How many of us when we were little said, “I want to grow up and work all day in a little cubicle and eat microwave macaroni for lunch.” Probably, not too many of us aspire to be corporate cash cows. We all want to have exciting entertaining jobs that were proud to call home and tell old friends about. Well this past weekend I was fortunate enough to meet a man who had the guts to pack his bags, head to the mountains and follow his dream of making his living on the ski slopes.
Jay Casper was laid off from his corporate job with Qwest in 2001. Facing unemployment, he considered his options and decided he had enough of the office life. Instead, Casper decided to make his living off of what he loves most: skiing. Casper moved to Keystone and opened a new business he named SlopeTracker. This new business, which is catching skier’s attention, attaches a global positioning system tracker to your arm. It then tracks what lifts and rides you take throughout the day. When you’re done skiing or boarding the GPS device, which only weighs about 5 ounces, prints out a full color map of the mountains, showing every lift and run you have taken that day. It also tells you the distance you traveled, your top speed, total runs taken, vertical footage, hours riding/resting and calories burned.
The computer will also compare you with everyone else in the database and give you an overall difficulty and skill rating. It is interesting to see how far you have really gone after a full day of hard skiing/riding. It is $24.95 and you get a free beer while you wait for your map to print. For now it is only available at Keystone, but Casper is trying to expand to other resorts. The new innovation is making a big impression on skiers and boarders, and it is all thanks to one man who decided to follow his dream.
“My wife said, ‘Do something you love,’ and I love skiing, and so I built this thing for other people who love it, too,” Casper said. So instead of just slamming headfirst into the business world when we all graduate, perhaps we should take a moment to think about what dreams you once dared to believe in, and perhaps try to make them a reality. The world could use more people like Casper.
