Cool On Ice

In the process of writing a piece on skateboarding recently, I found myself at a distinct disadvantage: being much older, I had little or no experience of the world of the skateboarder, a world which may as well have unfolded on another planet as far as I was concerned. In the heyday of street skating, I was living an idyllic life in the suburbs, busy raising three young daughters, each of whom pointedly ignored all the Tonka trucks and bulldozers I bought them, preferring to brush the hair on their Barbies, for some weird reason. It was a girl's world; skateboards did not exist.

Casting about to find a way into the mind of the skateboarder, though, I stumbled upon a most valuable insight: I actually was a skater in my youth: an ice skater. As a young inner city boy, I had pretty much the same attitude and behavior as the dudes of So-Cal who put wheels on their surfboards and hit the ground rolling back in the 70s, later to be known as skateboarders. We had the same lust for thrills, chills and spills, the same yearning to kick ass, and the same mad willingness of the truly immortal to just let it fly, regardless of how many pieces you were in when you landed. Wheels, blades - who cares? It was the need for speed. Kind of a guy thing.

There was this big public park practically in our backyard in Albany; looking at it from the kitchen window of our third floor apartment on Elm Street, it appeared to be one great big bowl scooped out of the center of the city- the flat bottom of which served as a football and baseball field in the summer, then transformed into an ice skating rink in the winter. This was one big glassy surface, man, at least to a kid; it seemed to be a mile wide, and we made use of every square inch of it, every free minute of the day. At night it was not unusual to have a bonfire going along the edge to rest and warm up and crow about our exploits.

There was no end to the contests we invented, either, to find new thrills, improve our skills, and to polish our manly credentials. Rubber tires were used to create obstacle courses and hurdles, the stack gaining another tire after each contestant succeeded in jumping it. The task was basically to avoid experiencing the feeling of metal blades hitting rubber in midflight with nothing between you and the ice below but a knitted cap; all while exhibiting a sense of style, of course.

There were a number of kids, mostly younger kids and girls, who just skated, doing figure 8s, spins, loops and other things to occupy their time. A few played hockey, but that was not for us. It seemed too boring, and required playing by an elaborate set of rules. If we had enough manpower, we would prefer to play a game of Head On, which consisted of dozens of skaters on two teams, each starting from one side of the field, who, at the cry of HEAD ONNNN! would launch a high-speed charge across the expanse of ice at one another, the collision in the middle resembling nothing so much as a war scene from Braveheart. As in war, the last one standing was the winner.

But to give you some idea of the true scope of our madness, I will tell you a tale of unmatched bravery, with a bit of bravado, a touch of humor, a pinch of stupidity, and a whole lot of pain.

We awoke one morning to the dazzling sight of a historic ice storm in the city, back in the days when winter could still be expected to behave like winter, and such things were extremely rare. Trees were down, the power was out, the city had been brought to a standstill. Most miraculously, the schools were closed. Bob and I, of course, immediately realized the full potential of the moment, the magical gift we had been given: the entire town had been turned into a skating rink!!! We quickly grabbed our skates and ran out the door to round up some of our skating buddies.

While cruising through the empty streets, we soon recognized a simple but heretofore unrealized fact that, unlike the surface of a skating rink, many streets in our neighborhood sloped down toward the Hudson River, and you could actually ski down them. In fact, someone suggested, if you could find the right streets, you could . . actually . . fly. I don't recall who thought of it first, but suddenly we all looked at one another in a state of electric ecstasy: lying right behind us were the numerous sidewalks of Lincoln Park, many running straight down hill and ending at the icy lake at the bottom. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What the hell are we waiting for?

We soon found ourselves flying at speeds only dreamed of by other skaters of the world; we were downhill racers with nothing beneath us but metal and ice, crouched for minimum wind resistance, well on our way to establishing new land speed records. But the records were never to be recorded, and are now lost to history. Besides, even if we had succeeded, we ourselves would later smash it more than a decade later, as Bob so beautifully chronicles in his recent post, The Right Stuff. Little did it matter if we did this in a vacuum, though; it was really about the adrenaline. The intoxicating thrill of speed and, oh yeah, the danger.

After each successful run and subsequent laborious return to the top of the hill, we would choose to see who went first. The lead-off run would then set a speed and distance for the rest of us to try to measure up to, and hopefully surpass. On what would turn out to be our last run, Larry won the first slot. He set off tightly coiled down a particularly steep and curvy piece of crystallized concrete. Trouble started about halfway down the hill, though, when his blade hit a crack in the ice, setting him off balance for a split second. That split second sealed his fate.

As he struggled to correct this problem, his skates went out from under him, he hit the ice-coated surface hard, and now found himself flying down the hill in a sitting position, with very little to slow him but the blades of his skates. But it was too late. We knew something was horribly wrong when we heard the scream, a sound like nothing we had ever heard coming from his lips, as he continued to hurtle down the hill. We all instantly set off after him, now a mountain rescue team, to learn what had happened, and tend to our fallen comrade.

