Let me say this first; the last thing I would ever want to do is scare people from performing the sport and enjoying themselves. This is an isolated incident that just happened to involve a longboard, and some poor decision-making.

It was the summer of my junior year in high school and myself, along with my friends, felt like we were invincible. After three short months we would become the top dogs of our school and nothing was going to stop us from proving our seniority.

It was a warm summer day, and like any high school student on summer vacation, we were looking to get into some trouble. After hearing the regular suggestions of swimming, movies, and hiking, we decided on heading out to longboarding.

Our group consisted of five guys, four of whom were rather experienced with the sport and one who was not. We drove to the outskirts of our town to an isolated country road that was full of blind turns and steep drops. The whole run was a rather impressive five or six minutes which would get you moving at about 40 MPH.

The run was by no means a beginner’s course. Apart from the blind turns and high speeds, the road was only one lane wide and had a steep drop off on both sides.

Lacking enough boards for all of us to ride at once, we decided it would be best to have someone follow in our car and provide a ride back up after each run. Not owning a board at the time and seeing as it was our good friend’s first time; I offered to drive expecting to be able to ride in a few minutes.

Our friend excitedly jumped on the board for the first time and pushed towards the hill without any protective gear.

As I watched him take the first turn I instantly knew that there was no way he was going to make it to the bottom of the hill. Trailing behind my friends I watched in horror as he got an extremely bad case of the speed wobbles and careened off towards a steep drop off.

When we got to him he was completely unconscious and we had no idea what to do. In a state of panic we drove his unconscious body to his parent’s store and tried to explain what happened.

Naturally, the parents were not too happy and immediately took him to the emergency room.

Our friend suffered a concussion and bruised a great deal of his body. He got hurt thanks to the poor judgment of all of us that day, but his spirit had not been broken.

Today, my friend has made a full recovery from his injuries and is still excited as ever to skate.

So what is the moral of this story?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; know your limits and always be safe.

For more information on longboarding safety, check out these links.

Skateboard Safety Fact Sheet [PDF]

AAOS Skateboard Safety Tips

Image of Gates Canyon - The Road of The Incident

A good friend of mine traveled down from Santa Cruz for a three-day weekend adventure in San Luis Obispo. Forgetting most of his essential belongings, such as his socks, toothbrush and extra pants, I was almost sure he had lost his mind. With what he lacked in personal belongings, he made up for in his enthusiasm to introduce me to the sport of sandboarding.

Sandboarding is a sport whose name accurately describes the activities performed. It’s simply snowboarding or longboarding, but with sand.

I was eager to try the sport out after hearing my friend rave about how much fun he’d had exploring the sport’s potential. However, with weather proving to be rather stormy, we had trouble finding a good time to head to the beach.

Finally, late Saturday afternoon, the storm broke up and we were able to head to the Montano De Oro dunes.

With the sand rather packed due to the storm that had just passed, we had a hard time finding a soft enough slope that would house our ambitions. After several disastrous attempts, we finally found a dune whose slope provided enough gravitational pull to allow for successful runs.

The dune we chose to learn and practice on was by no means a beginner’s course. My friend, who had been practicing the sport for a few weeks, claimed the dune to be the largest he’d ever attempted.

With the reassuring statements of my friend, I figured the best way to learn was to go all out.

After falling and rolling down the massive dune several dozen times, I finally started to get the hang of it. Once I started understanding the minute moves and adjustments needed to stay upright, I began having the time of my life.

While the sport was an absolute blast to try, there was one major downside.

Climbing back up the hills after each run was a grueling feat. With each step up the dune, our feet sunk below the sand and provided almost no footing. By the time we reached the top of the hill we each had to take a quick rest before we could endure the run.

This really isn’t too much of a downside though. The sport clearly provides a workout and in turn is a great deal of fun.

If you’re ever in any sand dunes, enjoy longboarding or snowboarding, than I would definitely recommend that you find someone with a sandboard and give it a shot. You will not be disappointed.

