This is going to be a long sequal.
20220831 1st try
While I was at Berkeley, a girl Lin taught me how to ride a skateboard. I remember I shot the photo of the tall grass right next to the training course that night. That 1.5 hour of practice was all I had with skateboard before I decided to buy an electric one. Technically I do have childhood experience on toy boards, which was driven by twisting, could be a reason why I learned fast.
It paid well. Within the first half hour I was able to cruise at 20 km/h and do normal turns with radius of 3 meters at lower speed. I tried to reach top speed but the board began to shake heavily before I can reach that fast.
20220905 2nd try, reach top speed
4 days of raining stopped my training.
I learned from reddit and Youtube that the 'shaking' I experienced at high speed was called wobbling and it is due to my feet position. By putting my front foot right on the front wheel, I can now accelerate to top speed (but still too cautious to look at the speed meter, it was about 38km/h according to the seller) without any problem.
It is still dangerous to go on road at this stage because I still cannot make sharp turns and fast stops.
On my search for how to make sharp turns, I found there is actually a style called carving in some Youtube videos [1][2]. I will practise that next time.
20220906 carving
I can now pass the corner at 20 km/h, within lane. The actual top speed is 35 km/h at half battery.
Carving is interesting, but I can not drift yet. It could be due to wrong posture, or simply because the board has too good a grip. No matter what, carving is definitely a good way to learn to control the board.
I tried to look for some groups on telegram, facebook, or QQ. Some of these groups are really active, and gave me some really good advice.
For example I was adviced to get a regular board to practise sharp turns and stop. I vaguely remember I could do a sharp turn on a regular board though.
20220912 first accident
I've been using the eskateboard for commuting in the past few days. Today I falled from a skateboard and crashed on land for the first time in my life. It was due to fast break (from >30km/h) before the turn.
This accident proves that the decision to protect myself using only engineering gloves was necessary and almost sufficient under such circumstances. There are further risk of grazing my elbow or bumping my head should I get unlucky though. It turns out 20km/h might be the safe boundry for daily commute.
20220916 ride on the other side
I borrowed a regular board from another classmate. It is slightly shorter, has wheels of half the size, and a much softer bridge. It turned out accelerating on a regular board is much harder.
I taught one of my friends to ride a eskaeboard too.
I also start practising riding on the other side, i.e. with my right foot in front, contrary to normal.
20220917 Yuquan campus
I went to another campus with my eskateboard today. It turned out I have mastered the riding on busy and unfamiliar streets.
I continued to practise on the other side. It seems most of the balance control memory are not transferrable and I have to learn them from like 0. Obviously, balance control is something beyond conciousness. I expect twice or third learning period since I will not use this side for daily commuting.