Longboarding is an increasingly popular sport these days. It's not surprising why, if you have ever tried it out. It's fun for people of any level of skill or experience. The versatility that longboards bring to the table enables you to spend hours trying new things and having fun the whole time.

One thing that makes longboarding so awesome is downhill riding. For me, there isn't much better than bombing a huge hill and carving it up all the way down. Longboards are designed for this, bigger wheels make the board more stable and far less likely to catch a rock and send you flying into the pavement. Wider trucks also help to avoid the dreaded speed wobble. Carving is just an incredible feeling too. For those who don't know what carving means it's just turning kind of sharply, but smoothly too. So you just turn back and forth as you go down a hill.

Longboards also provide the opportunity for some fairly unique tricking. Some of the best tricks I've seen pulled off on a longboard are by Adam Colton and the crew at www.whoisadamcolton.com. It's really inredible what people can do. If you are interested, you should check out the website, there are amazing videos and even trick tip videos if you want to learn some of the stuff yourself. It provides plenty of challenge, and there is always more to learn.

Sliding is a cool technique that many longboarders are mastering now. It works great if you have hard wheels and a good pair of gloves. The gloves can be homemade by taking a blowtorch and melting a piece of plastic cutting board then sticking it to the palms of the gloves. You can also stick smaller pieces to the fingers if you want to. You can also buy gloves but making your own is much cheaper. So a "slide" is when you take enough weight off your board that the wheels don't grip the pavement and you can slide your board around freely. It's pretty tough to do, but there are great tips out there on the internet and once you master it, it's pretty impressive.

People are constantly pushing the limits with longboards. The technology behind them is evolving rapidly and new boards are coming out designed for more speed, better carving, flexibility, "dancing" as tricking is sometimes called, or for sliding. The technology is barely able to keep up with the quickly growing trend of longboarding. The problem with the rapidly growing trend is that in many areas, longboarders are getting a bad reputation. People go out and try dangerous things with very little experience and not enough protection, ultimately ending in injury, often serious injury or even death. There are newspaper articles about the dangers of boarding and how bad it is. It's important to have fun while you're on your longboard, but remember to take the proper safety precautions and don't contribute to the stereotypes by doing irresponsible, downright stupid things. Longboarding is awesome, have a great time with it!

Learn more about this author, Rembrandt Q. Einstein.
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