bomming it down hills!!

[bluesnowcone]

me and my mates went out on our lonboards yesterday, and we found a lush hill, it wer realy long and steep at the top, on my last run a car puled out infrom of me, and i wer yelling at it to go bak in and wavin my arms, so it did but i only justed missed it. but then he followd me to the bottom of the hill and had a fat of go at me saying the youth of today deserved to be locked up and shiet like that. any one els have trouble when bommong it down hills??

[kitesurfer]

Have you tried out the path through the woods at alum chine yet? Really smooth and just the right steepness to get loads of speed up by the time you reach the bottom. No cars to worry about only the sharp turn onto the promenade at the bottom or a big jump onto the sandy beach at about 30mph!
Last time we tried it my mate had to bail onto the pavement cause when he rounded the corner at the bottom all his exits were cut off by people as they stopped to stare at him! Very funny, there wasn't a limb on his body that didn't lose at least some skin!

[jennie]

haha yer ive had a similar experience...i was bombing it down through the main road in my town, pretty early in the morning so not many cars about...then this plush beamer pulls out from a junction and didnt see me, there was no way i could have stopped to avoid it and i just smacked into the side of it, denting the guys car. The guy got out and was spazzing out that i had dented and scratched his car, while i was in the middle of the road pretty messed up.
He was trying to make me pay for the damage and going through my pockets looking for money, while my mate was dialling for an ambulance! Some people! and just for the record he nicked my wallet and fleshin' off before the police arrived...xxxxx.

I was pretty lucky i only came out of that with a broken collar bone, couple of cracked ribs and a mild concusion. My board came out fine and it hasnt stopped me longboarding

[tomcat360]

I try to stay off busy roads, but had some close encounters. Usually ends up with me falling. I was with this one dude who almost got run over by a pizza man...I whacked his car with my hand (that hurts) to get his attention though.

[GowerCharger]

learn how to do slides, coolest way to stop in a hurry on a longboard. and wear a helmet.

[bluesnowcone]

na i aint tried that one kite surfer, but i have tried the hill at boscombe peir, that is insane, you go soooooo fast, and its bumpy as hell, i bailed it and got beaten well badn blood everywere, them my board went into someones car and ther wer all what wer ur goin u stupid kid, whilst i was beeding everywer. sometimes i duno why i do it lol

gower charger, iv tried going slides, but my board is about 3.5 ft and its hard to slide it, i might buy a siding glove.

[iomarti]

i am totally confused by this thread...

do you all slide down hills on your boards into roads? or on to the beach? i have never seen this, or heard about it... could you fill me in?

(and tell me where in newquay anyone knows about that i could try it too! )

[buckthis]

besides hitting cars and crashing, how do you stop?
can you explain a slide?

[iomarti]

and jennie i've just re-read your post properly and realised you broke your collar bone?! wow... that's serious, i hope you recovered ok..

[tomcat360]

longboard skateboards. haha, you must've thought we are crazy...

slides....oh so much fun...

there are two types of slides, standup, and hands down.

hands down I prefer. you can either do short ones where you just tough it out and plant your hands for a quick pivot point, or you can do long drawn out slides with sliding gloves.

Basic approach to these are good leather work gloves with UHMW plastic (or a thick plastic cutting board) and then shoe-goo them, or melt them on.

After you get some sliding gloves made (or buy them) go practice some layback carves to get the feeling going. Just carve down a hill, plant your hands back side, and carve back side.

After that, I suggest a two-handed toe side slide. Get lots of speed. More speed the easier. Yeah, its pretty balls out. Go down a steep hill (this also keeps the slide moving) and begin to move a good bit of your weight onto your gloves as you turn toe side as hard as you can. Your wheels will hopefully now break into a slide. If they didn't you're now heading towards the curb or the edge of a mountain. You either:

1.) Didn't go fast enough
2.) Didn't put enough weight on
3.) Didn't turn hard enough

Anyways, you should come around so your board is perpindicular to the road. Keep looking down hill the whole time. When you are done with your slide, just kinda bring your board back around under you. That is difficult to lots of people, and I have a really hard time explaining how I do it.

After that I would suggest working on a coleman slide. They're fun.

After that you can start going and doing 720 one-footed surrenders and stuff like that.

A Word on gear:
ANY board is slideable, under right conditions. I've slid my 75mm 72a Avila's on a GS board. Anythings doable.

But, harder wheels are easier to slide. Up til a few days ago, my main sliding wheels were 78a kryptos. I finnaly switched to some proper slide wheels (sorta), and got some 96a No Skoolz.

A stiffer, shorter wheel based board is also good. A stiff board is more predictable. Shorter wheel base makes it break into a slide easier.

Trucks. Anything will do, but seismics are tough to do, and trucks like randals and holeys aren't the best, due to their ability to turn and their high CofG, but they defintately work. I like indys, 169 is a good width.

Anyways, take a look around silverfish in the 101 classes and they have some slide stuff I think.

[Brent]

Thankfully where I live there are a number of new subdivisions and property developments that have nice wide hot-mix asphalt roads not yet being used. Great for evening missions. One of my favourite things is (at the age of 40) carving down a long slope and having guys about my age out mowing their lawns or attending to 3 screaming brats or arguing with their wifes about what shrubs to plant....stop & watch me carve by...I can almost smell them thinking ...fleshin that looks like fun :-)

Also, with Google Earth & GIS type stuff you're able to research runs in advance. I use both at work and, they're very handy :-)))). WIth GIS I'm able to overlay 1m contour gradients and plot :->

Doing slides, for you newbees, try doing frontside slides first wearing old gloves, put your front foot further ahead than normal to put more weight on what I call the pivot point (directly over the front truck) and just push your back foot out, get your confidence up with each slide.

[tomcat360]

yeah, my dad owns an asphalt paving company, so if it's a spot with a good hill, I'll go hit it when the traffic is marked off.....brand-spankin new asphalt with the smell still lingering..

I love that smell, it's in my blood.

[bluesnowcone]

last winter, it snowed and on the roads their wer luvely patches of ice, and my m8 toed me on on his bike and i wer spinning 360, it wer so much fun!!!!!!

[jennie]

yer i want to start sliding because foot braking is just messing up all my shoes...

i just love doing big carves and drop knee turns all on super smooth roads, the high street in my town is perfect, just have to go late at night or early morning to get it completely free, its about a 2 mile ride from top of town to the end...so much fun.

[GowerCharger]

i think stand up slides look cooler, but theyre harder (i cant do them )
slide gloves are pretty easy to make, or you can buy them from lushlongboards in the UK.

[bluesnowcone]

will a motobike glove be ok for sliding

[GowerCharger]

yeah, but get a nice thick plastic chopping board and vut a chunk out of that to stick to it. or like me, get some motorbike knee sliders and stick one of them on it

[bluesnowcone]

sweet, what i stick it on with?

[tomcat360]

you can get a blow torch and melt them, then stick them on and put some weight on it.

look here:

ttp://www.hugh308.homestead.com/tutor_sliding_gloves.html

[FishKid Wales]

Cool thread peeps!
I live in the arse end of nowhere but boy do we have hills. How smooth does the road need? to be as im keen to get into a bit of longboarding but the roads around here have been raped by all the tractor traffic so they are quite uneven. Is this a problem? Is some small stones and the like going to cause the wheels to lock up?
How would I go about getting into longboarding?
Cheers for your advice
WishKid!