165. Longboarding

My friend Angus has about 4 long boards and when he’s not snowboarding they allow him a similar (although more painful) experience even in the centre of Glasgow. In essence they are long skateboards used for cruising and carving the roads and hills as opposed to pulling the tricks associated with conventional skate boarding. Back home there has been a great deal of chatter about them and many people are now getting into longboarding.

After spending some time on eBay Oz and Australian Gumtree I realised that I could probably pick up a second hand board here for next to nothing and since Sydney is so full of great hills I felt it would be a waste not to. Besides, it would let me get a taste and see if I really wanted to take it up as a hobby. I emailed a chap called Chris who was advertising a pretty-much unused board and went into the City to check it out.

It was basically a plank of wood with 4 wheels but on closer inspection it had good Invader trucks and new 80mm Kryptonic wheels with ABEC III bearings so if nothing else these alone were worth the $140 (£55) that I talked him down to. It crossed my mind that the deck, which seemed durable but quite pointlessly heavy could always be replaced at a later date with a more up to date one.

He talked me through the basics and showed me “how it goes” but I was too embarrassed to have a shot in front of him having only shoogled on Angus’ a few times in his hall. I was sure nailing myself on the pavement outside Central Station was not where I wanted to make my longboarding début. So I paid the cash and scuttled home with the board under my arm.

We had decided to get a DVD out that night and I saw it as a prime opportunity to test my new toy since it would be dark (so nobody could see me) and as there were several decent hills on the way to Blockbuster. It only took me about 5 minutes to find a hill that I was confident a beginner could ride so without gloves, pads or a helmet I put the board down in the middle of the tarmac and got on.

The next few seconds are a bit hazy but my last vivid memory are the words of my longboard vendor going through my head, “Now these wheels are really fast so be careful. The last guy I sold a board to wasn’t and he totally mashed up his hand on his first ride!”

The board started moving and I made one turn then another. I thought things were going great until I tried to make a third turn and realised that I was going too fast to jump off and I had no idea how to stop the thing. My forth and fifth turns and every one after that were more like wobbles and they started to happen with increasing frequency until I was zig-zagging down the street with the only hope of stopping arriving with the next car to turn into road ahead of me. Luckily that didn’t happen and I somehow stayed vertical. Thankfully there was a slight rise towards the next junction that slowed me enough to allow me to jump off.

To say I was traumatised was an understatement but the adrenalin buzz from that 30 second run was unbelievable and now I’m hooked.