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peed, blinding speed. We're not just talking downhill here. Nobody
talks downhill anymore and besides, talk is cheap. So is writing, for that
matter. You have to be there, with the force of the wind peeling your
eyelids back, a double dose of adrenaline coursing through your veins.
"'Cuz adrenaline is the strongest drug that there has ever been."
New Model Army
Naw, we're talking thrusters. A thruster cannot truly be captured in the
pages of this magazine. Ask a good pipe rider. Somebody like S. Alba or
his brother Micke, or people with names you've not heard, like Shelton.
Pipe riders get no credit like big wave riders get no recognition in surfing
'cuz contests are where it's at. Or are they? Using speed, a pipe rider
will push thrusters above the arc of a normal kickturn. And the sound:
like a 97A urethane needle screeching across a cement record. Pools too!
Thrusting into grind in both deep and shallow. Thrusters are not the only
application of speed, though...
Let's get back to pools. Ever done a carve grind? We're talking both
trucks here for the uninitiated. The best way to do them is to go so fast
that even if you wanted to pick up that front truck into a kickturn, you
couldn't. You're pressed to that coping by the speed and the force like a
bug to a windshield. I like the frontside, no coper, fast, long ones the
best. Salba and Shelton come to mind again. They don't win ramp
contests, but they blaze frontside carve grinds in square pools!
Oh yeah, when you botch a frontside carve grind, you eat it bad.
It adds to the appeal.
"Life in the fast lane...surely make you lose your mind." The Eagles
Where does this speed come from? You mix two parts commitment and
one part gravity and pray you don't have to pay. Try pushing like there's
no tomorrow across the shallow end of the pool and take the deep end
by force. Forget those little half-assed chicken step pushes. Since a lot of
skaters don't have access to pools and rely on ramps, how about rolling
in instead of dropping in. Do an acid drop a la Duane Peters. Does
anybody even know what an acid drop is anymore? It means straight in,
from the top of whatever (it doesn't matter) with no concern for life or
limb. Pure speed.
"Live fast, die young."
(everybody claims this quote)
Speed also comes from pumping. Watch Christian or Chris Miller
sometime. They don't do airs, they BLAST them. Watching Christian
screw around one time at Del Mar before it closed, I noticed he punched
successive backside airs, higher each time until he literally threw a
McTwist higher than all the airs. They should multiply the difficulty of the
maneuver by the speed involved. More speed equals more air time
equals more distance covered. Pumping for speed is hard to explain in
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