Most Interesting Pro Snowboarder/Rocket Scientist Ever: Andrew Crawford | TED Talk on ‘Reaching Escape Velocity’

Skateboarding has Rodney Mullen as their resident genius. Snowboarding has Andrew Crawford.

You may remember Andrew from his boundary pushing parts in the 90’s Whitey and Standard videos. While many snowboarders are forced into early retirement with no brains to fall back on and become Team Managers or box packers, Andrew left to intern with NASA and become a rocket scientist. Oh and he was also a symphony violinist. Good to see there are some real thinkers in snowboarding.

Check out his above TEDx Talk:

“Andrew Crawford’s story sounds like fiction the first time you hear it. The Montana native was a symphony violinist and spent a decade as a professional snowboarder. Crawford then began an academic journey at Flathead Valley Community College, earned a mechanical engineering degree with a minor in aerospace from Montana State University, and interned at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Crawford then was offered a job at X, Google’s “moonshot factory,” working as a program manager on Google’s self driving cars—that program has now become its own company called Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet.”

(track to 21:40 for some vintage Andrew Crawford action)