We're not ALL knuckle-draggers...

[Alaskan Rover]

What brought me over from ski-racing and rec skiing to boarding was NEVER the love of the pipe nor the jib-park. In fact, even when I was an 11 year old kid and most of my friends would head off to whatever skate-park or empty swimming pool with their shaved-wheel twin-tip decks, I always found more happiness and fulfillment doing long, sweeping s-curves on my wide-wheel tailboard down the slope of our street...dodging the odd car when I had to. We had this big old dog that would pull-me back up the hill if I held onto his leash and gave him a couple X-large Milkbones at the top. He was my chairlift...and the street was my "Aspen", even though it was the middle of summer. S-curves...all the way down. My friends thought I was crazy for not joining them at their homemade backyard ramps...I, in turn, thought THEY were crazy for not joining ME in pursuit of the speed and luscious g-force found on my self-made black-top "Aspen" that was Hoag Lane. They couldn't understand me, and I couldn't understand them. We ALL ended up with multiple bandages and bruises those summers...because like lady justice, gravity is blind.

In essence, then, I have never really had an affinity for the park and the pipe. And even, when after much practice and many bruises, I became quite good at the pipe, I STILL didn't feel at home there. My racing history beat the idea into my head that one must treat one's equipment with respect, and so I just couldn't understand the jibber's desire to beat hell out of a perfectly good board on some rail or picnic bench....and DEFINITELY not over and over again. While I greatly admired the skill of some of the groms there (some of which would later be plastered all over the pages of TransWorld Snowboarding Magazine)...I had about as much of a chance of completing a 1080 or hooking a clean 540 McTwist as I had riding on the back of a unicorn to the planet Jupiter.

I sort of drifted away from the pipe...and never felt at home with that wide-pant, trash-mouth set at the park. They were the kids perpetually in the back-row of 7th Grade class, trading spitballs and secrets...and I was STILL the front-row, chess-club nerd...even though we ware ALL easily in our twenties. I spent more and more time on the slopes, in the steeps, in the chutes...gradually and steadfastedly improving my high speed game. Remembering how one of my racing coaches used to describe how a Gyrfalcon made only minute adjustments of his wings while screaming down at near terminal velocity, I increased my own speed and my onslope dexterity until I re-acquainted myself with the love of the rush of speed.

Isn't that what it's all about, in the end?

Gravity IS life.