Category Archives: Inline Skating

Reign Ares as big-wheel skates for urban marathons

Posted on November 16, 2024 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

As a postscript to Big Wheels on Carbon Hockey Skates, I mentioned that I discovered Powerslide Reign Ares 100. They look like carbon hockey skates. Yet they’re equipped with Trinity mounts for big wheel configurations, such as 3x110mm. These skates seemingly disproved my assertion that “you simply can’t buy skates with big wheels on full-bodied, carbon hockey shells – they don’t exist”.

I bought a pair of Reign Ares, heat-molded them, and skated on them. I’ve examined them, and pondered on the internal structure of these skates for a week now. I’ve done all I could, to divine how they are made, short of cutting my new skates up. I can confidently say that, “they are no carbon hockey skates”.

But I love them. I think they are the best answer to my quest to find big wheels on carbon (almost) hockey skates. This long post documents my journey to customize and set up Reign Ares. I turned them into the right big-wheel skates for me, for urban marathons such as Wednesday Night Skate NYC.
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What are carbon-fiber inline skates ?

Posted on October 21, 2024 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

A few weeks ago I set out to write a short article on my quest to get Big Wheels on Carbon Hockey Skates. I organized pictures taken during the quest for illustrations. And I realized there were enough materials to address all topics on which I found no information online, during my quest.

So here is the first installment, on what exactly are carbon-fiber inline skates. How many types are commercially available. How your foot actually feel when you put them on. And how they are made.

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Big Wheels on Carbon Hockey Skates

Posted on October 18, 2024 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

I’ve been skating for a while on inline hockey skates with four 80mm wheels. These are normal-sized wheels popular since decades ago. These skates are great for urban skating on paved streets, skating on bike trails, skating at an outdoor rink, slalom skating around cones, and doing two-foot wizard skating moves.

But they are no good for marathon skating like folks do at Wednesday Night Skate NYC. So I set out to get myself a setup with three 110mm wheels. But it turned out that nobody makes carbon-fiber hockey skates that can take wheels bigger than the usual 80mm. So I had to compromise and make modifications to commercially-available skates, in order to mount big wheels on them.

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Where to Inline Skate on Long Island

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

The availability of skateable trails on Long Island is pitiful, compare to that in New York City. Despite having a much larger landmass, Long Island features very few publicly-accessible trails with paved and clean surfaces. To wit, click on the follow image to look at biking trails and bike-friendly roads in Nassau county compared to NYC, Queens and Brooklyn.

But not all biking trails and bike-friendly roads are suitable for inline skating. Some trails go significantly uphill and downhill – a challenge for beginner skaters. Some trails are not regularly maintained, and are full of debris that can trip an oblivious rollerblader. Furthermore, sharing a road with actual traffic is not something an inline skater would normally do.

For street hockey rinks and skateparks near Nassau, including some locations from Queens, head to the article on Public Skateparks on Long Island.

Outside of these parks, there are actually a few nice biking trails near Nassau that are relatively usable for inline skaters. You can find these trails on the Long Island Bikeways & Trailways map, published by the department of transportation.
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How to skate Mabrouk: 4 slalom components

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

This is part 2 of a series on Mabrouk. In this part I describe in excruciating details the four slalom components of Mabrouk previously summarized in What is Mabrouk: a slalom variant of Grapevine. I learned to skate a sustained Mabrouk by first practicing the four slalom components, and by connecting them with rudimentary transitions. I later refined these transitions to make the entire Mabrouk sequence flow, but that is for part 3 and beyond of this series.

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What is Mabrouk: a slalom variant of Grapevine

Posted on August 8, 2022 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

Mabrouk is a slalom variant of the figure skating move called Grapevine. The Grapevine skating pattern is described and diagramed as early as 1880 by Vandervell and Cox in “A System of Figure-skating”. The slalom version is presumably named after Swiss slalomer Eddy Mabrouk. Both Mabrouk and Grapevine employ the same exact 4 components, namely forward/backward criss-cross, and forward/reverse eagle.

While Mabrouk emphasizes curved patterns traced around equal-spaced cones forming a straight line, Grapevine strives to have the skater move in a streamline without giving explicit thoughts to slalom components. The difference can be seen in patterns they trace on the ground as presented below. Continue reading →

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Asian-fit helmets are a lot of hot air

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

Asian Americans who bike or skate know that helmets sold in America are generally not shaped properly for Asian heads. This is a phenomenon alien to most non-Asian people. Lately some brands have come out with so-called “Asian Fit” models. After an extensive research, I think these are just hot air, except for possibly a few exceptions. Continue reading →

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Wednesday Night Skate NYC

Posted on July 2, 2022 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

Wednesday Night Skate NYC is also known as WNS NYC. It’s one of several well-established groups in the city. Some say it’s the biggest group of them all. WNS is run by volunteers since the late 1990s. Every Wednesday from April to October, weather permitting, organizers show up wearing yellow-green vests at the south-side steps of Union Square around 7:45pm. By then a sizable crowd of skaters have already gathered at the steps. At 8pm an organizer gives a brief safety speech and introduces the route planner of the week, as even more skaters materialize all of a sudden at the steps. One organizer is appointed the leader of the day, and another the sweeper of the day. Folks are told not to skate ahead of the leader. The sweeper makes sure to leave no skater behind. Shortly after, skaters launch like a swarm of giant locusts, to descend upon the streets of New York City at dusk. The leader signals followers to take breaks at pre-designated stops along the route, so that the rest of the group may catch up, with the sweeper being the last person to arrive at each stop. The route circles back to Union Square, where a day’s skating concludes. Continue reading →

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Slalom bladers at Corona Park

Posted on June 19, 2022 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

Slalom bladers practice at a well-paved area behind Mist Garden at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. The surface of Mist Garden is quite smooth for inline skating as well, when it’s not spewing fog and mist. You will find Mist Garden right next to the Unisphere which skateboarders and bladers alike have also turned into a skating rink. Continue reading →

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Inline skating as rhythmic falls and recoveries

Posted on May 8, 2022 by Xinhai Dude 辛亥生

Some of us argue that skating consists of repeated cycles of falls and recoveries. Specifically, a skater deliberately moves her upper body such that shifted center of gravity causes her to “fall”. During this fall, she continues to glide on one skate. But at the same time she moves her other skate, the free skate, towards the projection on the ground of her shifting center of gravity, with the aim to recover from the fall by planting the free skate onto the new projected center of gravity. The process now repeats, with the free skate becoming the gliding skate.

If this fall and recovery sound like walking… well, it is walking, but with a special skating gait. In the sequence shown, the skater leans to the left while gliding on his left skate. He is about to fall to the left, but during the fall he moves his right skate, the free skate, over to his left side. He catches his balance at the last second, by planting his right skate on the projection of his shifted center of gravity. Continue reading →

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