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Comment by megameter | Hacker News Reader

Exactly why I am not skating! The skill barriers and risk are pretty undeniable - it takes a certain kind of person to keep doing it when it's so tough on the body.

While I sometimes think I'm missing out, I quickly settled for kick scooters when I was younger; I just wanted something simpler and smaller than a bike to ride around and a folding adult scooter is exactly that - apart from an occasional curb hop, no tricks or aggressive riding, but I can push hard and easily maintain a pace between a fast run and a sprint on flat ground. I actually took mine out again yesterday after a break of a few years. I get to carve a little bit, I have front and rear brakes, and I always get complements.

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Try longboarding. I street skated in teens/twenties took some time off then at 40 knew 1) I had lost some basic abilities 2) it was too risky to be jumping around and 3) I'm bigger = fall harder ... so I got a longboard. It's great a more mellow cruise type of activity.

To get to the point of being able to cruise around everywhere comfortably is a lot easier on a skateboard than learning how to bike imo. You don't have to keep up momentum, you just have to watch out for the occasional big crack in the sidewalk. You don't have to learn how to brake that well, either, if you aren't bombing hills. I kinda just start pushing slower with my foot and that brakes me fine enough, rather than do the shoe destroying sliding foot brake.

Tricks are another animal, but just cruising around can be learned in an afternoon in a parking lot. I picked it up as an adult. I mean there are bulldogs who can skate if you need motivation.

> it takes a certain kind of person to keep doing it when it's so tough on the body.

I gave up skating and eventually wake boarding (tore an ACL) for the same reasons. Surfing is something I feel like I can do forever. Snowboarding is also fine a few times/year. If I moved back to the mountains, I could see where doing it all season would end up also being pretty rough on the body though.

Something I've been doing a lot the past few years which is surprisingly not that rough on the body is jiu-jitsu. I did get dinged and bruised when starting out, but nothing like I used to get skating or wake boarding.

how do you get hurt while wakeboarding? I've tried it once or twice and besides drowning it seemed pretty safe . I'm really curious cause I want to get into it

At the speed you're going when you edge to the wake, the water is almost like concrete. When I tore my ACL I was coming out of a backroll[1] and cased upslope of the opposite wake so all my speed and rotation came down on my back leg, compressing my knee and snapping the ACL.

When I went to my surgeon he said I was the 4th wakeboarder he had done that summer and asked me why it was so rough on our knees lol...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC3TEqcyT24

EDIT

It is amazingly fun though. If you can ride behind a nice boat with big wake and speakers so you can jam out while riding, it's a great experience. Plus, wakeboarding is social and always takes a minimum 2 people. Learn to drive the boat properly and always give some gas money, and you'll be invited over and over.

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