Author’s Note: Please bear with me while I deflect from my Miyata chronicles for this personal story. Thank you.

One of my best earliest memories is of riding bikes with my brother and one of his friends from our neighborhood. There was a large lot behind our house which was known as “The Field”. This field was the focus of play of all types. It had particular utility as a baseball lot and so had a long strip of earth from the pitchers mound to home plate. This made an excellent runway for practicing skidding!
The idea was to start at the mound and crank up your speed as much as possible and then skid over homeplate. Probably it doesn’t seem like much to an adult mind, but there are so many possibilities in the quest for the perfect skid; skid right, skid left, the right-left skid, etc. At the end of the skid to pedal away without dabbing is ideal. The longest, deepest, most arcing skid is another ideal. I went for the latter on my final skid on the day that I am remembering in this post.
It was so clear to me as I started off the mound. My wheels spun up so fast and there – at home plate – I would stomp on my foot and brake so, so hard to come to a complete beautiful sideways skid, right on top and ride out victorious!
What I got was something completely unimagined; the gnarliest, twisting skid ever to be had. I still can’t describe the sensation of the slide – left and then right and twisty and down come to mind. I definitely met the ground with one of my feet intertwined in the bicycle frame and me and my brother and Tommy having the biggest smiles on our faces for a job well done!