My first alpine descent on in-line skates was a bruising series of traverses between parked cars on a city street. Necessity being the mother of invention, I found that PowerBars stuffed inside tight lycra shorts made excellent hip pads. As I became more proficient on my skates, I could finally have my bars and eat them too. That's because I had learned that doing a parallel slalom (stem-christie) turn at the last second prevented collisions. Furthermore, I discovered that the act of turning generated enough friction to stop me.

Since then, I've learned to control my speed by connecting these turns in rapid succession, like a slalom skier on moguls. Broad turns are enough to regulate speed on moderate slopes, while stopping requires a series of increasingly sharp jump turns. The less my skates point downhill, and the more my body stays perpendicular to the downhill direction, the more I control my speed. Here's how I do it:

For maximum stability, I lean back on my rear skate and stagger my stance. My forward skate, although unweighted, acts as a guide for steering. To initiate a turn, I simply begin by scissoring my legs. This will ultimately transfer my weight to the opposite skate, and requires a brief moment of weightlessness as my feet draw even. My hips then lean and rotate as I sink and transfer weight to the inside edge of the other skate. I press on the rear skate until it has carved a full arc, with my lead skate pointing back uphill.

At first, turning was a skill which seemed kind of counter-intuitive, but with practice it became my savior. A good rule of thumb while I was still having to think about it was to remind myself that I had to lead with the same skate as the direction I was turning. In other words, if was turning right, I would lead with my right foot, and vice versa. Another way to look at it was to think to myself "keep my weight on the opposite foot from the direction I'm turning." It came to me eventually.

For maximum stoppage power, I use slalom turns, not snowplow or telemark turns. Above all, I don't want to throw myself off by rotating my shoulders. The steeper the hill, the more this applies. No matter how steep the descent, if you can slalom like a skier, the whole paved world can be your playground.

Eddy Matzger skates for K2/TWINCAM. In 1994, Eddy has already won the Sea Otter Classic at Laguna Seca, the Race Through the Wine Country from Napa to Calistoga, and the Big Sur International Marathon Skate from Big Sur to Carmel.