Use the Force

Yesterday I went on another night skate with my friend. Armed with helmets and gloves, we hit up the usual runs on campus.

Except the skate was far from the usual skate. I had it in my mind that I was going to learn how to footbrake.

It’s a difficult thing to describe. Where to begin? I think I must start with my stance on the board. I ride goofy footed. That means I’ve got my left foot behind and my right foot up front. The opposite of the way that most people would ride. Which makes sense, since I’m left handed. But even stranger, I push with my right foot, the foot in front. I’ve been told this style is called Mongol. Either way, it isn’t optimal, because when you push with the front foot, you have to awkwardly bring it all the way back to the front of the board. For me, always on an electric, it wasn’t such a big deal, because I never did a lot of pushing anyway.

Back to foot brakes. In order to do it, you need to have one foot on the front of the board, and the other breaking. But in my case, the other foot was one I’d never had doing anything before. Other than steering the board like the rudder of a ship.

To finally learn how to foot break, I had to realize that I needed one foot in the front of the board, and the other breaking. Then we found a nice hill, and I started rolling. I balanced my weight on my front foot, and tried to break with my left. The result was a funny, hopping kind of motion. I was hopping down the hill with one foot, while the other dragged the skateboard along for the ride.

Then, like the calculus of a series of straight lines becoming a curve, I found an equilibrium. Before I knew it, I was sliding down the hill at a very manageable speed. But the I had no steering. Until a few practice runs later, I was able to break with my left foot, and even steer the board with my right foot.

The next obstacle was the parking garage. When I first stepped onto a longboard many years ago, it was at the top of a parking garage. I bravely went down the ramp, and quickly wiped out. I shyed away from longboards ever since.

But last night, I resolved to face the beast again. Using only foot brakes, and my skate skills, I managed to skate down the parking garage. With my board turned off. It was a great feeling, to be able to do that without having to rely on the board.

It’s worth mentioning here, that at one point in the skate, I did use my brakes. And I heard a very not good sounding clicking coming from the motor when I did. As a computer guy, that usually scares me shitless. Like my hard drive is about to blow. But I’ve only heard the clicking sound once before. And even then, only during a hard break. Still, I know it may be a sign that the motor is coming to the end of its life. Thank god brushless motors aren’t too expensive. And on the bright side, the board still seems to work perfectly fine. And I won’t be breaking quite so much in the future.

So you might say it took me half a year of skating to get to the point where I could learn to foot break in an evening. But it sure was six of the best months of my life.

Last thing. Evolve fixed my board. They’re shipping it back to me, today. I hope to have it by the end of the week, and after I do, I’ll be sure to type my shenanigans to you.

Neighborhood Carbon

It was a good week for electric skateboarding for me. First off, Evolve has emailed me about the status of my broken Carbon series. They’ve taken it in, fixed it, and pending a test run, will be mailing it back to me. That is music to my ears, exactly what I wanted to hear. Those guys at Evolve are great.

But without my Carbon series this weekend, I took my Snubnose back to Miami. It was great to skate that old neighborhood again. Miami, in general, has better surfaces, smoother roads, than Gainesville. It also is completely flat. Which in my case, is an advantage. It means I can carve around without breaking at scary hills. It means I don’t have to worry about using too much battery going up hill. While contrary to how skateboarders may traditionally ride, I find the backstreets of Miami to be perfect for electric skateboards.

Then there’s the kids. After skating all around the neighborhood, I saw a group of kids playing on the street, close to my house. What was different from the last time I had skated there? One of them was skating around on an electric scooter. It looked like a larger scooter, a cheaper scooter. It was very likely the same model that I saw the kids in the Gainesville ghetto riding.

As I rolled past these kids, doing my best to show off, one of the boys looked up at me and his face lit up. “The Electric Longboard!” he shouted.

“Yeah!” I said, and gave him the cowabunga sign. It let me know that he saw me, he remembered, and he googled. If there’s a sad point to this story, it’s that, despite being a rolling advertisement for Evolve, most kids will wind up with the cheaper toys. While this is bad for Evolve, it’s good for me. I remain the coolest kid on the block. And in a few years, when Junior gets a job, I think I know what he’ll be saving his minimum wages for.

I also, for the first time, skated at the neighborhood next to mine. While difficult to get to, it was nice to have a change of scenery. But it turns out, the neighborhood next  to mine is terrible to skate it. There are speed bumps everywhere. It made me long to have my Carbon series back. Because the Carbon series opens doors. The speed bumps that my Snubnose pulls a 180 at, are easy pickings for the Carbon series. So, oh carbon fiber next generation board of mine, come home safe, and come home soon.

