Dear Katrina, Caroline, Sierra and Annika, My wife, Maria Sayans, and I have spent so many good times with David that it is hard to know which stories to pick. But here are a few of my favourites. David was one of the first people I met at Stanford. I remember noticing his entry in our first year year-book. He had written as one of his three interests: ‘Extreme skiing’. I thought he was silly to say that, thinking he was just bragging about liking to ski off-piste... until I skied with him! I have skied with several great skiers in my life, but he was by some margin the best. He could ski anything as if it was a perfectly groomed run; he made ‘Sierra cement’ look like Utah powder. He joined me on my 40th birthday heliski trip to Canada and in true Dave style he took great pleasure in keeping up with the guides, not passing them only because it was bad form to do so. And he was the only person skiing on normal width (non-powder) skis! At one point Dave went away from the recommended route. We looked around for him and there he was standing on top of a 40 foot cliff. With a quick double tap of his poles (a little thing he always did before setting off), he just dropped down the cliff, bouncing his skis off a couple of small snow nodules on the way down. He landed perfectly and skied on without stopping. The other nine of us just stared in amazement. During the first Christmas at Stanford, Dave, Scott Regan, Heidi Hillis and I went in search of snow. We started in Utah, but there wasn’t much snow around. So we drove down to Telluride. There wasn’t much snow there either, but we tried to ski anyway. That was the only time I ever saw Dave fall over on a piste. I was so pleased to see Dave fall for once that I started laughing and skied over to him; I promptly fell over at the same spot, hurting my wrist quite badly. There was an invisible area of sheet ice; Dave had the last laugh, he usually did! In the second winter of business school six of us went on a road trip to Jackson Hole. We rented some skidoos one day to drive into Yellowstone Park. Within 50 yards of renting the vehicles, Dave tried to do a skid stop, and was lucky to escape a major injury as the skidoo overbalanced and rolled forward, breaking the glass windscreen as Dave jumped off, laughing. On the return trip from Jackson, we played an infamous game in which everyone in the car had to rank everyone in the car on various criteria that we all came up with. There were many funny results, some interesting rankings, and several awkward moments. I remember Dave ranked first for intelligence and unanimously first for likelihood of being successful. One thing about Dave was that he could seem quite cocky, but really he wasn’t, he was just that good at so many things. We went scuba-diving in Hawaii. Dave didn’t need a BCD like most of us; he was a Dive Master and could control his buoyancy perfectly with a small bladder unconnected from his air supply. Dave was an accomplished pilot. One time Dave flew Tim Cadogan and I down to Death Valley for a memorable hike up Telegraph Peak. While normally Dave would joke around a lot about most things, he took being a pilot very seriously and inspired total confidence in his abilities. We felt totally safe in his hands. Even when he was doing something quite dangerous, he inspired confidence. We met up in the Atacama Desert on the Chilean-Bolivian border and we decided to drive up a peak which was nearly 6,000 meters up. At about 4,500 meters up the winding, hairpin road we started to run into large snowdrifts covering the road. We were keen to stop but Dave decided it was fine to carry on. He would just speed up our small jeep and take a run at the drifts, oblivious to the significant drop off one side. The only reason I think neither Maria nor I was scared was because we trusted Dave’s judgment. It was totally crazy what he was doing, but we felt calm. One morning while we were there we decided to go and see some geysers in the desert. As it seems with most great sights, it was recommended to see them at dawn. So we set off in a small van to go and find them. We got lost in the dark. We saw some lights and decided to follow them, thinking the lights must signal another group of tourists. As we got closer to them suddenly their lights went off. We waited. The lights came on again and we followed them again. Their lights went off again. After doing this a few times, we drew level with the other van. They sat with their lights off and refused to open their windows. Dave got out and knocked on their door. Eventually they opened the window to tell us that they had no idea where the geysers were. We were told later that these must have been drug smugglers ferrying drugs between Bolivia and Chile and that we were lucky we were unharmed in the incident! David was quite simply one of the most talented people I ever met, and he was a great friend. Living so far away from California we did not get to see him as often as we wanted in the last few years, but whenever we did it would be like we had seen each other the day before: Despite all his success, he would always be the same down-to-earth guy we knew and loved. I will always miss his silly grin and his over-exuberant laugh, and admire his happy, positive outlook on life. And I will think of him every time I declare: ‘No friends on powder days!’ We hope to get to know you all well as you grow up and share more stories of our great friend and your wonderful father.