True Tales of a Mad Inline Inventor

Ever wanted to launch something out the back of your skate at whatever's chasing you? Hot oil sure would do the trick! A flame thrower with an adjustable tail would be neat! Or how about tear gas? That way you could really smoke the competition!

If this kind of mischief strikes you as far-fetched, think again. Take Terry Murray for example. Terry is all about taking wild and crazy skating ideas and putting them into practice. Whether you're after titanium skate sparklers, rear-mounted chalk-dispensers, or illuminated smoke generators with wristpad controls -- Terry has just about every toy to do the trick.

One of Terry's gizmos shoots a 20-foot jet of water rearward -- capable of keeping any dog at bay! He depresses a couple of buttons on a souped-up set of wrist-sliders and all of a sudden he's mixing water at the nozzle of a very high pressure air cannister. For extra effect, he hits all four buttons at night and illuminates the jetstream with a back light and a front headlamp!

What motivates an inventor anyway? Well, fun for one. If you were an inventor like Terry you'd do it so you could skate around the driveway with your kids, laying down lines of colored chalk from skate-mounted, spring-tensioned dispensers. Or you'd pay the recycling guys to purposefully leave the blue bins in the middle of the sidewalk so you could jump them on your way to work!

Still curious to know what goes on inside the mind of an inventor? Read on! I caught up with Terry after a skating workshop and asked him how he was getting on with his inline inventions and adventures:


E. Terry, what are you playing with now?
T. On tomorrow's night skate, since my spark brakes are on a two-week suspension while the skate patrol figures out a policy on them in public, I will be testing an aerolsolized
water spray, highlighted by red and blue spot lights, all under finger control.

The effect of jumping hedges when deployed is a red or blue or alternating smoke cloud
soaring over the obstacle, similar to concert lighting. This works fine in daylight hours for a mist stream out of the skate, similar to the smoke bomb you talked to me about. The smoke bomb produces a better and more colored trail than the mist stream.

I've completed the first pass of the smoke generator and it looks really cool, like your skates have jet engines in them! They deploy by means of a release-cord ignition system. I also illuminate the stream at night for the jumping jet stream effect. It's way too complicated
for public consumption, but for stunt skating it works great.

E. What else have you been working on?
T. I've been testing out some new ideas for colored lines. The chalk system I made for my kids was a linkage system that could be mounted well on boot skates, but it's kind of bulky for [racing] skates like yours.

Now I'm trying a powdered spray that is no more environmentally obtrusive as chalk. It's basically a painting system that washes away. There are simple cartridges that mount into the corner of the frame and are triggered by wristpad control. The system employs small tubes that run down your leg to the skate injector.

E. What do you call this painting gadget?
T. This project is simply being defined as an environmentally safe means of marking pavement with a path traced by a skate for the purpose of creating paths and mazes and for instructional purposes.

E. When will it all be ready?
T. I'll have all the latest gadgets operational soon, though no flame in public! I've got a new pair of serious knee pads for aggressive stuff, and am adding titanium toe sliders to my boots for cool knee slide stops, now with sparking effects.

E. So what makes you tick?
T. Give a kid or an adult a safe way to accelerate, like on a swing or a slide, on skates or with a bungee, and they will come back to it every time. You would not believe some of my
other high G inventions. I've shot my kids across frozen lakes before. I would be on full crampons and holding on to one of them while we stretched out the bungee like a slingshot. Another invention, the Kidd Cannon, can shoot a surfboard 100 feet like a cruise missile, which will then do a full 360 loop. It is not currently safe with human payloads and I have the bruises to prove it.

E. Anything else you'd like to say?
T. Any input on wild needs or ideas would be appreciated, with a demo version in return.
And thanks for all the drills from the workshop. I've divided my 10-mile commute into a series of drills. I'm busy perfecting the endless crossover!

Eddy Matzger has always harbored dark dreams of chrome-plated exhaust pipes mounted to his skates which could belch choking smoke as the finish line drew near. Lucky for his rivals, though, sponsors TWINCAM bearings, Salomon skates, Explore wheels, Transpack, Wigwam, and PowerBar have kept Eddy on the straight and narrow path of good sportsmanship while racing. Visit Eddy at www.skatecentral.com.