Sidewalk Sacrifice

Riding of my longboard these past few days, I’ve had more close calls than I care to admit. And not just coming from the *forbidden angle* either.

Yesterday, riding down the street in the bike lane, I was going about the same speed as the van next to me. I was actually looking into the side view mirror of this van, keeping constant watch on his lights for signs that he might turn.

But he gave neither a turn signal, or even a slow brake warning, and turned right, in front of me. I’m not sure if he saw me or was even aware of my presence. But he turned right just far enough in front of me to avoid any kind of accident, or even my having to slow down. Still, that turn left me with a funny feeling that I’d been lucky. Again.

Then, just a few blocks down the same road, a car coming the other way wanted to turn left. He had been waiting to turn across the oncoming traffic of this two lane road for a while, and apparently decided to just go for it. But a car next to me honked, I believe on my behalf, to get him to stop turning. Sure, he blocked traffic both ways, but at least he didn’t turn into me.

To tell the truth, so much of skating on the road is unclear. Who saw who? Why did they honk? I’ll never have the answers.

Then, just this morning, a car in front of me stopped for a bicycle that was already stopped for him. As a result, I ran into the back of his car. I hopped off my board, and had to grab his spoiler to stop and steady myself. But this guy probably didn’t even notice. As evidenced by the way he let his car roll back a fraction of a meter, after he let the bicycle pass.

It’s one of the problems I’m having with commuting by skateboard. If I ride on my snubnose, then using the sidewalk really is tough. At least in my neighborhood, the concrete is so uneven that you really can’t get a good ride on it. In places, you *have* to pick up your board, the cracks are so bad. Hence taking the bicycle lane, which is smooth and easy. Except there you have to deal with cars that never see you.

Which is why I wish I had my carbon series back. With its big, inflatable tires, it’s the only board I know that can handle the sidewalks as smoothly as I might take my snubnose on the bike lane. I hate having to choose between the two, but really, how much better will conditions ever get in this imperfect world?

Still no word on my Carbon series, although Evolve probably has the board by now. I’m scared that the repair could take as long as if I ordered a new one. Months. But I suppose only time will tell. In the meantime, I am now very tempted to spend money on the car horn kickstarter. But I have a sinking feeling that it would be simply throwing my money away.

Bus Cowabunga

Well it’s been interesting times in the world of Electric Skateboarding.

I’ve been working on a spreadsheet of all the types of electric skateboards available at the moment. I’ll post it in the near future.

This weekend, my mother bought her second electric board. Another Emad board. I have such mixed feelings about it. Because on the one hand, those boards are so heavy, with such a long charging time and short range that I hate to give them more money. But that heaviness does make them easy to ride. And she got the board for only $100 from the local scooter shop. In the end, I still have to hate on Emad, because of how blatently they lie on their packaging. Despite her buying their best model, the Sidewalk Surfer 600w, it still only barely goes farther than three miles. Not to mention how lead batteries really putter out and turn Puny McWeaksauce about halfway through their ride.

Yesterday, on my commute, I had a great moment. Going down a long stretch of road, a bus pulled even with me. This is on Campus, where the speed limit is 20 mph. Meaning if the road traffic doesn’t speed, and I go as fast as I can, I can keep pace with them. The bus actually opened its door, while moving, so that the driver could give me a high five. I’ve had plenty of people roll down their windows before, but yesterday was my first bus validation.

The other thing that happened came when I was skating into the building. You’ll know from my previous posts that I love to pull a George Jetson. I love to skate all the way up to the door, and pick up my board, wheels still spinning, as I walk into the building.

The entrance to where I work is at the bottom of a small hill. I typically skate down this small hill, and break to make the whole routine controlled. But yesterday, as I was approaching that small downhill, there was another longboarder doing the same. He had to stop at the top of the hill. Poor orthodox boarders -- they don’t have breaks. As he walked his board down to the entrance, I played the holier-than-thou-douchebag perfectly. Long live electrics.

Carbon Series - Big Wheels

Sunday night, I decided to convert my Carbon series by taking off the regular skate wheels, and putting on the big wheels.

The process took me a little longer than I thought it would. I had been thinking that I could simply take off one set of wheels, and put on another. It wasn’t until I tried the conversion that I realized, exactly *how* the board converts was never explained to me.

