KEY POINTS:
Having kids means there's a better chance you'll know about Jossi Wells
"You spoke to Jossi Wells today - lucky you," says a friend. She's got kids.
She also knows that Jossi - short for Josiah - and his brothers were home schooled, that they come from Wanaka and that Jossi does remarkable things with skis that make him look like a cross between Jean-Claude Killy and a helicopter.
"My boy worships Jossi Wells - he'd love to be doing what Jossi does," my friend goes on, before revealing more about New Zealand's freeski whiz, who is ripping up the competition in the US and Europe.
"Jossi used to be a ski racer which means he's used to the speed. It gives him a big edge," she continues. So now I know.
It's tough getting a handle on all these new sporting crazes, coming from an era when diversity equalled the Ranfurly Shield detouring off State Highway one.
The sporting world has turned many circles since then, flinging out kids like the 17-year-old Jossi who are creating completely new mainstreams, as well as their own lingo, websites, magazines and fans.
They are even making it into the old mainstream. Nowadays, that kid up the road roaring around on a bike the size of a trike could actually be an Olympic-bound athlete.
In keeping with this trend, free skiing might also be about to follow other X Games sports into the Olympics.
Free skiing is a world where the competitors are scored on half pipes, full slopes, jumps and rail rides. It's a place where dedicated athlete meets urban cool, where skateboard park meets ski field, where flying trick-merchants defy gravity and invite injury by turning snow's classic transporters into artistic whirly birds.
For those of you who thought skiing was primarily a way of getting from the top of a mountain to the bottom, think again. Free skiing is Evel Knievel meets Jean-Claude with Tony Hawk (he's a skateboarder, you oldies) and a touch of Olga Korbut thrown in.
The free skiers not only work their magic on a wall of snow shaped like the bottom half of a big drainage pipe but they hurtle down huge inclines then spin and slide along rails the way Torvill and Dean used to fling it about on a chunk of ice.
The rising king of the rail mounting and mountain dismounting is young Mr Wells, who won the world snowpipe championships at Utah last weekend after becoming the youngest X Games medallist at Aspen earlier in the year.
"It's my best victory so far because it's pretty much my first world title," Jossi tells the Weekend Herald a few days after his Utah triumph.
"I'd been skiing pretty well and I was super confident. To be the best free skier in the world - that's my goal. Now it seems more like a real goal rather than a dream. Now I know I can win these competitions."
He comes from a free-skiing family. Wells is followed by the burgeoning talents of his brothers Byron, 15, Beau-James, 12, and Jackson, 9.
It might be no surprise that their parents loved to ski.
Bruce and Stacey Wells were Aussies who fell in love with the Cardrona ski field and made the deep south their home.
Bruce, a qualified nurse, and Stacey, a primary school teacher, first strapped skis to an 18-month-old Jossi during a trip to Canada so the nipper could waddle on the snow, guided by his mother's legs.
Now the Wells are happily strapped for cash, supporting their four sons to the hilt.
Bruce chaperones the three oldest boys to America every season and young Jackson will join the jet set next year.
"We've extended loans and maxed out the credit cards," says Stacey, who runs a swim academy in Wanaka.
"One thing we never do is try to work out how much it has cost. It's too scary. It's tens of thousands, although Jossi is self-funding now."
Bruce is a builder/labourer whose wages are hardly enormous, especially as he is overseas for three months of the year, the maximum time he can spend in the US on a visa. The boys stay away for up to six months.
Bruce and Stacey's willingness to seek any routes that open highways of life for their sons goes back a decade.
They decided to home school the boys because it would allow their brood more options and time flexibility in pursuing a range of interests.
School work was still a priority - alongside skiing, skateboarding, and a host of other activities.
Jossi was a skiing prodigy, who wowed an academy instructor at 8 and trekked over the extreme Rip Curl Heli-Challenge course a year later.
He and Byron have had ski and clothing sponsorships since ages at which most other kids are still working out whether they like Marmite or peanut butter.
So the Wells boys may have been educated at home, but the world was always presented as their oyster.
Jossi says: "Some home school kids end up separate from the community but I don't come from the typical home school family. I pretty much used to know everyone in Wanaka.
"I'd ski most of the day, come home and do my work at night. It was a bit hard to work when you're so tired, but definitely worth it.
"I guess my parents put me on skis when I was very young and I always loved doing it. I wanted to be a ski racer but I loved jumping, so I stopped racing to concentrate on the free skiing.
"My parents have always supported me and let me chase my dream, and now I'm starting to live it.
"As long as I can make money from skiing, this is what I'll do. One of the best skiers in the world just bought a Lamborghini so it's quite attainable to make a reasonable income out of it."
Jossi lines up in a big Idaho event this weekend then heads to Europe to compete and also star in a ski film before returning home to complete his final year of correspondence school.
The skiing will really kick in after that, so watch out.
Injuries are a great unknown - Wells broke two ribs near his spine and smashed his collarbone last year - and so are the ways of Olympic bosses. But if things go to plan, the 2014 winter Olympics will become Jossi's ultimate goal.
Wells says: "The X Games are the Olympics of our sport for now, but hopefully I can aim for an Olympic gold in 2014. That would be amazing."
Now that is something us sporting dinosaurs can fully understand.
