pavedwave longboarding

danjamesmick@gmail.com · Joined: 26 Oct 2009 Posts: 3 Location: Cairns Australia

Well my mermaid finally arrived after 3/4 months of waiting. I took it out this morning on a beautiful day in Cairns Australia along the esplanade which has a nice smooth bitchumen bike track. (not sure if anyone can view this but the garmin gps info is at http://connect.garmin.com/activity/17199258 if you can view it ignore the elevation plot which is just plain wrong).. Does anyone else doing ldp live in Cairns?

The first kilometre or so I just attempted to work out how on earth to pump so I'd push and carve attempting to coordinate some kind of rearward force in the middle of the carve as if I was tick tacking without lifting the front of the board.. also tried to do the weighting and unweighting and generally picturing in my head eric on the cambiar youtube clip under the gear section of the pavedwave website. it took a little brain pain to get things in sync but within 2kms I was moving under my own steam though struggling with the slight inclines, though eventually got over those with small fast pumps and back foot a lot further forward. In the end I managed to get up to speeds around 17km/h or just over 10mph I think my top speed was a little higher than that but that was what my gps was saying when I thought to look at it, and I think I averaged around 10kmph for the whole ride, which I gather is slow but it felt really really goooooood.

Not sure if my pumping is at all efficient or not but thought I'd ask advice on my setup in particular not sure about my front bushings as the front truck doesn't always naturally return to centre when I hop off the board. From top to bottom I've got Orange Barrel, white barrel orange cone wide to narrow. the pic should be attached. any advice?

Click to see full size image

Also I'm very keen to get my girlfriend into pumping though I don't think she has ridden a board at all in her life. My initial impressions from my first ever pump ride are that maybe just for her to get the feel of pumping it might be easier on a shorter board with bushings on the softer side (low geared bushings?), at least on the front, what do others think? I am keen for her to get the feeling of pumping as easily and as quickly as possible so that she has lots of fun and then graduate her to a longer distance setup (if the fun and easy is different to the longer distance setup)... so is a fun and easy setup different to a long distance setup and would fun and easy equate to shorter board and softer front bushings?

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stridey · Joined: 11 Mar 2009 Posts: 48

For your girlfriend Id take it in small steps, so she retains confidence. Lastyear I had to teach someone to skate for a TV show in four allocated days. I found getting some different setups to try and graduate to helps and also putting some cones up so they know THEY are controlling the board rather than be a passenger inspires confidence. some pads too. The lady I taught did really well, tts on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVCY6sNhKo

LDPanda · Joined: 21 Nov 2008 Posts: 418 Location: Seattle, WA

Assuming in that picture that 'down' is towards the nose of your board (hard to tell from the shot) then your setup looks fine. You could try removing the cup washer from the bottom and run that orange cone straight against the baseplate, that will give you a little more turn. If you want to improve your return to center you could try a harder top bushing or maybe change out that orange cone for a blue one. A shorter board with turnier trucks will be easier to pump so its not a bad idea to have your girlfriend start on something like that. I dont know how much softer you can really go in front, youre already running a very loose front truck.

danjamesmick@gmail.com · Joined: 26 Oct 2009 Posts: 3 Location: Cairns Australia

stridey that youtube clip of teaching the girl to ride was awesome very inspirational.. I might show it to my girlfriend.. then point out we'll just be going on the flat for a while.

thanks LDPanda nice to know I haven't put the bushings together completely wrong and I'll remove the bottom cup washer (oh yes and by top to bottom I meant bottom as in base plate) and try the blue barrel and blue cone options you suggested. I'm about 161 pounds.

I think I might have overdone my first run yesterday as my front leg calf is really trashed today

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