First Honk

So today was the day where I did it. My first real honk, using the #loudbicycle horn. So if you haven’t been following me, I have the horn actually *inside* of my backpack. The button to honk it is attached to the backpack strap, so that I can hit it like someone on Star Trek would hit their communicator.

Because the horn is so loud, at first I wondered if I should even use it for my morning ride into work. Reason being, I take the bus most of the way into work, and from then on out it’s mostly backroads and sidewalks, so the chances of me needing to honk the horn on the ride in are slim.

That first day, I didn’t connect the button, but I wished I had. Because while skating the downhill, back road from the bus stop to work, I saw something out of place. A truck. A *big* truck, parked right in my way. I came into sight of it just in time to see a man get into the truck, close the door, and start the engine.

That is more or less a nightmare scenario. Especially because the way the truck was parked, there was no going around it. I’d have to skate in front of the truck, or else use my brakes and lose all my dignity.

In that moment, I wished I’d connected the damn button, because it would have been the perfect situation to honk. But instead, I slowed, made eye contact with the man in the driver seat, and skated on by.

But I vowed to skate with the horn after that little incident.

This morning, I had the horn. I was skating up a small hill, right outside of my work place. At the midpoint of this little hill is a busy four day intersection. Close to that is an also busy threeway with a bus stop. I’ve already had a few close calls in this area.

This morning, I was skating up the hill, and that’s kind of the first red flag. Because people never expect someone to be skating up a hill. And then a pickup truck pulled to the stop in front of me. The way the light is, I couldn’t really see if this guy saw me or not, which is another red flag. He looked like he was making a rolling stop.

Against I was faced with a split second decision. Do I break and lose my uphill momentum? I hit my Star Trek communicator. Honk! As soon as I hit it, his rolling stop became a full on stop, and I skated by, confident that I wouldn’t be run over.

The good thing was that it wasn’t so loud as I was scared it might be. It didn’t make me jump out of my shoes or anything. The bad part was that, because it’s in my backpack and pointed *behind* me, it probably scared a pedestrian behind me. In other words, direction *does* matter and there’s no good way for me to point it forward.

But the car stopped rolling, and the experience gave me some piece of mind, so I’m happy about that. Yay #loudbicycle horn!

#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.

Rain and Compare

Today the gray clouds are in the air and the sky is as gloomy as can be. The weather report says that it should have started raining an hour ago. But outside, the ground is still dry, and the air still has a slight chill to it.

According to the weather report, it should rain for the rest of today and tomorrow. Normally, I would leave my skateboards where they are, put on some headphones, and walk/bus to work.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I asked myself, it today were the last day of my life, would I walk to work, or would I ride my board? It’s a silly question, because if today was the last day of my life, I wouldn’t even go to work. But despite the faulty logic, I rode my board to work. Our time in this world is limited, and you never know how much you have left. The weather report can be wrong. And besides, I can always leave the board at work and walk home, if its raining this afternoon.

I want to mention the ride I had on my boosted yesterday. Now, with the upgrade, the board has three speed modes, up from two. On low gear, the board is pretty tame and great for beginners. The old low gear was so slow as to be useless.

I had used the medium gear to skate to work yesterday. It was unremarkable. I intended to use the fast gear home. If there’s one fault to Boosted’s speed switching system, it’s that it’s really hard to hit the remote button three times *just right* to change the speed. That being said, you’re probably not going to change the speed setting that many times.

I *flew* home. Yeah, it wasn’t so much faster than before, but it was fast enough for me to feel. As always, the brakes are the best part of the Boosted board, and a great thing to have when you’re sharing the sidewalk with pedestrians unaware.

I want to talk about this review I found:

http://ego-cruiser.com/en/vs-boosted-boards/

But I’m out of time to type. In the meantime, have a look.

Yuneec Cameo

Much has happened this weekend. First of all, I went  back to my old stomping grounds in Miami. For whatever reason, it’s the perfect place to skate. It has flat roads, plenty of shade, decent surface, and little to no traffic. Plus, my grandma lives just a short skate away from my dad.

