#loudbicycle

So yesterday, the second of my kickstarter fantasies became a reality. (the first was my Boosted Board) And don’t quote me on that, because I’m not even certain this one was on kickstarter. I’m talking about the #loudbicycle. It’s basically a car horn for your bicycle. My challenge is to adapt it for #electricskateboard use.

Now that I have the thing in my hands, it’s a lot easier to gauge how to use it. First thing, it’s kinda too big and heavy to hold, or attack to my arm. As a matter of fact, only the Evolve Bamboo Series 2, with its motor sticking out of the back, seems to be large enough to accommodate it. Even that’s a stretch. There’s also the matter of vibrations. Of which a skateboard receives much. I’m not sure how sturdy a product this is, but I’d hate to immediately mount it to the board only to find it doesn’t like being shaken.

The thing came with directions, which said to charge the thing first. They said it might take up to eight hours! But I noticed it uses the same, *Mini* USB port that for some reason is increasingly common to see. And though I kinda hate this port and wish it would die and leave the rest of the world to make *Micro* USB the standard, apparently Mini USB *is* popular because at my charging station, I’m already setup for Mini. It’s the same port that Evolve and Boosted use for their remotes.

So I plug the thing in to charge. Keep in mind, this was just after coming home from work. So there at my charging station, I also have my laptop, the Boosted Board, the Boosted remote, and now this #loudbicycle horn.

The Boosted remote’s light was the first one to turn green. I unplugged it. Then the Boosted Board turned Orange. Remember I have one of the earlier models that turns orange, not green, when it’s charged. I unplugged that. Finally my laptop started flashing orange a blue. I swear, this isn’t because I’m some sort of huge University of Florida Gators fan. That’s just how chromebooks work. My chromebook, at least. And it’s usually the slowest to charge.

But it’s my routine to unplug the whole power strip, once everything is charged. When I did that, I didn’t realize that the #loudbicycle horn was no longer charging, as it was plugged into the power strip. When I was the horn was no longer charging, I was tempted to simply plug the strip back in. But the strip has all of these AC/DC converters plugged into it, and they might draw some power away from the charge, so instead I plugged just the #loudbicycle horn directly into the wall.

And when I did, it’s light turned green. I always kinda wonder about batteries and appliances like this. I bet if I had left it plugged in, it would have taken quite some time to charge. But for some reason, unplug it and plug it back in and it’s all good?

So what was the next step? To honk the horn, of course. It has an external button on a wire that you have to plug in, and I connected it. There was some tension in the air as I braced myself for what should be a loud noise. I hit the button.

The honk was loud enough to make me jump, even though I had braced myself for it and pointed the horn away from me. Also, that single honk caused the charge light to go from green to red again. I let the horn charge.

I have a big pocket on the outside of my backpack that has #loudbicycle written all over it. I cleared out the pocket, and now the horn lives there. To be fair, it was so loud, I’m almost scared to use it. Which might be a good thing.

For my morning commute to work, I take a bus most of the way. So for that short ride, almost entirely over sidewalk, I elected *not* to connect the button and have the horn as an option. I plan to enable it for my ride home. So, yeah, I haven’t actually field tested the thing. More posts to follow. As always, see the horn on my instagram @maulakai.

Two AM Skate

We were skating at almost two thirty in the morning. There’s a couple of strip malls by the Krystal that have a perfect, gentle slope to them. During the day, their parking lots would be filled with cars and business. But at night, if you start up by the bowling alley, you can have the run of the place.

Now the first question, for me anyway, was which board to bring to this location. True it wasn’t my first time skating there. But because we were skating at night, and because I wasn’t too familiar with the place, I decided to bring my Evolve Bamboo Series Two, with the all terrain tires.

With orthodox skate wheels, there are many things that can crash you, especially in the dark. The best advantage of those all terrain wheels is that they can handle just about anything a bicycle can, which makes me much more comfortable skating in the dark.

My friends were both on orthodox longboards, of course.

One of the guys there had never seen an electric before, and asked if he could ride mine. I set the remote to the low speed and let him make a few turns, while I tried out his board.

Let me tell you, as an electric skateboarder, his longboard sure felt like it had some kind of magic to it. Probably because of the friction of the drive train, I’m not used to boards rolling like his did. It rolled like a banana peel over butter. Because of the slight and perfect tilt to the asphalt, simply pointing the board in the right direction would cause it to roll -- magic!

