Trip to the banks... Lessons learnt.

New T-shirt lol 

Been waiting for the dry weather to coincide with an early morning off ever since I got the Stoke really. There was a window of opportunity this morning so I thought I would go to the local novelty spot - a 'skatepark' built in an old paddling pool. Used to take the push skates there for a while and wondered what the difference would be with the Stoke.

Push skate 50/50 on my 50th - far too long ago now !

The park itself is little more than two curved banks opposite each other (in what was a round paddling pool) with a raised flat bank/ledge area and a grind box to the side... A pump hump sits in the middle. Good fun if you live close and catch it before the hundreds of kids on scooters and tricycles take over or before the dusk time gangs congregate!

I have had the Stoke out on some flat bank/ramps a couple of times and already knew that there were quite big differences to the feel of a normal short board and the motorised Stoke. As far as I can ascertain these are mainly due to the weight difference, especially the weight at the back.

From the box and driveway section

Forget the kickturning difference for now, I am talking more about the feel as you 'weight' and 'unweight' up and down the bank. First off if you freewheel into the bank or stop accelerating as you go up with belt drives (not sure about hub motors but I suspect it will be the same) you will slow down a lot more than you do with no motors. With no motors muscle memory/feel will turn you back down the ramp before you stall.  This can be a bit of a shock to start with and means you quickly have to learn to slightly accelerate at (or just before) the top of the carve. Too much and you might feel like you are overbalancing backwards and also accelerate off the bank too hard, too little and you still feel like you are stalling before you should.

After a few carves round the bank this became more natural. Now for a thing you don't have to do, unweight and weight as much as one would normally do. Might seem obvious, but again muscle memory tends to take over and it felt weird. Not sure if it does anything extra, tried pushing it round and the extra weight made it impractical and pumping it didn't have the same effect. So, the next thing is hitting the bank with too much speed. Don't know about anyone else but my normal operating speed on an esk8 is a lot faster than it is on a push skate. So remembering not to 'gun it' between the bowl sections was something that had to be consciously thought about.

Pump hump

Perhaps the biggest thing I learnt from the couple of hours was  that I feel that one needs to be in a lower power/torque mode than normal riding. I normally never come out of GTR mode, mainly as being on the heavy side I need the torque and power on hills and like the acceleration curve if I need to get out of trouble on the road. However, in the park it felt like it was more of a hinderance when trying to make the subtle accelerations needed to carve through the bowl sections (as talked about above).

Remember though these are all just my thoughts on the matter and I am probably off the mark... would love to here what other people think.


Below is a lame vid I took and edited on the phone.

More phone shot footage  from the session on YouTube