Snowboarding has always been one of my favorite hobbies, but few people know that to be the case. It’s not something I get to practice on a regular basis. I grew up near Cleveland, Ohio, which is not exactly a destination ski spot. Growing up however, I did get to go on several trips to mountainous Colorado. Riding the slopes there was like a dream because the ski lift ride was worth the lengthy trip down shredding through fresh snow. Colorado slopes were heavenly in comparison to the more often than not greenish-brown speckled hills of northern Ohio, where your board was more likely to coast over ice with a screech than glide through a slight turn.
I currently live in Charleston, South Carolina, and you can imagine that I didn’t move here for the ski slopes either. My snowboard, amongst my other miscellaneous snow gear, has been waiting faithfully under my bed for the past year and a half. The fact that it’s even there is thanks to my friend Alissa who brought it for me from Ohio when I was arranging to go boarding in Virginia (but ironically didn’t because there was too much snow to drive to the ski place). Ever since then I’ve been itching to get back out there, but it’s hard to arrange that kind of thing when you live where I do–which brings me to how I decided to buy a long board.
I’d seen long distance friends pick up longboarding in their college years, when it was a savvy way to get around campus. My college campus was pretty small, and my commute was basically one long walk uphill (that’s western Pennsylvania in a nutshell), so I never felt inclined to pick it up back then. So now, as a 23-year-old teacher living in Charleston, it seemed an absurd yet perfect idea. So back in January I started my research.
I’ve always been a frugal person, as well as indecisive. Trying to look into long boards with little background knowledge proved to be the perfect storm for my deliberation. I spent weeks periodically looking them up, figuring out what kind of riding I would be doing, how long the board should be, and what brands were good, while at the same time taking price into consideration. I wanted a good board, but nothing more than a starter one to see if I even wanted to get into it as a hobby. I didn’t want to invest what could be nearly $100 in a board that I might not be happy with or even use.
One Saturday morning in late January, I had nothing going on. I leisurely made my coffee, and realized that that very day could be the day I finally started to practice longboarding. I had plenty of free time, and the weather was a balmy, humid Charleston 60 degrees in the middle of winter. The more I researched, the more I realized that I just wanted to walk inside a store and get my hands on a board. I couldn’t bear to wait 10 days for something to ship. What’s more, I wanted to look at it in person to get an idea of the size and design. Walmart was the only place within 20 miles that fit that criteria, so there I went.
I went straight to the back of the store to the sporting goods section, and behold, an entire wall was lined with boards. I found ones that were the brand Quest, which I had seen online as a dependable one. None of the designs were my favorite, but there was one that had an outer space one that I knew could work in a quirky kind of way. I wanted to cover it in stickers, anyway. There were also little mini cruisers, and I was torn. I kept pulling the boards off the wall and rolling them under my feet, fighting the urge to roll down the aisle on it just once (the only thing that held me accountable was the family in the next aisle innocently picking out a new bike). It took a while, but finally I knew I wanted to commit to the bigger board. I had read that I would be more stable on it, and it looked just like the ones I had been interested in.
It took a lot more confidence than I had anticipated, but there I went, carrying my new longboard through the enormous aisles of Walmart to get to the self check-out. I felt like a kid with a new toy. I was eager to get in a line, and of course inadvertently chose the one that was behind people with entire carts full of groceries. The line next to me zipped by as people checked out their one or two items, and my eagerness to get out of there and try my board was killing me. Even the older lady in front of me turned around and expressed her impatience to me. We finally resolved that we were both trapped in the line, and waited it out.
20 minutes and 60 dollars later, I had my board. I went home, cut it out, and put a sticker that I had been saving on it. It was drizzling outside at this point, but I didn’t care. The articles I found online when I Googled “should you skateboard in the rain” all said to turn back, but I couldn’t help myself. The pavement was only damp, and the drizzling came in spells. I drove a few blocks over to a street that is still undeveloped and set to work. Again, I incited all the research I had done previously into learning how to push and get on the board to get it moving. The first time I did this I was so eager that I almost flew straight off, but I corrected myself and got going. I was moving at a snail’s pace and pushing pretty weakly, but it felt so good to say that I had tried something new and felt successful at it.
For a while, getting out on the long board was a daily activity. I could feel myself improving, and didn’t want that to slip away from inactivity. It’s now April, and while I’m not the best rider out there by far, I’ve grown in confidence in my ability to use it as a mode of transportation, mostly just for fun and exercise. Maybe maneuvering around a big city to get from point A to point B would be a different story. But it’s a challenge I would like to try now that I have gotten more experience riding!
Since our city has been in quarantine, I’ve gone on the long board several times a week as a way of getting out and moving. It’s been a great outlet for me because I can still be outside and escape into music, podcasts, or an audiobook at the same time, or even catch up with someone on a phone call.
I’m now considering looking into buying a small “cruiser” board. Now that I can control myself on my current board, I’m interested in trying out some new ones! Let the research begin.
Written by Hannah 