My father’s pool is, was, and always will be –– all skaters agree –– absurd. The pale blue surface is very hard, durable, very fast, and sentient. The coping is a great grindable bullnose. The shape is a perfect kidney, just under nine-feet deep. To ride the pool from one lip to the other across the deep end, a skater must roll no more than four seconds (I know, I’ve timed it) but to measure this distance in time is folly. It should be measured in neurochemicals released, synpases fired, genes unwinding from histones and proteins synthesized while calculating your next move, the one you’ll make when you hit that coping.