Watch 90-Year-Old Vet Take Wild Sled Ride

Video documents 90-year-old Claude Bratcher enjoying a high-speed sled ride.

ByABC News
February 28, 2015, 12:48 PM

— -- Snow days aren't just for kids.

A 90-year-old man is clearly young at heart after taking a wild sled ride Thursday that was all documented on his grandson-in-law's go-pro.

The video begins with Claude Bratcher, 90, getting lowered comfortably onto the sled. After a dog jumps in his lap, the ride starts up as Bratcher's son pulls the sled from a four-wheeler.

"It was Claude's idea," Bratcher's grandson-in-law Anthony Smith, 35, told ABC News today. "He'd been watching us sled for about an hour. After an hour he says, 'Well I think I want to go sled behind the four-wheeler.' He didn't want to just sled down the hill, he wanted to sled down the four-wheeler."

The video shows the sled pulling Bratcher faster and faster as the dog happily runs alongside him in the snow, keeping up almost the entire way.

"We were concerned, but we weren't really going that fast," Smith said. "He just wanted to do it because it was fun. He hadn't done anything like that in a while."

It's hard to tell Bratcher's expression during the high-speed ride, but as the sled comes to a stop, you can see the 90-year-old crack a smile as his family gathers around him.

Bratcher, a World War II veteran, lives "right across the road" from his granddaughter and grandson-in-law, Smith said.

Bratcher and his wife were married for more than 50 years before she passed away a few years ago, Smith said.

"One thing about Claude is he keeps going. He's real mobile," Smith said. Every day, he gets out and does something on the farm. I think that's kind of the key of what's kept him young and alive. Just to stay going."