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Vol. LXII, No. 4
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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Vol. LXII, No. 4
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Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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If it’s winter, Jim Johnson keeps one eye on his daily business and the other on the weather channel. At first chance of some fresh powder, the 80-year-old is primed and ready to head north, hitting the slopes when most of us would stay in the warm cabin.
But that’s just a way of life for Mr. Johnson, whose affinity for the slopes has made him into something of an inspiration for his contemporaries. Of course, he doesn’t think of himself in those terms.
“I don’t think about the age,” he said, taking a holiday from Killington at his home at Windrows, where he lives with his wife, Jacqueline. “But people do marvel at it, I suppose. You should have seen me at 70 — I was skiing with the best of them.
“But I’m a little slower now,” he quipped.
Mr. Johnson picked up skiing later than most. He first hit the slopes at age 43 in an attempt to do something active with his kids. Thing is, not only did the kids love it, he did, too. It started on Mercer County’s now-closed Belle Mountain (“Belle Bump” Mr. Johnson now calls it), when he first got his ski legs on.
“The hill is so short, you’re down at the bottom before you even know it, so we started going to Vermont, bought a house up there, and the rest is history.
“Before that, I had never skied, and I remember going to the beginners’ slope and my kids were making fun of me. I went, I fell, and people laughed, but it wasn’t as tough as I thought it would be,” he said.
Thirty-seven years later, Mr. Johnson has skied the Austrian, French, and Swiss Alps, and routinely skis in Sun Valley, Idaho, where his son, James Cameron Johnson, now lives.
A retired vice president of marketing at Johnson & Johnson, Mr. Johnson (no relation) now finds himself rarely needing products he used to market, particularly Tylenol, for the occasional ache or ski-related bruise. He knocked on wood when he said that, to this point, injuries are far and few in between, despite some mild concern from his family. But even they seem to trust his overall judgment, he said.
“My wife used to think it was kind of crazy, but she got used to it and she doesn’t say much about it anymore,” he said. He is careful about pushing it, however. Mr. Johnson has heart arrhythmia, so keeping things in moderation is important. “It’s not a big deal, but it’s kept under control.
“It doesn’t slow me down, but it makes me remember that I’m mortal, so that’s a good thing,” he said.
Active through most of his adult life, Mr. Johnson said the challenge of “wanting to beat it all” plays a large part in his desire to stay active on skis. But on the slopes, he said “you never actually beat it, and that’s what makes it interesting for me. You can always get better in my case and I can always find a hill or a slope that’s going to be a real challenge; and it’s just fun.”
Mr. Johnson quickly dismisses the octogenarian stereotype of “sitting by the television set.
“Older people are doing more things these days and when you get this age, you want to be as physically fit as you can, and you realize that it’s not going to last forever,” he said.
Of course, with age comes privilege. His course in Killington got rid of the discount for 70-year-olds. Now at 80, Mr. Johnson thinks he could save some cash: “The ski tickets are pretty pricy — I’m still working on that discount.”