Carveboard....review..

[Mantas 3]

I thought I’d do a mini review on my new Carveboard ™ . You could call it a mid-life crisis, or just a re-kindling my childhood fascination with skateboards. At 41 I don’t care anymore, I’m just enjoying myself while I can.

 

I’ll start with a brief run down of the product.

I have a 43” Wave. It has 10” pneumatic wheels, and an 8 ply flexible deck.

It aint nothing like the skateboards I had as a kid!!

 

Pros.

1- It’s cheap fun. No lift ticket. Just a bit of fuel money to get to the hill.

2- Technique. The similarities to surfing and snowboarding are uncanny. The weight displacement of your feet in the turns is very similar to snowboarding. If you push your turn too hard the wheels will slide just like loosing the edge doing a snowboard turn. They are designed for slow fluent controlled turns.

3- Fitness. There are a lot of things you can do for snowboarding fitness but riding a Carveboard works the exact same muscles as snowboarding. And walking back up the hill each time is sure to get the blood flowing.

 

Cons.

1- Danger. The potential for injury is huge. Particularly for a novice. They do not handle any kind of speed. If you get going fast on one there is little you can do about stopping! You can’t just turn it sideways and dig a rail in like a snowboard. Throw in some crazy motorists that don’t really care if you live or die and you have pretty lethal environment to play in. The hard bitumen road surface is not very forgiving (unlike snow and ice that allows some form of sliding with padded cloths for protection). I always ride with a helmet shoes and some trendy gardening gloves minimum.

2- Terrain. It’s difficult to find hills that are both long enough and have the right gradient and width with no traffic. Quite suburban streets seem to offer up the best opportunities. Most likely more difficult for you guys living in Japan.

3- Variety. It doesn’t offer much else other than riding turn after turn. No jumps, bumps, rails ect. to play with.

4- Cost. At $600 Aus. They are not cheap, and probably the reason they haven’t taken off thus far.

 

Carveboarding ranks a poor third in my book as a sport/activity behind surfing and snowboarding. However it is great fun. They market them as ‘cross training tool’ for surfing and snowboarding and I’d have to agree. It does keep your riding skills honed through the long warm seasons with no white stuff for miles.

 

If nothing else it will give you some real street cred when you rock up with the biggest skateboard in the neighbourhood.

The official site has a short video on the home page.

http://www.carveboard.com/