10:41 PM, 8,730 feet above sea level, floating in the ether of the Eldora Galaxy. Disco ball spinning, arrays of red lights glowing, candles burning. On the stereo cranked up to level 42 (out of 50) some dreamy heavenly trance album with the lyrics "And these are mysterious times." Indeed they are.

For the first time in awhile for this pilot, things feel right. Perfect in fact. So good in fact that I feel the need to tell of the latest adventures from the newly formed Pluto Intergalactic Special Forces.

The latest adventure consisted of a roller skiing spacecraft adventure. For those of you in the dark on this one – and I was for the longest time – roller skiing is the way nordic pilots prepare for the winter months when the air is still warm and ground dry. It’s something of a silly exercise really – the skis are basically 3-foot long metal slats designed for "skiing" over the mildest of paved terrain. All well and good, except for one little problem – these spacecraft's have no breaks. Stopping on a dime is pretty much impossible, save for the option of dropping to the hard concrete and hoping not to lose too much skin or crack your skull open. No, the key to piloting the roller skiing spacecraft is anticipation – by the time a crisis situation arises it’s pretty much too late.

One could argue that roller skiing is – for lack of a better word– stupid. It takes an extremely long time to get anywhere and you are pretty much relegated to asphalt roads. Note that asphalt is key, because the exercise is absolutely useless on pavement. Intergalactic ski poles don’t grip in pavement.

While roller skiing may be stupid, it is not without a soul. It takes a certain level of trust to roller ski well. Trust that the intergalactic forces will not strike you down with some random car, flying skateboard or slice of gravel. More than any other activity I’ve ever participated in, roller skiing requires you to surrender control, and to trust your instincts. Use the force Luke.

On this day, the Pluto Special Forces decided to make a journey into the absolute evilest empire in the entire Intergalactic Universe – housing subdivisions. Today’s pilots consisted of Dancing Queen AVG, Iceman, Bryn of the many moons galaxy and pilot DV8. Unlike mountain biking or running, roller skiing, sadly enough, is actually quite good in sterile well paved shit holes like subdivisions. Note to engineers out there – please invent a roller skiing contraption that works well on trails!

Driving into the subdivision known as "Rock Creek" (quaint name), Pilot AVG commented something about entering the hell zone from the famous book – no make that bible – "The Monkey Wrench Gang." Indeed. The place had a cold feel to it, and it had little to do with the weather. Miles upon miles of cookie cutter houses stacked on top of each other. SUV Ford Explorers set nicely in their driveways. The 2.2 average kids outside on their push scooters, looking oddly bored for people who supposedly should have a ton of youthful energy. The American Dream, all nicely packaged in a corporate cling wrap that is desperately in need of being torn.

The area where Rock Creek sits today used to be different. Back in 1993, as a freshman at Coloversity of Unirado, I used to take my road bike on epic adventures through the now Rock Creek. The land back then consisted of wash-boarded dirt roads, flowing fields of natural grasslands, coyotes, antelope, deer and a cornucopia of other critters. Perfect land for feeling the rush of the wind a 20 miles an hour on a bike and checking out the awesome Rocky Mountains and the amazing break where plain meets mountain.

The land was basically raped by the all-mighty word that developers love and the wilderness cringes at: GROWTH. It’s a word tossed around every day by politicians, businessmen and other assorted shit heads to the point where it somehow has a positive connotation.

Now I’m not necessary against people moving here. Hell, I’d be the biggest hypocrite of all time, for I am not a natural Coloradan. Still, I prefer progress to growth. Progress is where the human community makes decision based on the betterment of humankind, not just the almighty buck.

Think about it. Uncontrolled growth is a very human concept. In nature nothing grows uncontrollably. That would be fucking scary – it would be a two-headed freak monster that would eventually implode on itself. Actual, I take that back – there is something that grows uncontrollably in the natural world: cancer. Note that cancer eventually kills its host.

Anyhow, this was the setting for our little skiing adventure. Actually, it was fun. Fun seeing the looks on the kids faces as we skied by like some sort of aliens from outer space. I think we even made a convert of some of them. A couple kids on the evilest of all evils – roller blades – told us that they were ready to hop on the internet, but some skis and sell their roller blades. Another convert away from the darkside! Hopefully that kid will actually not by roller skis, but will instead get himself a pair of real backcountry skis so he can get outside, get chased by bears and feel an adventure that Sega or Sony Playstation II will never match.

After an hour and a half or so, we became bored with this adventure. Something about subdivisions stimulate the mind a lot less than a high mountain peak. Kind of scary, considering 80% of out population are now confined to these places (happily) 24-7.

We decided to depart this portion of hell and head back to our respective worlds of soul and freedom. For me, this whole traumatic experience necessitated a quick hop on the single speed for some soulful bridge crossings in my secret Nederland galaxy. Salvation takes on all sorts – for me it’s a sweet singletrack that only a handful of elite pilots and I know about – ridden in near complete darkness.

There is a rumor that three of the pilots capped off the day by participation in some sort of ritualistic cleansing exercise at the SOMA galaxy. And while these reports remain unconfirmed, there seems to be lingering effects of Intergalactic Glitter Dust found at SOMA on the writers hands. These are mysterious times indeed.

DV8