Meet Jake Burton, one of the most influential sports figures you've never heard about.

Born in 1954, he went on to ski competitively at the U. of Colorado until injuries cut short his career. With big dreams and a small inheritance, he headed to Vermont to fulfill a dream: manufacturing his own snowboards. The dream lived but Jake blew through his cash and in just 12 months, he was $100,000 in debt. But Jake never gave up and now he's a global figure in snowboarding, sitting atop an a business empire and his snowboards are famous worldwide.

Below is a very nicely done video about Burton that is really an advertisement for the Wall St. Journal. But don't let that put you off. If you're into video making at all, this piece has some great techniques; if you just like a good ol' fashioned "follow your dreams" story, this will do it for you to. And if your just a digital photography ho, yeah, this vid has something for you to just watch and goof on: the extensive coverage of a Burton photo shoot where they are actually using (gulp) flim. They even show the art director checking out the Polaroid test shots.

Today is my 51st birthday. I can't say this with any amount of celebration in my voice, or in my writing. Writing out "51" is hard enough; I nearly choke when saying it out loud.

This past year has been a tough one, and in ways I didn't foresee. I walked away from a good great paying job and have little or nothing to show for nearly a year's "time off." There is a "good excuse," I'm just not ready to let the world in on it... yet.

I had a nagging feeling last year when I hit the half-century mark that "everything would change," and it has. Oh, it hasn't all been dire; it hasn't all been black clouds and pending doom. For example:

My second grandchild was born just a week ago, again to my eldest son. Jake Shamgar is his name (no, I'm not kidding).

I completed a cross-country trip that saw me drive 18,000-plus miles from sea to shining sea and then some. That picture above is mine, taken somewhere in the high plains of Colorado. I have a ton of wonderful stories to tell, in both photography and audio I collected on my way. Just don't ask to see it because, frankly, it feels like I'll never get it out into the world for others to see (this relates directly to the "good excuse" mentioned earlier).

My second son has launched a vigorous and respectable freelance writing career; meanwhile he has completed a pretty good, though very raw, novel. In fact he has rewritten said novel; he's begun to launch into the real world of agents (and rejections). This is something his old man has dreamed of and never, ever, even gotten close to. I'm incredibly proud of him, even if it never gets published.

My eldest, besides becoming a father for the second time has also published a book, of his photography, again, beating his old man to a dream.

My youngest son from my first marriage looks more like he grew up in the corn-fed fields of Nebraska than the rain soaked suburbs of Seattle; he's broad-shouldered, a bit arrogant and worth every bit of respect he's due as Navy Corpsman. He's now training for the killing fields of Iraq, where he will soon be deployed with a company of Marines, who will call him "Doc," whose lives he will literally hold in his hands. I am bursting proud of him and I am scared shitless for him at the same time. I can't imagine what my days and nights will be like when he's finally deployed. Perhaps the thing of which I'm most scared is that once he goes to The Suck, as the Marines call who've been there call it, he will never be the same. The person he is today will not be the person that returns...

And so 51 is here; I will, at some point, sooner rather than later, be employed again, though in what capacity I can't say. I'll have to keep the wolf from the door very soon now; there is little financial cushion left. I've chewed it up and spit it out... what a mess.

Thankfully, each day is a reprieve; it's something I no longer take for granted.