It's an age-old practice to add image to memory, and Breckenridge resident Jay Nelson is featured on The Learning Channel's "Miami Ink" tonight at 8 and 10 p.m. Nelson gets his first tattoo on the program to commemorate his dearly departed friend, Phillip Steven Mann.

Mann died at age 24 in the driver's seat (Nelson was in the passenger's seat) in a tragic rollover car accident in French Gulch on July 30, 2004. Nelson and Mann both grew up in Valparaiso, Ind., and moved up to Breckenridge to pursue snowboarding.

"Miami Ink" is the name of both the reality television program and a tattoo shop in Miami's South Beach. The shop is owned by artists Ami James and Chris Nunez, and the show also features artists Chris Garver and Darren Brass and apprentice Yoji Harada.

"I just hope they do him justice. It's obviously in someone else's hands as far as a final edit, but I'm excited to see it," said Nelson. "It's a bittersweet situation, so I'm happy we're getting the word out to anyone who would have known Phil."

Nelson wanted to have something stating Mann's initials, who he was, and the years that he lived. Initially, he thought that it was kind of clever to use the tires from Mann's prized minibike to represent the zeroes from his years.

Mann's minibike - a blue, white and chrome 1969 Honda 50 Mini Trail - was given to him by his uncle.

"When I sent off say what I considered 'A' footage clips of him (Mann), I shot footage of him when he was seven ripping this thing around the yard. So he's had it his whole life," said Nelson. "Everybody's into whatever they're into, you know? And this just happened to be something that he was way into."

Nelson went under a laser guided by the gifted hands of Brass for six-and-a-half hours.

"When I showed up with my design, he (Brass) said, 'In the long run it's not going to look good. It will look good initially, but there's so much going on with the minibike itself that it (the ink) will eventually come together and it just won't look good 10 years down the road,' " Nelson said. "In his initial design, he pulled the logo off the gas tank to use instead of the minibike.
"He showed me what he came up with, and I told him, 'I totally respect your art work, but the logo of the brand is not what reminds me of him. It's the minibike itself.' I was not trying to be disrespectful to him in any way, but I had to say, 'I need the mini bike. I gotta have the mini bike,' " Nelson said. "So he felt quite challenged, like could he pull it off or not?"

So Brass got on the internet to research the bike and had Nelson take off until the next day. What Brass came up with from those hours of research became the final product.

It's Nelson's first and only tattoo, and the artists and television program staff attempted to talk Nelson out of placing the tattoo next to his ribs because it's probably the most painful area.

"They were like: 'We just really want you to be able to get through this thing,'" Nelson said.

Nelson is no novice to pain - considering the falls, tweaks and body-bruising he's endured as a professional snowboarder and snowmobiler.

"I've been hurt a lot of times," said Nelson, who specifically chose the spot along his lower left rib cage for its proximity to his heart. As a matter of fact, Nelson had a number of conversations with Mann about the future tattoos that Nelson knew he would get some day.

He knew the tattoos on his left side would be memories of people who made a difference in his life.

"(At that point) I was psyched that I didn't have any. I know that it's inevitable; everyone dies, so it was inevitable that I was going to get some," said Nelson. "But I always felt lucky for not losing those people that were that close to me that I would get tattooed for."

Then Mann's accident happened.

"He was that first person that I lost," said Nelson.

Mann was an avid snowmobiler during the last few years of his life. He was a snowboarder like Nelson, and because of using snowmobiles so often to access coveted backcountry terrain and build jumps, and because snowmobile technology has advanced so dynamically over the past five or six years, the two found a genuine passion for the sport.

No stranger to being on camera, Nelson, who has done stunt work for movies as well as producing his own, said, "I felt that in every aspect of the entire experience it couldn't have been better. All of the people on set, everyone involved with the whole production whether they are sound guys, camera guys, interview people, the tattoo artists themselves, could not have been cooler. It was just, from a-to-z, a great experience."

Nelson, who earned enough money through his snowboarding career to buy a house in Breckenridge and now owns a landscaping company which he operates when he's not filming his snowmobiling videos, knows he'll have more tattoos as well, though it's just his true inner circle that will be celebrated on the medium of his body.

"So I wanted this tattoo to represent him in a way that was fairly light-hearted; like the fond memories and to keep it upbeat."