A little parking garage skating

Had a nice chance to finally test out my downhill/parking garage board yesterday. After meeting some friends at the Allen, Texas, skatepark Saturday morning, I joined them for a garage session in Dallas. I set this board up last year, but have just never gotten around to really riding it.

The board worked great. When I set this board up, I knew that to keep the board low I’d have to settle for some “smaller” diameter wheels. In this case 66mm. That is small for a downhill wheel. A lot of riders use 75mm or higher. But I really like the spoon-concave of Comet skateboards, and since their board (at the time) didn’t have wheel cutouts, I kept the size of the wheels down.

The construction of Comet boards keeps them nice and light, with a little bit of flex – not bouncy at all — to soak up some road vibration. The spoon concave gives you a little spot behind the front truck that is a lowered pocket — creates an incredibly stable, locked-in feel.

I set this board up with Randal-II 150mm trucks, with the rear hanger flipped for added stability. One thin riser under each truck. 66mm, 80a Retro ZigZags from Milehighskates.com. A real surprise has been the great, fast, an inexpensive Speedy Lunatic bearings. And of course some good bearing spacers. Unfortunately you can’t get the Comet Voodoo deck anymore, but the Comet Crystal Chalice is very similar.

So I was riding with my friend Blake, another longboarder, and several guys on shortboards with hard wheels. The shortboard guys were doing a lot of sliding. This wasn’t a high bust-factor garage, but if you are planning to go ninja-style in a garage, leave the hard wheels behind. Man, they are a lot louder than the softies.