Editor's Note: Eric Neel isn't really an "extreme guy," but Page 2 sent the columnist to the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., to cover the event from an outsider's point of view. Here's his report from the first day of competition:

	There is a calm serenity to these radical Xtremists.

The Combination

Extreme. X.

In a way, they're misleading labels.

In a way, the essence of the Games isn't something wild but something cool. Not hip, not gotta-wear-shades cool (though it's true that, as jazz musician Hank Mobley once said, there's "no room for squares" here), but calm cool.

I came to Aspen thinking mostly of the supercalifragilisticexpialidotiousness of what I was about to see. I came thinking of an inside and an out, of a divide between the basic movements of games I knew and the extraordinary angles and patterns of games played on an unfamiliar edge.

But from my first moments on the hill at Buttermilk on Thursday morning, watching the SuperPipe practice sessions and the Slopestyle Skiing competition, I was struck by how quiet and unhurried things are at X.

The athletes move easily. They walk, slide, ski and speak with a centered sort of stillness.

Jumps and moves are born of a yoga-like self-awareness -- all body-mind grounded and natural, effortless reaches for the sky. You can almost see them breathing into the spaces they travel over and up into.

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It's composure, the same thing you see in a pitcher in the moment before he goes into his wind-up, or a quarterback as he surveys the field before bending down to take the snap. Only here, it's not something before the action, it's part of the action -- it's in the flow of the spectacular.

Between runs at the top of the SuperPipe, I asked 15-year-old snowboarder Mason Aguirre what I should be looking for in a good run.

"Big air, big tricks," he said. "And smooth, it's gotta be smooth."

There it is. Smooth. Deep-breaths, loose shoulders, a kind of surrender to the motion and the moment that makes everything wild seem organic and right.

X. Extreme.

In another way, of course, they're just the right labels.

In another way, the essence of the games is something mad, something wicked and unbelievable.

	Yes, these guys are calm cool ... but they'll always be badass cool, too.

I'm standing on the deck of the SuperPipe, staring over and across the lip. Suddenly, with a shiver and rumble, a board and a body shoot up over the lip, way up over the lip. And into the sky. And they're spinning now, in a tight spiral, the way water goes down a drain, only seemingly against gravity, not with it. And then they're gone.

It's a jaw-dropping, did-you-see-that, catch-your-breath thing (every single time it happens). Ever had a car speed by you just a little closer than you'd planned? Ever get buzzed by a flock of low-flying birds? Remember the Memorex guy blown away in his cushy living room chair? It's that kind of thing.

Boarder Channelle Sladics sees the shake in my head and wonder in my eyes and says, "That's cool -- you're bringing the awe factor."

Um, no sister, you are.

Later, I'm at the bottom of the Slopestyle hill, looking up at the crest of the last jump. It's still, the light is flat, there's a slight push and pull about the clouds above.

A father and young son stand next to me, kid on dad's shoulders.

	Third-place finisher Jon Olsson was left awestruck by Tanner Hall's lo-fi, high-fly sails.

"Watch it, watch it, watch it," dad says. "Here he comes."

Then Tanner Hall materializes in the still, flat light at the crest.

He can't be real. He spins, summersaults, crosses his skies, sings an aria, paints a portrait, boxes with God. Who can say what he does? It's a magical blur.

I've got no words for it. Dad can't do much better. "Did you see that?!" he shouts.

The kid -- and he's just a little kid, maybe 8 or 9 -- nails it: "That was sick," he says, like it's a word in French, like it's a made-up word you use to keep secrets, like it's a sacred word that can't be translated.

Sick. Smooth and sick. Like Robert Frost's fire and ice or something, only with more play and abandon in it.

The silent glide of a SnoCross sled mid-jump, and the churn and crunch of that same sled busting out of a corner and making a mid-hill pass.

Lo-fi and high fly at once.

It's the combination that gets me, makes me want to come back for more.

Random Xtra Notes