Powerblading from the outside
Modern Mobility: Powerblading – Guest Post by Kathy Gonzales
While powerblading is rampant in Germany and the rest of Europe, sadly it seems that much of the western world is oblivious to its existence and sport. Ironically enough, the rest of the world think it’s too expensive and strenuous a hobby when they can afford a Playstation 4, a PSP and a brand new smartphone to boot. Even so, very few know of powerblading.
Imagine a skating master donning the most modern and safest way to spread his art on a blank canvass. Armed with years of skating experience and a flair for Parkour, the modern powerblader is the epitome of mobility, speed and freedom in its purest form.
While I’m sure you are all acquainted with a lot of awesome tales that make the sport even more legendary, none of them are tall enough to be discredited by any practitioner. My brief encounter with two adolescent males in their early 20’s has piqued my interest in this new skating phenomenon.
The way they flew about the streets unlike most skaters, managing all obstacles with ease, I just had to ask when one was slow enough to talk to. It turns out that he was slow because he was playing poker on the same site that I always play on, de.partypoker.com/ and it gave me a common ground to work on. Being able to access Partypoker from your Android device is also a new feature for the popular gaming portal. As poker transcends and breaks all age barriers, I was able to talk this stranger like we’ve known each other for years. Funilly enough I started out on this website as a beginner accessing the ‘How to Play’ functions and browsing through the video tutorials for instructions and in no time, I was a regular card shark. The stranger was kind enough to give me a background on powerblading; the difference in equipment, the maximum speed and increased flexibility and its basic difference to rollerblading, and how you could do tricks previously unheard of on large wheeled skates.
I’ve photographed some of their sessions so I could bring it back to the United States and hopefully start a movement there, but alas. It was previously introduced and it has a very limited following in my neck of the woods.
The potential for this new sport is endless; it can help couriers and food deliveries in busy cities to get around faster and it can finally get our youth to get off their lazy bums and start doing something remotely close to an exercise apart from moving their fingers playing all those games. The potential benefits seem endless. The apprehension that most regular free skaters and food delivery people I speak with is that the gear is expensive and takes practice to master. An exasperated sigh was all I can muster as a response
