- a perfect layback

There is something sublime and special about watching my daughter in the midst of a layback. Time slows and stretches -- you are aware of the physics and yet at the same time not completely in belief that a person can stretch into that position and still maintain control while balancing muscles, torsion, and grace. There she is, moving along the ice, then a quick three-turn, and now the back is jackknifed, the hands perform air tracery, the trailing foot gradually descending, her revolutions tracing sparkles of imaginations in pinwheel fireworks.