Shane Lotridge bombs a hill on his sandboard

The students interviewed are:

• Nick Boncich
• Eric Schellenger
• Talbot Kendall

appearing in that order. Enjoy!

Naturally, this being a site devoted to longboarding, the words board and longboarding proved to be the most dominate.

Wordle has proved to be a pretty fun site to toy with. If you have any time to kill you should try making your own.

Balance boards can come in many different shapes and sizes. There are a few companies that offer complete packages already built to purchase, but these tend to run at a fairly steep price. Furthermore, paying for something as simple as a balance board is pretty irrational once you see how simple they are to actually build.

At a bare minimum all one really needs to build a balance board is a pipe and a piece of wood. A video I found online argues that you don’t even need that, but instead just an old skate deck and water bottle.

But what if you don’t want something as primitive as a water bottle and don’t wish to spend upwards of $100? It’s time to build your very own balance board.

To get started you first need to gather a few supplies from your local hardware store.

• A piece of plywood. Generally ¾” will be ideal.
• A thick PVC pipe. This needs to have a diameter that’s about five to seven inches and is thick enough to hold your weight without bending.
• Friction tape.
• Screws or some type of fastening devices.
• A saw to cut PVC and plywood

Step one: Designing the board
Once you’ve acquired all your materials its time to decide what the board is going to look like.

Technically speaking, the board should be long enough to allow for a shoulder length stance to fit comfortably and wide enough so your feet don’t hang off the edges.

Other than that the board can be shaped in any way you see fit. Personally, I would recommend a simple rectangular shape. It really doesn’t need to be fancy as long as it fits the technical requirements.

Step two: Attach stoppers
Stoppers are small pieces of wood attached to the bottom of the board to prevent the pipe from rolling out from underneath.

After cutting the board down you should have some left over wood. Cut two small rectangles about two inches wide that stretch the width of your board.

Attach these on opposite sides of the board using screws or other fasteners.

Step Three: Preparing the pipe
Preparing the pipe is a fairly simple task.

Merely cut the pipe down to a length that is about the width of your board and apply the friction tape. This will grip the pipe to the board and help prevent any unintentional slipping that may occur.

Once you’ve completed those three easy steps you’re ready to hop on your board!

Be sure you wear a helmet the first few times you step on to prevent any injury and best of luck!

For more information on how to build one of these devices you can check out this guide by Kathy Westergaard.

Having this in mind one can imagine that the distance one may travel on a longboard probably isn’t the most significant achievement. While the town is undoubtedly fun to skate, when it comes to skating for distance, there really isn’t any destination that is hard to reach.

Well that’s not the case for a handful of skaters in Europe. Skate Further is a website devoted to the sport of long distance longboarding. According to the site’s about page, the team was created in 2007 to bring together people with shared interests and to help push each other to reach their goals.

Apart from the blogs and personal journals that follow skaters as they travel on their boards, the group puts on a number of events to bring their community together.

Their next event, titled Skaiti, is a 24 hour skate-a-thon devoted to help benefit the struggles in Haiti. The event is scheduled to take place on April 10 at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome.

Dunsfold Park Aerodrome is a famous test track that is used extensively in the BBC hit, Top Gear. The team has worked out details with the people are Dunsfold Park Aerodrome to allow participants to camp out right next to the track, allowing optimal sleeping arrangements to get the most out of the event.

While the people at Skate Further have accomplished some radical feats, they still fall short when compared to Rob Thomson of New Zealand.

Rob Thomson broke world records by traveling a stunning 7,500 miles on his longboard, by himself. Thomson had no crew following him as he traveled across Europe, The United States and China. Using a modified longboard as a trailer, Thomson was able to pull his gear along the journey, removing the need for a backpack. To make his feat even more impressive, Thomson never stayed at any hotels, instead he found safe places to lie down and rest or found hospitable people to house him for the night.

For more information on Thomson’s journey be sure to check out his website.

Thomson's longboard with trailer attached.

Before I indulge in that information, I would like to first quickly comment on a recent tragedy in the sporting world.

