Skating on damp asphalt

[whm98282]

Hi I'm new to this site. I am a night worker here in wet Washington State. I try to skate twice a week on my way home in the early dark damp hours of the morning at the Everett Marina, safe place to skate. Most of my travels are on concrete sidewalk and some asphalt. Both surfaces right now have some damp vegetation from the trees. I currently have indoor type wheels that work pretty good but are slow. When I have totally destroyed these I would like to get something a bit faster with good grip. I use both Hockey style skates Hilow design and some Powerslide R2 with 3 x 100 wheels. I can get up to 110 on the speed skate frames.

I have been ice skating since the mid 1960's but just started speed skating. It's like learning to skate again almost and it takes a lot of attention to not dig my toe end of the blade into the ice. I'm having the time of my life back on the ice and have also had a blast on the inlines as they are much better that the old ones I had back in the early 90s.

[whiskey02]

I'm sure if you contacted one of the large online dealers like nett tracing, inline warehouse, skatenow and spoke with someone, they could hip you to some wheels that are suited to wet/damp conditions.

ps. when I visited the Ho rainforest, YUP, wet is the word to describe conditions.
Good luck.

[darthblader]

Hey, another night owl! Welcome! Been working nights 16yrs myself.

Resumed skating the Galveston (TX) Seawall after not skating down there for a couple years, and I've found that salty mist can make the Blvd a tad slick at 2:00AM! Been thinking about trying those MPC storm surges, or at least mixing a few in with my Atom's.

[ese002]

Rain wheels, like MPC's Storm Surge would be the obvious choice. They are rather slow compared to regular outdoor wheels on dry pavement, though.

[Joey]

I skate on some fairly hard outdoor hockey wheels for speed and they last longer than soft wheels. I find skating on wet anything nearly impossible to be safe. It can be done, and you can find speed skate race videos online where they race in the rain, and fall a lot.

Keep your weight over the foot on the ground best you can. Shorten your push stroke. Let us know if you find wheels that make a big difference.

Personally, I switch to my longboard for wet skating. Big, fat wheels have much larger contact patches and are actually difficult to make them slide. Also, on a longboard, my weight is ALWAYS over the wheels. Plus - half as many bearings to mess with after a rain skate.