But the process involved taking off the wheels, removing the motor, and dicking around with a new drive belt, and the cover to the drive belt. So I definitely got my hands dirty. When I had to work on my old Snubnose, I bought a set of L Wrenches (I hope that’s the right name for them) because the screws on Evolve boards aren’t standard flathead or phillips. It was a good thing, too, because I needed two more sizes of L wrenches out of that set in order to convert my board. I threw those two new sizes of L wrenches into the little repair kit I like to keep in my backpack when I skate. Just in case.

The hardest part of the conversion, for me, was getting the damn belt on. You have to thread it through the motor wheel gears and the wheel gears. I threaded it through the wheel, but couldn’t get it onto the motor. I was almost ready to admit defeat, when I tried threading it on the motor first, the smaller gear, and the wheel second, the bigger wheel. That was the trick, as doing it in this order made the process *much* easier.

Then I actually put the big wheels on. This was rather straightforward, although I felt much apprehension since I’d never done it before. The big wheels have two sets of bearings on them. But when I was done, the wheels turned reasonably well. Of course, the wheel with the drivetrain felt like it had much more resistance than it had with a regular skate wheel.

I took the board for a test run around my parking lot. Wow. My parking lot has a terrible, bumpy surface. I hate to skate on it. But with my big wheels on, you’d hardly be able to tell. It might have been a freshly paved road, the way that board road without any bumps at all. I was impressed.

But these wheels are filled with air. I tested the pressure and found that they needed more air. So I skated across the street where there’s an air pump at a gas station. While I was filling up, two college students watching me told me how cool that board was. They said they’d seen me riding around. Such is the life of an electric skateboarder.

One thing I think is important to note, is that the big wheels really make the skateboard feel bigger. It makes you ride higher. With those wheels on, it would really be a stretch to take the board onto the bus with me. It would also stick out much more, under my desk at work. Basically, it takes all of the inconspicuousness and innocence out of the board, and turns it into a much larger object.

But finally, with my wheels at 60 psi, I was ready to roll. I called a friend over, and we skated on campus.

It was the best skate of my life. The board rode like a dream, everywhere. So much of skateboarding was learning where to skate. Learning to avoid certain cracks on the pavement, and what speed I could take different patches of tactile pavement at. With the big wheels, none of these things concerned me.

I could skate over the cracks, the bumps, the roughness and the imperfections, even the tactile pavement. This board could all of that up, and you wouldn’t even know you skated over it. In other words, with that one ride, I was instantly convinced that air in the tires is the way to go for electric skateboards. If you had to push, those wheels don’t fly. But if a motor is doing the work, you’re probably going to want that comfort.

It was a great ride around campus, with my friend taking my old Snubnose while I rode the big boy. Until 6.4 miles into the ride, according to my gps. My board lost power. It wouldn’t come back on. It hadn’t given any signs of failure, no low battery light or anything. It simply cut out.

My friend skated back to the car, and we drove home.

I plugged the board in to charge the battery, really the only thing I could do. And when I did, I noticed the place where you plug it in felt loose. But the board seemed to charge fine. Until the morning, when I unplugged it.

Here I want to note that I’ve been charging this board by the book. That means, annoyingly, plugging the charger into the board, and then plugging the charger into the wall. When unplugging, starting with the wall first, and the board second. But when I unplugged the charger from the board, sparks flew out! I also felt that the plug was indeed, loose, or possibly it had come unattached.

Needless to say, my Carbon series is now dead.

Kudos to Evolve, however. Because they responded to my distressed email straight away. They’ve asked me to return the board, and they will replace it with a new one.

It’s a shame that electric boards are as fragile as they are. But it’s nice to know that if you do shell out the bucks for one, that the company will have your back. Thanks Evolve! Still I can’t help but wonder. Did my board break due to a simple defect? Or was it the shoddy packing job that caused damage during shipping?

Even now, as I rush to mail the board back, I simply don’t feel right, sending it back as it was sent to me. I feel obligated to pack it better than that. Stay tuned, and we’ll see how this unfolds.

Carbon Series - Skate Wheels

The Carbon Series - Skate wheels

When I picked the box up from FedEx, I was surprised. The tape holding the lid down had come undone. I could see inside -- I could reach inside. It looked as though, if the box were mishandled, items could actually fall out of it. When I got it home and opened it fully, I was surprised to see no packing materials whatsoever. But to my amazement, everything was in the box and looking good.

Until the next day, when I got a small package from Evolve in the mail. It was a cover plate for the drive chain. So not everything was in the box, but nothing was lost in the shipment.