Midway down that hill, some anonymous saboteur had thoughtlessly shattered a soda bottle on the sidewalk, just for kicks, I would assume, being somewhat familiar with the phenomenon. Pieces of it were still lying on the concrete when the storm hit, and were now frozen solid to the ground; embedded knives fixed in place as though by Satan, ready to yield maximum pain to its first unsuspecting victim. One particular piece is still seared (frozen?) into my memory: the bottom of the bottle, base down, with several jagged, razor-sharp mountain peaks jutting out of the surface of the ice. Larry hit that thing doing at least forty miles an hour, with nothing to protect him but a pair of well-worn Levi jeans. They may be tough, but they ain't that tough.

Hours later, as we all sat around the hospital waiting room waiting for him to be stitched back together, we couldn't help but crack a few jokes about the event, as boys will. It's an ancient coping mechanism, I believe; probably having helped many a caveboy to get through the night after a particularly bad encounter with a mastodon or sabre-toothed tiger. A number of jokes involved various body parts, as I recall, and what may or may not have become of Larry had he hit the glass just an inch or two in either direction, but I won't go into those details here. Suffice it to say that Larry is living happily ever after, married, with children. 'Nuff said.

Afterthought: All of this, I suppose, was written by the inner boy that dwells within an aging man; a man grateful to this day that he survived the antics of the boy's days of glory, long since past. If you listen real close, though, you can still hear the little guy jumping up and down, shouting, Hey, all you California skating dudes, them skateboards ain't nothin' when the only price you got to pay for a mistake is a few scrapes and bruises and maybe a broken bone or two. You ain't done a goddam thing 'til you come to New York and break the land speed record on a mountain of glass, and pay the full price with half your ass.

Ok, that's it. I've had just about enough! Go over there, sit down and be quiet. I don't want to hear another sound out of you. See, he just hasn't learned yet what the aging man has long since learned: that you can't be immortal forever.

The Migration of the Anglo-Saxons

To provide a bit more visual context for the previous story, I offer this photo, taken roughly within the same timeframe of those events, with an additional bonus: it includes our trusted steed, the unsinkable '57 GMC panel truck which carried us to some of our greatest adventures from Maine to Cape Cod, from the Catskills to the Adirondacks. Winter or summer, she never let us down. Why, we were actually pre-testing the future retirement lifestyle of a bunch of RV'ers, and livin' our own Kerouac On-the-Road fantasy all at the same time. One of these days we will document the final moments of the old chariot, since she went out in such a blaze of glory.

The photo was taken as we were about to depart for Rendall's wedding, probably in the summer of '66. Rendall, also known fondly as Grendel of the Moors, until this moment was a roommate in the infamous cellar beat pad in Albany, which, like the fine mold growing on its rugs, will produce its own stories on these very pages, in due time. That's me on the left, Rendall in the middle, Bob on the right. Was it really that long ago?

The Right Stuff

Most people still believe that no toboggan has ever broken the sound barrier. Mick, Marty and I are the only ones who know the true facts of the matter, because together we pushed the toboggan envelope further than it has ever been pushed. There was no one else around at the time, though, so details of that historic occasion are confined to our fading memories, and this humble record of that fateful day. You are therefore asked to pay close attention, since I'm only going to go through this once because of the adrenalin rushes and trembling.

The toboggan ignorance that generally prevailed in the previous century - the early sixties in fact, that unequaled decade - was understandable, since the "sound barrier" was still a relatively new concept in the public mind, as was "heat of reentry." Neither of these phenomena had ever been associated with toboggans, but only because destiny had never before brought together, in the right place and at the right time, the right conditions (i.e., completely icy) and the right men (i.e., completely iced). The Guinness boys weren't there that day because their Book of Records was still just a wee thing; anyway we weren't drinking stout and there was nothing in their book about toboggans.

The new world toboggan speed record required a steep ski slope, completely abandoned by perceptive skiers because of perilously icy conditions, and a toboggan manned by young men full of the right stuff. Things were coming together in that way the universe has with icebergs, unsinkable ships, mountains, college students, what have you. Mick says there were only 3 of us rounding out the wouldabeen Guinness Book crew that day: he, I and the ever-ready Marty, but somehow I can't believe only three of us were that crazy. Surely there must have been more... I have the feeling that there were 4, maybe even 5 tobogganauts aboard, but amnesia has its place. So if you were that fourth or even fifth fellow, please get in touch. I remember Marty was there, because of how far he went beyond our terminus. I remember Mick was there, because of his supersonic torso. I remember I was there, because the ice of fear does not die.

