Hilarious thing happened to me today. I walked over a pedestrian crossing to walk to the other side of the street drawing some attention with my board in my hand. Now try to picture a man in his 40’s trying to look cool with his toy. As i got to the other side I put board down and stepped on it with my front foot while my other foot was still planted firmly to the ground. Still looking awesome… I could feel the people anticipating the moment…thier envious glance…how cool is that board! They thought…
Then it happened. My trigger finger squeezed the remote just enough to make the board go forward…but my other foot was still on the ground.There i was…doing a Jean Claudia van Damn!..involuntarily…not so elegant…waving my arms wildly in the air. Trying to keep balance. Everybody around me avoiding to get slaped by my out of control arms while I try to save what is left of my pride and dignity. My legs split further apart…my crotch starts to hurt. With a last effort, I find my balance once more…I didn’t fall to the ground but my ego was devastated. No helmet… no protective gear could avoid the damage done.
Legs wide apart and still standing (if one can say that). One foot on the ground and the other on the board. Oh how I wished I had reverse set on my VESC - that would have come in handy. I manage to pull my legs together. Stand up straight…put out my chest - a proud stance. This time I put both of my feet on the board and accelerate out of sight.
What can you do in such situations you ask? Well,you’re asking the right man. I can speak from my personal experience.
Make sure you have both feet on the board before you accelerate.
Learn how to split like a boss - just in case. You could then say it was intensional.
Protect your crotch at all times.
Pretend to do some stretching exercises to avoid total embarrassment.
Fluidly transition to a yoga pose if you do fall.
If everything else fails - rise from the ashes like a phoenix on an esk8…or fall down and pretend to be unconscious. Most people won’t bother to check if you’re OK. Carefully peek and check if the coast is clear and proceed with your day when all is clear again.
Haha this is great. I can see this exact situation happening to me
My Evolve GTX died RIGHT as I was going past a bunch of “real” skaters on the promenade. Lost all power. I didn’t fall off or anything but I coasted as far as possible after realizing what had happened and then proceeded to spend 10 minutes on the phone with Evolve trying to get it going again, all whilst they were skating and watching. After failing to get it going I had to ungraciously pick it up (mall grab obviously) and walk it home like a suitcase.
This reminds me of learning to skim board a long time ago…if you did it wrong your back foot would slip off the board and bury itself in the sand as your other foot continued on at a high rate of speed…it was unpleasant…
Made me laugh imagining the situation, did this lots of times by accidentally hitting the joystick on the back pack or side of the gloves, luckily never in front an audience
I was down in Venice for the group ride with Inboard a while back.
The night before I was skating the bike path after Venice where it gets a little twisty before passing the parking lots before Santa Monica…
Well passed a two dudes walking in the bike path…and maybe 50 yards past them…I hit a part of a palm tree…it basically wedges itself in my front wheel…but it’s sliding cause of the sand on the path…needless to say…the board wasn’t sliding fast enough…
So I “Supermaned” to the pavement… was an awesome moment. Pick myself up. Walked back to the board took out the stupid palm tree branch…and chucked it into the sand.
By this time the two guys I just passed walked up and asked me if I was ok. Had a few scrapes…but nothing to write home about…They were like holy shit mate…you flew! Lol… Lucky for me they were two Brits walking with a case of beer…
So took a moment to have a beer with these two blokes…talked about Esk8 and went our separate ways… was a fun night
last time i had an accident i quickly left the area like in 30 seconds or so walking away with a shattered pride. next day, guess what a dollar pizza employee which is on another street asked me if it was me who was involved in the accident lol i guess bad news travels fast
I exercise trigger discipline when at a light and make sure my fingers are completely off and pointing straight out, like you do for a gun. And if I think I won’t be needing to ride even for a minute, I simply turn the remote off so there is no chance of it taking off with or without me on it.
get a skateboard (a ral one), and do some actual skating now and then. learn an ollie and such things. with the skills you will evolve this won’t happen again.
hmmm…ollie and such things? - I´m not sure if one could simply ollie a longboard plus the additional extra weight of esk8 hardware. Have you tried? Besides - let´s assume you could ollie an esk8…I still doubt that that skill would have prevented my board from sneaking away like it did and thus making me split.
good idea. great advice. I usually dont leave my board on the ground at intersections when I know I´ll be standing there for a while. I maul grab it - just to have it under control if things go wrong.
I haven’t fallen in awhile but a couple weeks after I first started riding I was on the bike trail which splits into two paved trails with a grass median (One for walkers and the other for bikers). I decided to take the walker trail to get around some people hogging the other trail only to run into some oncoming walkers. I have AT wheels so I thought I’d be cool and cut through the grass to get back to the biker trail. Little did I know the grass was full of mole holes and I hit one going 15 mph. The board sunk it and I went flying. I took two running steps then did a barrel role onto the bike trail. Luckily I landed on my feet but my knuckles were bloodly. It was embarrassing but I quickly jumped back on to finish my run. I wear gloves now.
I’ve had several embarrassing moments on my board - I generally walk it across intersections (so if I get hit the driver can’t claim that I came out of nowhere) and occasionally I jump on it at the other side and it goes the wrong way, or I’m so unstable that I wobble around a lot.
But the worst one was very similar and just happened - I was towing a friend who had run out of power and we cruised by a couple of push skaters and then started up a steep hill when - I lost all power. My friend went down, I managed to run it off but basically we ended up in a heap on the trail.
I almost got hit by a car going the wrong way the other day on a bike trail/car road that was turning into a parking lot. Since they were going the wrong way I thought they were going to leave the one way road and get on a real road but nope, they turned into me and almost ran me over.
Didn’t feel too cool there.
Best part is the time before that I was on an actual bike only path and a cop car came screeching around the corner w/o lights onto it and I just stopped in time.
Earned this only a day ago…