I am a couple of weeks in to riding my Comet FSM, learning to carve, foot break, but most of all, trying to get to grips with a Coleman Slide. This is generally acknowledged as the quickest way to safely take a whole lot of speed out of a moving board.

The only issue is you need a whole lot of speed to make it work.

And, commitment.

But that just scares me.

As I am sure we all do when wanting to learn something, I have watched a load of videos and read a lot of blog posts.

I like this video the best – this is actually with the man himself teaching his namesake trick

I mention commitment – I read a particularly funny forum thread about learning to slide – someone asked where they were going wrong, and the response was

you need more commitment.

The reply came back something like

I have searched all over the internet and can find nothing about this commitment, please can you explain what commitment is?

I can only imagine the poster thought “commitment” was some kind of accessory, or trick they had never heard of!

Today, I went out on my board, after the drizzle of the day was beginning to dry up, but used the slightly damp ground to my advantage and added in a little extra commitment and, yep, you’ve got it, my board slid!

OK, I was only on the basketball court, but it felt good to actually experience what is meant to be happening. I did try again on our road, which has a nice little dip, and I am getting there, but I still have a way to go, but give it a few months, and this will be me:

Comet // Fresh Faces from Comet Skateboards on Vimeo.

Maybe!