Gadzooks!
I think I’ve figured out my turning dilemma!
I turns out (haha) that the best way to go in a straight line is to explicitly ignore the image I created in a past post about my foot stance and instead of looking down, look up.
I spent a while today trying to get the absolute basics down. Those basics being:
- Moving without falling off the skateboard
- Stopping a moving skateboard without killing myself
The first one was easy to do. Once I realized that the best way to not lose my balance was to look up and find a target point at the end of the run (there is a loose paint flake on my garage door that I used) and go towards it, I ended up going in a much straighter line. This is likely because I wasn’t worried about losing my balance or turning, but getting to that point. Not looking down also stopped me from being as jittery as I’d been earlier.
The second one wasn’t too difficult either. I’d seen a video online of a kid stopping his skateboard by rocking backwards onto the tail of it to skid to a stop. I tried that a few times and it wasn’t working for me. Instead of stopping like a pro, I was stopping and either launching my deck into a snowbank, or I was causing one of my feet to pass over the other one and making me unbalanced.
Instead, I figured out the answer to my problem. The best way that I can see to stop a moving skateboard is to step off of it. Very easy. I even tried this on the hill that is at the end of our laneway and even on that hill, while moving pretty quickly, stepping off the board is the fastest, most sure way I’ve found to maintain control of it. It’s easy enough to quickly step on the top of it again to get it to stop of the sugar hits the fan.
I may move on to other methods of braking, but for now, the step-off is the best.