport. Not only do you have to learn how hit a jump, you're trying it in the middle of a crowd that's way better than you and perhaps a little judgy. If you screw up, everyone's gonna see it.

So people wait until the crowd thins out, and then they attempt to summon some courage to hit the jump at the end of the day.

Nevermind that this is not the optimal time to hit jumps. They're tired from a full day of snowboarding and the landing is starting to get dark and icy. They would know this if they were more experienced, but alas, here we are.

After this small group of people are done cheering the straight air, I think to myself, "I am going to blow these peoples' fucking minds."

I drop in switch and do my best cab underflip 540 of the whole day, really putting my all into it. I put down the landing gear and ride off into the sunset, trying to appear mysterious.

How the hell am I even here doing this? It has to be a dream.

A year ago, it was a dream. That is to say, I could only get to this place in my dreams.

I was diagnosed with a heart valve problem two summers ago. I was told I would eventually need surgery for it. To get technical, it was a mitral valve repair surgery with a 90% success rate and a 10% chance of having a valve replacement. My nurse told me my chance of death was 0.02%.

It turns out heart surgery is kind of a big deal. They literally stop your heart and run your blood through a machine, operate, restart your heart, and then wake you up.

If I were to get a valve replacement, I would have received a mechanical valve, which means blood thinners for life and no more snowboarding (especially no more terrain park snowboarding where you can fall on your head and bleed to death).

Last December, when I was facing this reality, snowboarding seemed so far away, like it was some part of my past locked away forever, something I might never get to experience again.

If I live ten thousand lifetimes, how many of them are in this snowboarding world with all of its interesting characters, the people flying through the air going upside down, grabbing snowboards, goobs who don't know what they're doing, the feeling of cruising on a groomer, the joy of blowing peoples' minds with some dumb trick that wouldn't impress the more discerning athlete?

It felt like I would have to die and get born again to get back to this place.

I got the surgery last January, and it was a successful repair. I was so weak in the following five days that it certainly felt as if I had been reborn.

Walking around the cardiac ICU with three tubes coming out of my body, draining fluids into these huge canisters I had to carry with me, I tried to make light of the situation with my physical therapist.

"You know, I'm normally really active when I'm not having heart surgery."

I lost an entire season of snowboarding to the recovery process. They put me on a more mild blood thinner called Eliquis (yaay old people drugs) for three months, so I couldn't do any of my usual activities like mountain biking. I just kept working on my games figuring c'est la vie. I'll get back to it.

Two days ago, I did. It was my first day in the terrain park in two years.

Could I still do what I used to do? Would muscle memory just kick in at the right moment and save me?

What the hell am I doing here, anyway? I'm on three different prescription drugs. Okay maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.

One of them is plain old low dose Aspirin. The other is a statin. The third is this beta blocker called Metroprolol Succinate.

I have a scar on my chest, and I'm taking the same drug my dad takes. But sure, let's hit some jumps two years out of practice.

The first run was a straight air that felt super wobbly. The second run was another straight air, this time with a better grab and a more solid landing. The third run was a backside 360. The fourth run was a switch underflip 540.

If you knew my story, if you knew what it felt like to wake up in the cardiac ICU vomiting all night desperate for some ice chips to quench my thist, you might think all of this is rather remarkable.

And it is remarkable, but it's also not remarkable.

This is my routine. I've been doing this set of tricks in this order, day after day, year after year, for over a decade. I conditioned myself to be this way. Whatever fear I once had of doing these tricks is long gone.

This is who I am, and when I do this, I know it.