Doing Dumb Things

I went out on my new Freebord today for the first time. A Freebord is not a skatboard. The idea is that it’s like a snowboard for the streets, I can’t attest to that quite yet, as I haven’t ever gotten good enough with it to compare the two. If you take a look at the photo, you’ll notice that it’s got six wheels, the center two are on casters, that rotate 360º, which enables you to slide on pavement and make similar maneuvers to that of a snowboard. It also has bindings on the top of the board that your shoes hook into (they’re very easy to pop out of).

I used to have a Freebord Alpha 112, which was one of their first models, when I was in either middle school or high school. I never really got good at it, because it’s meant for going downhill, which is pretty scary on a board. The thing is, I never really learned what I was doing on it, and didn’t stick with it long enough to even get comfortable on the thing.

So, I decided to pick up a new one, with the 15 years’ worth of improvements that they’ve made since my last one. It slides a bit easier than I remember, and is much, much smoother. One issue that I had was that I would frequently catch an edge, just like on a snowboard and eat it. Didn’t happen at all today. I even had my brother towing me on his bike, and while I didn’t get going too fast, I was starting to get a feel for it. I’m hoping that when I get back home, I’ll be able to work up to trying out some of the hills in Belmont and San Carlos. Either that, or I’ll either scare or injure myself and will sell this thing within a few months. We’ll see.

Oh, and this is totally going to be me: