Worst. Skate. Ever.

Last night my girlfriend’s friend came over with her son. I take him on electric skateboard rides sometimes. Besides being really cold, it felt like a typical skate for us. But little did I know it would turn into the worst skate ever.

Usually I let the boy ride my Snubnose. But the battery pack still isn’t secured to the board. And the drive belt is still very loose. So that wasn’t an option. I figured I’d make him ride the Bamboo series two with the all terrain wheels, since I’m very territorial with my Boosted Board.

So we skate onto campus, and we don’t get very far before I get a funny beep from my Boosted remote, a beep I’d never heard before. It took me a minute to figure it out. The remote ran out of battery.

At first I beat myself up. How could I have been so stupid? Usually I’m really good about charging the remotes. But this time, I guess I forgot. It flashed through my mind that, if the remote used Micro USB instead of Mini USB, my chances of charging it would have been higher. But with effectively no change at charging the remote, I was forced to go home the old fashioned way.

I had to get back on my Bamboo series two and make the boy kick that Boosted Board home. I thought the Boosted might give him a little trouble to skate, but he said it rolled like a boss. Not only that, but he really enjoyed skating on the Loaded Deck. I don’t think he’d ever skated on such a high end board before.

That was the epic fail on my part, involving the Boosted Board. But there was another event which happened that night.

As he was skating the Bamboo Series two, I noticed he was staying in low gear. Why? He was experienced enough of a skater to max it out on high gear.

“The connection keeps cutting out in high gear,” he told me. I thought that was bullocks. I told him to try holding the remote in a different place, like behind his back. That didn’t work. I told him to try pressing the remote either looser or tighter, finding the trigger’s sweet spot.

“Nope. It keeps cutting out when I’m in high gear,” he told me. So when we switched boards so he could kick home on the Boosted, I got to feel it for myself.

Would you believe he was right? I had a bit of an epiphany at that. I’d never noticed the difference between high and low gear, because I never use low gear. When my girlfriend skates the board, she always uses low gear, and I confirmed with her that uses low gear for the same reason. I had to admit that even I have had the board cut out on me on high gear, but I was blinded by my love for the board.

So something is wrong here. It might be in the board, it might be in the remote. My hunch is that the culprit is the new remote. But I plan to write Evolve and get to the bottom of this.