Zaturdays: Hack Your Skateboarding

I hold the patent on one of the worst inventions of all time. It’s stupid and flies in the face of what’s good and holy about skateboarding. But there’s something about it that makes me want to see it though the design process, R&D, mass production, distribution, and finally land on a shelf in the sporting goods department of a Target near you. Let me introduce you to my invention: The Internet connected skateboard. First of all, this things is going to be stuffed full of wires, like the Haro Circuit board from 1986. It’ll also have a USB that pops out from the side and plugs directly into your computer. It might be a little clunky but the benefits of it will far outweigh the, uhh, weight of it. So what will this Internet connected skateboard do you ask? I answer what WON’T it do!? Haha. Long story short it’ll track your skateboard’s every move. It will measure the length of each grind or slide (3 foot boardslide, a new personal best!), keep a running tally of your success rates on all tricks (0 for 35 on hardflips today Timmy?), measure the effect of board wear on your performance (Turns out you do your most consistent skating on a board that’s 13.4 days old), guage the PSI when taking drops from various heights, clock the distance you’ve traveled, count the number of times it took you to make a nollie flip out of a crooked grind, etc. But here’s where things get really good, after each day of schralptitude you’ll plug your board right into your computer and it’ll upload all of the info onto the HackYourSkatebaording.com website where you can compare it to everyone else’s skateboarding. So you’ll see that Larbsk8r/211.snarl lands with twice the PSI from a big drop than you do (that means you’re butter Timmy!), but he nollie flipped out of a crooked grind in 734 tries while it took you 987 sorry (however the data does not reflect toe drags). And look at you skating 9 miles in one day, what a workout! Oh, and how about this, the internet connected skateboard can show you 3 dimensional renderings that identify the optimum pressure points and foot placement to turn your tired old switch 360 FLOPS into beautifully polished switch 360 flips that even Shane O’Neill would be proud of. So yeah, you’re going to be swimming in data about your skating. You’ll have all the date to know exactly where you stand compared to every other HackYourSkateboarding.com user on the planet. You’re stoked. All that’s left is to figure out what to do with it.