ATER
writing. When I was learning how to skate at a playground on
some cement "'igloos," my friend told me to pretend I was digging
a hole at the bottom of the bank with a shovel. Kind of crouch
down at the bottom of one wall, pretend to shovel some dirt and
thrust upward so you're standing upright as you climb the wall.
Kickturn, and then do the same at the base of the other wall,
higher and higher with each successive kickturn. I don't know, it
made sense to me.
"Faster, faster until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of
death."Jim the speed skier.
"I'm going too fast... turn into a driveway and fall down."-
Calvin and Hobbes
A discussion of speed wouldn't be complete without mentioning
downhill. John Hutson still holds the standup speed record on a
skateboard at 58 mph. The snow skiing record has been pushed to
better than 139 mph. We're talking cojones here. If you've ever
"stepped off" of a board and taken a couple of 30-foot steps
before your body passed your legs and you fell into a slide, you
know what I'm talking about. Oh yeah, we're talking stand-up
skateboarding here, not laying down. They might as well establish
records for big wheels and shopping carts too, 'cuz laying down
isn't skateboarding.
So what's so important about speed? Let me leave you with a
slightly irrelevant concept here. Seems there was this guy named
Big Al (Einstein). Probably one of the heaviest guys that ever lived
Opening Spread:
Jim Thiebaud, all-
out ollie boardslide.
Sequence: Christian
clicks out in Oz. This
Page: High velocity
two-sheel drift by
Billy Deans. Inset:
Above 25 m.p.h.,
staying on is the only
logical course of ac-
tion. Caedman Bear
at the Capitola
Classic, 1982. Photo
by C.R. Stecyk I.
that, to my knowledge, didn't skate. Out of the clear blue one day
he came up with the theory that the faster you go, the slower time
ticks. Sounds impossible? It's been proven. If you take twin
brothers, put one on a rocket-powered skate and send him out
around the furthest planet, when he gets back he will be younger
than his brother who waited on earth. So what are you waiting for?
Get out there, get on it, and inject speed back into skating!
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