I would have thought Mac was there, we were staying at his family's lodge in New Hampshire, but I asked Mick recently and he said Mac was too sane to have gone up that ice mountain with us, which seems plausible, he being a perceptive skier. At this latterly point in my life it's hard for me to do retrospective sanity assessment with any accuracy; it all looks insane from here. What the hell were we thinking, I can ask now, without feeling too fogeyish. We're all of us men of steel, until one day we regain consciousness and from then on know instinctively that certain actions are not of benefit; the mere recollection of some of them can even induce adrenalin rushes and trembling, so let me get this over with.

It had been flashcold that weekend so we'd spent a lot of time indoors, warming up with our dates and losing perspective on outdoor reality. None of us were skiers (apart from Mac); as city boys we were ice skaters, so in ski country we pretty much stayed in by the fire and partied. But then late in the afternoon of our last day there, rendered dauntless by spiritual consumption we decided that before we departed we had to go out there just one time and show the mountain who was who and what was what, giving no thought to any substantial impact of who against what. There was a toboggan in the loft, so we guys took it out (women are smarter at pretty much all stages of life) and determined to test ourselves against the worst the mountain could throw at us, which, if you think about it in retrospect or at any time without scotch, is quite a lot.

When we arrived in full readiness at the bottom of our Slope of Destiny (a series of gleaming, undulating grades at what in my mind's eye now looks like about a 75-degree angle), it appeared to our happified eyes like a big, beautifully decorated and fun-inviting piece of cake frosted in bright, hard icing. Perfect for skating. I don't know how we climbed the ski run, but we were ice guys, and well experienced with toboggans (always in snow, however), at Lincoln Park, Bowlie's Hill, Synagogue Hill and other speedy slopes around Albany. So there at the top of the run we set up for our one long sunset ride on the historic toboggan: Marty in front, Mick behind him, me at the rear.

We had just pushed off onto the steep glaze and were roaring downward when doubts began to set in as things began to get blurry, the way they do when you get up past 5 Gs; then came the boom as we passed Mach 1 and events began to occur exponentially. My subjective impression was that we lost control even before we went hypersonic, when a brightening glow began to issue from the front of the toboggan as the atmospheric friction corona began to surround us in a womb of light. I suppose that individually we were screaming things like "LEAN LEFT!" "LEAN RIGHT!" "O, GOD!!" and whatnot, mewlings erased by the sonic booms.

The entire launch and reentry took a fraction of a picosecond, if memory serves, setting a new world record; had nothing stood in our way we might have sped on till early summer. If there'd been anything like a ski jump at the end we might even have left orbit, but as I've indicated the mountain headed down. Actually the mountain just stood there unmoving while we went down, setting the de facto - but uncertified - toboggan speed record that has never since been broken or even approached, and I doubt ever will be, given the combined requirements.

As we neared our terminus, one of those old existential questions arose: Why are there concrete stanchions at the bottom of the Slope of Destiny? Beguiled by the scotch and ice of the moment we had failed to notice, down there where the slope administrators would have been working at the time, had they too been insane, a series of concrete stanchions whose purpose even now eludes me. Panzer defense? In a nice, powdery, skiing kind of snow, even the swiftest skiers could stop well before reaching those tank stoppers, but on solid ice like we were enjoying, once you go hypersonic on a toboggan there is no stopping short of the state line, unless you encounter a mountain or its equivalent.

Just before coming to the deadest stop any of us can recall, we'd all been leaning hard right, in vain seeking to avoid our Stanchion of Destiny, which rapidly grew in size and importance until we met it broadside with the toboggan's left edge, closely followed by my 20G left thigh, an impact compounded by Mick's supersonic torso, while Marty wound up in Vermont I believe it was, as Mick and I, still smoking from the heat of reentry, rolled around on the ice howling and unable to rise. Actually, I was doing all the howling; Mick was unable to howl, or breathe at all very much.

While Marty thumbed a ride back to New Hampshire, Mick and I were taken to a doctor, where it was proclaimed a miracle that my femur was intact (eat your heart out, Schwarzenegger), though my left thigh muscle was rendered non-functional for weeks. The impact of Mick's torso upon my knee had broken three of his left ribs. He was taped up tight and gasped well into springtime; I was given a cane with which to hobble from class to class like I was already much older than I am now.

We were young, we were insane, what can I say; that's part of what college is all about, and we completed Downside 101 in a single afternoon. But tobogganing itself remains golden in memory, since we survived. Even now, we survive.

God must have been watching that day and been blown away at the quantity of right stuff in those young rapscallions down there, and decided in her kindness not to let us become the landscape pancakes we seemed determined to be, but to let us off with minor but painful injuries and actual futures, filled with opportunities to avoid the icy slopes of life insofar as possible forevermore. And so we have. To my knowledge not one of us, even with the right stuff, has ever tobogganed down an iced-over ski run again.

Amen.