I thought to myself as I awoke in steaming humidity this morning. So out I went with my Airwheel for Day 10 of my learning diary, and to have a lovely afternoon summer glide about the heath, in the nicely muted receding sun, recording it all as I go to share with you later. If you play the videos fullscreen and point a fan at your face, it’ll help with the realism.
Here’s part 2, the slow relaxed actual speed glide around the lake – no de-shake – pretty much raw footage, 1080P from a 3 Black Edition, ProTune Off…
Whilst Part 1, top, is more of a speed-through, and mostly at 100-400% real time. If you like Airwheel or lakes, you’ll like them both. Part 1 has been stabilized, which leads to some very odd and giddy camera motion, but I thought it suited the speed run we were doing, and riding a wheel feels a bit ‘all-over-the-place’ initially, so I left that on.
And hello to my friend Daffydd, who I haven’t seen for too long, and I’m very pleased to find alive and kicking, in this case specifically about the heath with his wifelet, progeny Mat(h?)ilda, and friends…
Moving on though – there is only balance through motion, it was round that lake, trying to do it all without getting off. And apart from half way across the walkway below, where a bush sticking just too far out over the lake to make rolling through it a wise thing to do, I got there. Sandy path is a very nice thing to roll over. And doesn’t appear to get stuck in your workings either. Bouncy bouncy :)
Of course I was carefully noting the many and various different substrates and terrains over which I was gliding; new ones today were extra long grass, sand, dried mud, forest root systems and incredibly bumpy off-path heath. The latter 2 types of ground require some skill to ride, with slightly bent legs, faster twist action, and lightning quick reaction to and absorption of sudden ruts and protrusions you haven’t had time to steer around. That is exhausting stuff, even if you aren’t as hopelessly unfit as I am.
Your smoothest, most effortless rides will be on surfaces where you just don’t have to deal with all that – wide pavements and shopping plaza areas are what you want for no-effort riding. But, put the effort in, (and you’ll be a better rider in the process), tackle the difficult terrains and suddenly you can go pretty much anywhere in the British Countryside !
The Airwheel Electric Scooter coped majestically with all of today’s ground-based challenges, except on 2 occasions, once when it threw me when I went far too fast from smooth sandy path to epically bumpy heath, and again, right as I was back at the car, when, high on the confidence of my previous ride, I tried to make it go up a 45 degree slope with a ditch at the bottom, and I was rightly face-planted for my stupidity. What an almighty twat. However, thanks to shrubbery, wrist braces, reactions and sunglasses in glorious combination, I got up entirely uninjured, got in the car, and ran home to edit it all.
So that was nice.