While skating, we encountered several speed bumps. That’s one of the things you learn to do as a skateboarder, is to judge speed bumps. Because in a car, for the most part, all speed bumps are created equal. But on a skateboard, you sure learn to see the many different varieties. There are some bumps that I can go over with no trouble whatsoever. But there are also some other speedbumps that could scrape against the bottom of my board. Which is something I *really* don’t want to happen.

Have you ever watched a youtube video of someone puncturing their lithium battery? The result doesn’t look good. The battery, when exposed to the air, essentially becomes a tiny bomb. You wouldn’t want your phone to be in your pocket when that happens, and you probably wouldn’t want to be riding an electric skateboard when that happens.

So avoiding damage to the battery is a good thing. As a result, whenever I come to a speed bump, I hit the brakes, hop off my board and let it take the bump all by itself, then hop back on. Every time I did that, the board cleared the speed bump. Yet I’m too chickenshit to stay on the board over a speed bump, for the aforementioned reason.

And of course that makes me think that as electric skateboarding becomes more popular, as more and more of these boards go on the market, eventually, somebody is going to puncture their battery. Right?

I mean that’s a headline right there. Man skates of flaming board.

Old Battery and Fiik Boards

So my oldest electric skateboard is the Evolve Snubnose. It’s served me well, and you can tell when you look at the bottom of it. It’s all scratched up. But those scratches are love, they represent me learning how to skate.

I thought it might be a good time to write about what happens to the battery, at least on this model, after a year or two.

For the most part the board is still fine and working just as it did on day one. With a single exception. As I was riding around the neighborhood, I saw an old couple on bikes in front of me. I wanted to pass them, I *live* to pass people on bicycles. And pass them I did. Just slow enough for me to hear the man ask his wife if I had a remote for my board.

I have to hand it to that old man on his bicycle, he spotted what others easily overlook. He saw that I was using a remote. I guess the big clue, with that board, is all the duct tape I have wrapped around the battery to keep it attached to the board.

If there’s one thing I love more than showing off on my electric skateboard, it’s showing off in front of people who *know* my board has a motor. People who can recognize that they’re looking at something they’ve never seen before.

But the problem came a few miles later. I had an internal tingling sensation, my spider sense, if you will. I felt like the batter was almost drained. But I was constantly checking the low battery light, and it never came on. One more time around the neighborhood then, I decided.

It was the wrong choice. A mile or so away from the house, the board lost power. No low battery light. No more juice after it powered off. It was flat dead.

It sounds minor, but to me, this issue really is an annoyance. Because riders really do rely on that low battery light. Now I’ve always said that of all the electric skateboard companies, Evolve most needs to improve on its remote design. And I’m not really sure what the issue was here. They say the simplist answer tends to be the correct one. Probably the battery is getting old, and simply doesn’t report being in low power before it’s out for the count.

But something also tells me that the same thing wouldn’t happen with my Boosted Board, which features five lights that slowly count down the battery power.

Needless to say, I pushed that board home, kicking a skateboard more than I’ve ever pushed in my life. I learned a lot about orthodox skateboarding on that journey home. Kicking is physical effort, something I’m not used to doing while riding a board.

The entire time, I was remembering a colleague from work who said he had gotten hip problems from kicking a skateboard so much. So I would vary which leg I used to kick. Even though I’ve been riding boards for years, I haven’t pushed boards enough to have a favorite leg, or the muscle memory to prefer one over the other.

But the worst part about that journey home was passing the neighbors. In their yards, on their balconies. They had been watching me skate all weekend, wondering who was this new man on the block zipping by. But for that shameful ride home, they got to see more of me, as I passed them much slower, with only my leg to propel me.

***

I also want to mention that a new brand of board maker has come to Florida. Fiik. They’ve opened an office, and while they’re currently waiting on more inventory, they’ve contacted me and told me that soon they will have more in stock. It sounded to me like they’re going to make the rounds in Florida. Meaning they almost have to come to Gainesville, and our Freeride Surf Shop. So if you’re reading this and you’re anywhere near Gainesville, follow me @maulakai so you don’t miss out. A free electric skateboard ride *at* Freeride? Oh yeah!

Wait a minute. I just checked their webpage. I only see the older model, heavy lead battery type. Let’s reserve judgement until they get some of those new, lithium battery models in, as I don’t condone those fat boards (Street Surfer, Big Daddy, Shortii) that ride more like a war tank.