Wearing an unbound, steely-eyed, self-possessed look as the blood red sun starts to set before him beneath the last stretch of late July Ohio cornfields in the distance—after all, lest we ever forget, this is America, “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave”—Billy Ventura stands poised in his helmet, elbow and knee pads, chin up, chest out, shoulders thrown back, his right foot stamped down upon the tail of his skateboard, its wheels hanging over the vertical lip of his ten foot halfpipe as if in breathless anticipation.