The Search for Freedom Page #5

with "pro skateboarder,"

"surfer," or "Minecraft player."

I asked my little brother, and he said,

"Seriously, dude? I'm ten."

"I have no idea. Probably a pro skier.

Let's go get some ice cream."

See, us kids are going to answer

with something we're stoked on,

what we think is cool,

what we have experience with.

But if you ask a little kid,

sometimes you'll get the best answer,

something so simple, so obvious,

and really profound.

"When I grow up, I want to be happy."

This is where I'm really happy.

Powder days. Skiing, to me, is freedom.

I look at this

and see a thousand possibilities,

and it's a good metaphor for my life.

People are celebrating

just what action sports really entail,

much more than just the technical side.

It's just more about the opportunity

it gives you to be out on the mountains,

be out in the oceans.

It's just an amazing experience.

At the center of the whole industry,

there is still that core,

that very limited,

very small group of people

who really continue to push progression

and really take us to the next level.

Because that's really,

at the end of the day,

that's really where

a lot of the new ideas are born.

You always kind of have

in the back of your mind

what your biggest passions are,

and your biggest goals,

and that's what you live for.

And for people like me,

that's jumping off stuff,

sliding down snow as fast as I can,

finding interesting, creative ways

to have fun in the mountains.

Skis, normally,

are the fattest at the tip

and they get skinny under your foot,

and then they get fat again at the tail,

and these are the opposite.

They're fattest in the middle

and they get skinnier at the top.

I took that shape idea

from water sports,

from surfboards and from wake-boards

and from water skis.

So finally I just decided, you know,

I'd grab these water skis

and mount them up.

These are jumping water skis

from the '70s.

I put those things on,

and then all of a sudden

these huge double doors just went...

And I was like, "Look what we can

do now. Look what I can do!"

To be successful,

you've got to be learning new stuff.

You've got to be inventing.

You've got to be pushing the boundaries,

going bigger, flipping more,

spinning more, going higher.

That's the way you make your mark.

I think that is solely what drives me,

the land of the infinite possibility,

knowing if I go to work today, I can do

something I've never done before.

Just like skateboarding as a sport,

when the physical aspect of it evolves,

I believe that the environments

that we skate on

also should evolve

with the skateboarding itself.

The ultimate goal is to get to

where motocross and snowboarding's at,

as far as magnitude of jumps

and distance and heights,

and the caliber and scale

of the air time.

There's no boundary. There's no limit.

We haven't found it yet.

It's crazy because I'd always watch

the videos of Tony doing 900s.

It only took just one person

to have the great idea

to try to take it up a notch each time.

I guess I was that person on this one.

Somebody asked me, like, ten years ago,

what's the biggest advance

in the mountain bike?

I said, "The trail."

That whole technique, artistry,

has seeped out and is

just starting to cover the Earth.

The ultimate trail-building started out

of Vancouver and the B.C. area.

The trail builders up there,

some of them have become

sort of like underground cult heroes.

When I'm not working at the hospital,

I practice the same procedural basis

to go and do wingsuiting, climbing.

I change the outfit of clothes

that I wear, I change the look,

but the underlying process,

I think, is very similar.

There is a thrill-seeking gene,

the DRD4 gene on chromosome 11.

You can have

between two and 11 copies of that gene.

If you have two copies,

you're a low-sensation seeker.

If you have 11 copies,

you're a high-sensation seeker.

And that's me. That's Heather.

We've done the tests.

We have 11 copies of the DRD4 gene.

It's a whole difference

in our essential brain neurochemistry.

A lot of the behaviors that we think

are environmentally determined,

in fact, many of them have

a genetic predisposition.

And I don't consider myself

to be an extreme sports person.

I consider myself to be

somebody who's experiencing things.

Skydiving, it started as a way

to save your ass

when you got out of a plane

that was falling out of the sky.

And then it became a sport.

People wanted to prolong the amount

of free-fall time that they had,

so they started building suits

that gave them wings,

that prolonged the amount of time

that you could interact with the air,

interact with that new environment.

And that technology is getting better

and better all the time.

That's a nice climb right there, too,

that little tiny thin crack.

It's funny how that works,

because in your youthful times,

you play the risk, in a way.

It's more exciting.

As you get past that, and you realize

that you don't live forever...

- When you're 19, you'll live forever.

- Yeah.

But when you're my young age of 56,

you're like, "Dang, you don't."

I'm only 16, but I've been

through a lot of stuff.

Like, from 2011 to now,

I've been locked up probably, like...

Like 20 times.

Since I'm 18 now, if I keep

continuing this path I walk on,

it's going to lead down

to destruction and all that.

Time makes you think. It really does.

Just sitting in there, you think.

Yep. That's right.

It goes around that way.

Underneath, and then back out.

Don't even think about it.

Just start going, yeah.

Put your foot right inside that crack.

Yeah, like that. Exactly.

- Keep going. Motivation.

- Lift this one up, down.

Yeah. Focus. Just use the rope a bit,

and go up there and grab it.

Pull up, and we'll pull you up.

Got you, we got you.

Just jump. Yeah, bro. Yeah!

Yeah, yeah.

It's so interesting.

We call it, when we're underneath

a friend, you "spot" him.

So that's what we're kind of doing

for each other now

in these moves we're making.

Those kids are sharing how they feel

and I'm sharing how I feel.

We're spotting each other in life,

helping each other to the next move.

- You're holding me.

- Yeah.

My life's in your hands.

Every definition of adventure

in "Webster's"

has an element of risk.

If you take the risk out,

you take a lot of the values

that you get out of it.

When you're doing these risk sports

you try to live right on the edge,

and try to push that envelope

all the time,

push the edge away all the time.

But you never go over,

because if you go over, you're dead.

I know going into it

that there's a really good chance

that, unless everything is perfect,

I'm going to pull the plug.

I start out the day going,

"There's 20 nos."

"Unless I turn those into yeses,

I'm bailing on this thing."

Sometimes that means I've made it

three quarters of the way up a mountain,

and I can't get that 20th "yes,"

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