My first thoughts of the board was, it’s long. Really long. Long enough to make carrying it the way I carry my Snubnose impractical. But with its length came a certain sportyness. As though it were a race car. And the board is thin. Thin and sexy, and surprisingly, way thinner than Boosted’s Board. I’m not sure if that’s because the battery is thin, or possibly recessed into the carbon fiber.

After charging, we rode it that night. It rides a lot different from the Snubnose. Because of the spacing on the wheels, it can’t turn quite so nimbly. But what it lacks in turns, it makes up for in smoothness. And on that first run, the trucks were pretty tight.

After riding the board for that first time, I came to another sad realization. I couldn’t use the Carbon series as my board, and give my Snubnose to my gf, as I had originally planned. The Carbon series was simply easier to ride. And for that reason, I had to let my gf use it, while I remained using the harder to ride board. Poor me, right?

Later on, we would do just that. We had a blast, riding around the parking lot together.

That next day, for my commute to work, I found myself with a difficult choice. Take the Snubnose to work, or take the Carbon series. I had waited months to get my hands on the Carbon series. Why was I hesitate to ride it to work? Because it was big. Big enough to make taking on the bus a bit more of a hassle. But mostly, it was the turns. When I first learned to skateboard, I couldn’t take many of the campuses awkward ninety degree turns. It took me months to have the skill to loosen the trucks enough to be able to make those turns. And sometimes there are a lot of pedestrians walking on the sidewalk that I have to weave through. I wasn’t so confident doing that on the new board, either.

I had both of the remotes in a bag filled with all of my skating paraphernalia. I decided to reach in, blind, and whichever remote I grabbed would be the one I would take to work. I grabbed the Snubnose. That was Thursday.

Friday I took the Carbon series. I loosened the trucks a bit, and had no problem doing my usual skate run. The worst part about the run, was walking into the building where I work, with this skateboard from another universe tucked under my arm. I kept thinking of the Captain Obvious meme, “If you wanted me to park my car at work, you should’ve build an employee parking lot!”

But when I got to my desk, another surprise. My board was too long to fit nicely between the desk. I had to slant her in.

DIY Electric Skateboard

So many things happened yesterday, I won’t even be able to write about them all. So let’s keep today’s blog post to the DIYElectricSkateboard.com website I’ve just become aware of, after he posted a comment on the blog claiming the Boosted Boards have about 2.8ah batteries. I’m not sure if his numbers are right, but the Evolve boards have 7 and 10 ah boards, so chew on that.

Still, I’m very fascinated with his site. I think it’s fair to say that he’s a direct competitor to my friend who owns Redrockboardshop.com, I have to admit this guy is giving my friend a run for his money. Want the special trucks you need to connect a motor and drive chain to your board? They’ll run you $300 @ Redrock. But DIYElectricSkateboard has them for $140. Now that I’ve learned of this website, the cost of making or converting your own electric board just took a nosedive.

But what I really like about DIYElectricSkateboard is that this guy knows the problem with a home made board is the remote. If you make your own electric today, it’s going to have a big, clunky remote control. Check out this link of the new remote he’s working on. It’s a Nintendo Wii Chuck. And while it’s just a prototype that you can’t buy, I feel this guy definitely has the right idea. He’s making the remote small, cooler, and most importantly, *not* in the shape of a gun.

***

My fingers are still typeing, so let me type a bit about this email that Boosted Boards just sent out to me.

Guess what? They’re still very, very close to shipping boards to people who ordered them way back when. But the price has increased. Their new price is $2000, making them, to the best of my knowledge, the most expensive electric skateboard on the market. Yes, even more expensive than the almost $2000 Evolve 2 in 1 Carbon series.

I guess I have to admit that if you were thinking about buying a thousand dollar board, or a $1600 board, that you can probably afford a $2k board. But still, the price is steep. Before, when I only had one board, I had a good excuse to buy a second. So that I could go skating with my girlfriend, maybe even rent one out or sell lessons. But now that I have two boards, paying through the nose for a third is much harder to justify. Especially after learning of an even less expensive way to build a board on my own.

Still, I have every reason to think that I would love their board, and it appears to be top quality. The only thing I can fault it for is the low amp hours on their battery, if the number stated above is accurate. But there’s a voice in the back of my head that cautions. The price has changed, the design has changed. There’s a good chance their battery could change, too.

Until then, continue to skate that endless carve. And use my favorite new hashtag, #skateclassymyfriends

Carbon Series Ships!

So much has happened in the world of electric skateboarding. And that’s just since my last post yesterday.

First, I put a piece of tape over the battery cover for my underlighting. Check out the picture on Instagram. But surprisingly, it adds a certain charm! I like it much better now than I did before.