With the Olympics in full swing, the attention of sports fans has turned to the winter events. Taking place in Vancouver, the events focus on the winter oriented sports that require cold environments and snowfall.

The Olympics opened in controversy late last week as one of the young luge riders, Nodar Kumaritashvili, crashed and was thrown to his death. With the tragedy still fresh in our minds, it should be reminded that when participating in extreme sports one should always take the proper safety precautions to limit injury. Nodar Kumaritashvili was wearing his safety gear, however the poor design of the track proved stronger than his protection.

With that said I would just like to remind everyone to respect their limits and to practice any sport they are participating in safely.

With that out of the way, we turn to California where weather is almost completely opposite of that in Vancouver. As the weather begins to return to a constant 76 degrees, longboarders are also beginning to reappear as a dominant form of transportation in San Luis Obispo.

But what if you wish to push your skills beyond that of transportation and personal achievement? Welcome to the world of competitions.

Longboarding competitions are generally hard to locate due to their limited publicity, but when they do happen to surface, they do so in several forms.

Races

Races are as simple as the name implies. The first person to complete the track wins in this downhill event that pushes the speed riders are willing to reach. While each event has its own set of rules, there are a few general rules that are usually applied to all events of this type to maintain safety and fairness.

1. Helmets must be worn at all times.

This rule is pretty simple. Wear your protective gear. In more intense runs it may be asked to wear helmets that protect your face as well.

2. No speed mooching.

This basically means not to interfere with other riders by grabbing or pushing them.

3. No shortcuts

This rule is also fairly simple. Everyone wants a fair chance of winning: don’t cheat.

Slide Competitions

These events are focused more on one’s ability to perform slide maneuvers, which are scored by a panel of judges. The area to perform these tricks is generally a small portion of a road or course that allows for a crowd to watch.

Much like racing there are rules to protect safety, but other than that riders are free to express themselves in any way they see fit to impress the judges.

As a matter of fact, there is a longboarding slide competition taking place here in the central coast this weekend. Santa Barbara’s longboarding club is hosting the event, which is scheduled to take place Feb 20 at noon. (See poster up above.)

So if you’re in the area or wish to put your skills to the test, Santa Barbara may be the place for you. Best of luck!

Brian Anderson uses his slide gloves to slide across the pavement.

You can find these gloves online or at stores for around $60 retail, but its fairly simple to make your own and save quiet a bit of money in the process. To construct the slide gloves you’re going to need a short list of supplies.

• Gloves
• Sliding material
• Velcro
• Glue
• A saw that can cut through your sliding material

Step one: Choosing the right glove.

There are many different types of gloves that can get the job done, but what it really comes down to is the glove’s durability. Gardening gloves or any glove made from leather that you are willing to sacrifice, are acceptable candidates for the product.

Step two: Deciding on material.

The material that makes contact to the ground is the key factor in the effectiveness of the gloves. This material needs to be able to slide against rough concrete, yet have enough traction to help a rider come to a stop when in a crisis. Corian samples (which are often handed out at stores such as Lowes and Home Depot), slide pucks and cutting boards all make for exceptional materials for the construction of the glove. Generally speaking whichever type of material you can find at the lowest cost will probably be the best.

Step three: Attaching Velcro to the glove.

This step can be done in one of two ways. The first option is to sew the material to the glove. This step can be tedious, but the result is a guarantee that the Velcro will not leave the glove. The other method is to simply glue the material down using a hot glue gun or other strong glue.

Step four: Preparing the sliding material.

First you should cut down your material to the desired shape and size using a saw or other method. Once you have completed that you should take the other piece of Velcro and glue it to the freshly cut material. Once this has been completed you’re practically done.

Step five: Attaching the glove to the material.

With the Velcro firmly in place on both the glove and material, attaching the two is as simple as pressing them together. The Velcro makes replacing damaged slide plates very simple while still holding the material firmly in place.

With each step successfully completed, the resulting product should be a more than satisfactory glove that cost much less than a store bought version.

To give you a better sense of what is possible; here is a link to a video of some slide gloves in action.