Me and Scott trying to out-cool the Marlboro Man.

Scott was a brilliant and talented man.  It seemed that his talents and capabilities were almost unfair.  He was a shining star, a great guy, a celebrity in his industry (mainframe computers with IBM), masterful acrobat on a mogul field, incredible guitarist, beautiful singer, brilliant student and a charismatic person.  I considered him a “genius”.  He was that brilliant.  He retired at 53, having nested his egg.   I met Scott on the playground of Pine Grove Jr. High by getting in a fist fight with him over bumping into each other on skateboards.  It was a pointless scuffle foisted upon us by our peers that ended quickly, because the recess bell rang.  At the end of the day, we found each other and laughed about how ridiculous it was and became lifelong friends.   We went through our time at Miramonte High School as close friends, and quickly discovered our shared love and capabilities at skiing moguls and steeps.  His parents’ cabin at Tahoe Vista was to become our go-to place, once we were able to drive, and Squaw Valley was our go-to steeps.  Scott and I would drop into mogul fields, find a “line” and dance down, one behind the other.  The exhilaration of it was incredible, especially when done under the chairlift and encouraged by onlookers.  One of my worst memories with Scott was in 1984.  We boarded KT22 at Squaw, as we had done many times before.  It was our first run of the day, and we were excited for the moguls of West Face that we had done so many times before.  We got to the second tower with our chair still swinging from our boarding.  Suddenly, it snapped off the cable and we slammed onto the rocky ground.  I was OK, but Scott was struggling from having the wind knocked out.  We were surrounded by onlookers and then whisked away to the Squaw Valley office.  If it had detached 2 minutes later, I wouldn’t be writing this.  The amazing thing about Scott was that even into his 50s, he trained at Whistler during the summer to master mogul skiing.       After Miramonte, we both enrolled at Cal.  We were in different fraternities, but as in high school, spent many weekends at Squaw, busting our asses on moguls.  During the summers we skied and boated on lake Tahoe with our friends.  In 1982, we backpacked through Europe with fellow Miramonte buddy, Greg Thompson along with 2 of his Davis fraternity brothers.  It was an incredible trip – a youth experience that influenced my future life of travel.    Later in life, as I raised my family and he keynote spoke at worldwide computer conventions, we kept in touch by phone, visited when possible and tried to stay connected.  We even skied together, although I was not able to do what we did in our 20’s and 30’s, while he had actually improved and was more aggressive.  I’m happy that I was able to stay connected to my old friend Scott.  He was a brilliant and talented man.