I don’t think I’ve ever skated so much in my life! Trading between my boards, my knees and joints hurt from skating so much. It was awesome.

During my time there, my original Bamboo series Evolve board did something it hasn’t done before. It died, suddenly. I was only a block or two away from my house, but I had to kick home, which is always a weird feeling. Kicking a skateboard is one of those things that is completely backwards for me. I probably haven't kicked a skateboard even a mile. But after skating electrics all this time, I felt like I was kind sorta getting the hang of it.

The biggest problem is that skating with a motor is so fast, such a free and liberating experience, that if you are forced to kick a board, it’s always slow and dull by comparison.

Of course, Evolve mailed me back a new truck to replace the one which had broken. I’m not sure what to think about it, because they mailed me back only a single truck. I was under the impression that they would send me a new set. One of the Evolve guys said that those trucks had been recalled. If that’s so, why do I still have to skate around on a recalled truck?

But I didn’t have the time to install it, so my Bamboo series two is still on the all terrain wheels. Which turns out to be a good thing, because they’re repaving one of the roads I take home. So the all terrain wheels are quite useful at the moment.

Then Boosted returned my board after fixing that loose part. They also gave me a speed boost, and they changed my belts for free. Yay Boosted!

So imagine this morning, when I’m getting ready to catch the bus. There are my two best boards, the Boosted and the Evolve, side by side. Which do I reach for? I really should take the all terrain Evolve, because of the road construction. But I took the Evolve. I just wanted to ride her again, after our long separation. I wanted the easy board to hold on the bus.  And besides, I could skate around the construction.

So here I write to you, using my Boosted as a foot rest, and I’m happy to have her back.

Oh one more thing. My mom sent me a message on instagram. She never uses instagram. Either the armageddon is coming, or she had something important to show me. She had stopped by the Ron Jon Surf Shop, the biggest surf shop here in Florida. And she saw the Yuneek board on sale there. I’ll try to get pics on my instagram. But yeah, electric boards are now officially on display in Florida. And it’s neither a Boosted, nor an Evolve. Man do I want to give that board a test run.

Race and Range Anxiety

The story so far.

If you haven’t been keeping up, one of the parts on my Boosted Board came loose. I put a video of it on my Instagram @maulakai. Shortly thereafter, I was contacted by Boosted, who invited me to return the board for a repair. They even furnished me with a return mailing label, so it didn’t cost me anything.

I was very impressed with their customer service. Remember at the same time, one of my Evolve trucks broke. They asked me to ship the broken part back to them, at my own expensive. After a wait and another email, they finally said they’d be sending me a new set of trucks.

I’m still waiting for both the Evolve trucks, and the Boosted Board. It’s a strange waiting game. It’s almost become a race in my mind. Which company’s return will reach me first?

In the meantime, I’ve been taking my old Evolve Snubnose. I can’t say enough about what a good board it is. To this day, I really love the way that board can carve, the way it rides. It’s so much fun, and its been very good to me.

Yesterday was such a perfect day, I decided to ride around a little extra. My usual commute is approximately four miles. Maybe I added a mile to that, going down a nice road, and doing figure eights in a parking lot.

I was kind of surprised to see the low battery light come on before I got home. I’d always estimated the battery life of that board closer to eight miles. The board completely ran out of battery just as rolled to my front door.

It’s hard to say what’s going on here. But probably, the battery is old, and losing some of its range. Which isn’t really a big deal, but its the kind of thing you have to keep in mind. So I realized that electric skateboard might also get what Tesla owners get: range anxiety.

I mean, if you’re using your board to commute, you probably know what you’re capable of. And if the battery loses range over time, you’d know it before it would ruin your day. But if you just want to take the board out for a joy ride, then sure, range anxiety comes into play. Because no one wants to end his ride by kicking his board home that last mile.