But most importantly, I got an email from Evolve saying my board has shipped! I have a tracking number. Even as I type, it is coming to me. I expect it on Tuesday. Life is good.

I’ve also been going over the new Boosted web site with a friend of mine who is knowledgeable on model planes and batteries. He says the Boosted LiFePO4 Battery, what he called a “Life” battery, is newer and better than the lipo battery Evolve uses. However, the Boosted web page says it’s a 40 volt, 2000 watt. The problem is, we don’t have all of the information. He says we’d need to know the capacity of the battery in amp hours.

Not that capacity in amp hours means so much to me at the moment. But my Snubnose board has 7Ah and the Carbon series have 10Ah. As soon as I figure out how many Ah the Boosted Board has, I’ll let you know.

Four points on electric skateboarding

Many changes in the electric skateboarding world.

1 - Underlighting fail. You’ll know from my previous posts that I’ve installed green track under lighting on my Evolve board. Well, after going home yesterday, I noticed it had failed. The battery case finally snapped off, and now there’s a gaping hole where it used to be. It happened while skating, and I’m pretty sure I know where. The problem is, it’s just so easy to ride over some plastic garbage on the road and not have a second thought about it. But yesterday, when I heard that tell-tale sound of riding over plastic garbage --- well I now know it was my own. You can find a pic of the damage on my Instagram @maulakai

At first, I was going to take off the underlighting and diss Nite FX for their cheap ass product. But then I realized, if I really like the lights, a single piece of tape would fix it back to complete functionality. But I must caution anyone who is considering buying their product. Perhaps on a scooter, there’s a suitable place for the battery compartment. But the underside of a skateboard is not such a place.

2 - Still no word on the Carbon Series board I was promised in February. No update email. As a matter of fact, the Evolve web page still has a long outdated message about parts arriving in a week. I won’t hold my breath. But there is a ray of hope. Because on their Facebook, they posted a picture of a room filled with Carbon Series longboards. I sure hope mine is somewhere in that room.

3 - Boosted Boards webpage update. And it is a beautiful update. Finally, they’ve ditched the “sexy” picture of a skateboard, and replaced it with an updated model. Know what? It still looks sexy.

I got the chance to read through their new page, and I must say, I like what I see. According to them, since I placed a pre-order months … make that years ago, I will eventually hear a follow up from them. Who knows? If I still don’t have my Carbon Series by then, I just might order one.

They also have a section that seems devoted to many of the questions that skateboard virgins would have before getting their first electric board. About the importance of learning how to kick push, and break, and not depending on their brakes. And wearing a helmet. The usual stuff.

But I think their asking this new generation of electric skateboarders to learn to push and break is a bit naive. It’s like giving a new driver a car with an automatic transmission, but telling him he should really learn to drive a manual. I have learned to kick push my board, for the start of a run anyway. But it took me months to master. And I still can’t kick my board around for any good distance. I tried that one morning my old board broke. I found it to be very difficult. In all but the most ideal circumstances, I preferred to simply pick up my board and walk. Breaking is another issue. I would love to be able to wear skate gloves, the kind with the hockey pucks on the palms, and use those to break. But because I’m riding an electric skateboard, my hands aren’t free for such maneuvers. Which leads me to the next point.

4 What’s the next step? What’s the next, Evolution? There are two features that our electric skateboards are lacking. First, we need remotes that can be used in tandem with skating gloves. I’m no inventor, but I have a basic idea about how to make such a remote.

Boosted, Evolve, if you’re reading, please take this idea and run with it: Make the hockey puck the potentiometer. In other words, you could adjust the speed of the motor by spinning the hockey puck on the palm of your hand. If for any reason, you needed to put your hand down to break, there should be a pressure sensitive kill switch, so that you could slide and stop yourself without the motor working against you.

Look around the skating world. Anybody who's anybody uses the gloves. I see the pros making incredible runs without even knee pads. And their secret is the amazing level of control having skate gloves gives the rider. We need that with our electrics.

The second step, as I’ve mentioned before, is the car horn. I took a new way home yesterday, and sure enough, nearly got run over. You can wave your hands, you can wear LED lights, but the bottom line is that car drivers simply aren’t trained to look for skateboarders. Especially when approaching from, what I’ve come to call, *The forbidden angle* (down the sidewalk side approaching traffic, where a car pulls perpendicular to you to make a turn).

But car drivers do react to sound. We have the battery, we have the electrics, we even have the space. Board makers, please give us the horn we need to let cars know, we’re here!