Was out for a spin a couple of days ago – my route taking me back through the local council estate (take note, Stoner!) Heading towards me spread across the road a group of the sort of lads who you think are likely to cause you bother. Or at least a rude comment or two. The comment I got: "I want some of those". A bit further down the road, going past a group of girls: "How cool is that".

The secret of course being that I wasn't on a bike, but on roller skis (I have to admit I actually thought they were a bit weird and sad, but obviously I was wrong).

Roller skis you say….

any good?

If you wear them on a conveyor belt will you take off?

what's the point of roller skis in the UK? you've got no real snow and you biathlon army team is dead last every time.

wow. Complimented by anyone for being on rollerskis is unexpected IMO

what's the point of roller skis in the UK? you've got no real snow

Er…. Isn't that exactly the point???

roller skis are for potty weirdos, there are no brakes at all. they need dedicated circuits to use them properly.

Maybe where you live you need dedicated circuits but here it appears we use chavs to help stop us…what's your point though? We don't have snow or a dedicated place so they shouldn't be used? Sounds like a very early rant about these new-fangled mountain terrain bikes or all terrain bikes that appeared on the scene all those years ago – nowhere for them to cycle, etc…

roller skis eh?
sounds like a lot of sweat and lurid lycra skinsuits to me – right up your street!

Of course, if you're going to do it properly you should have an SLR slung across your back and get points for knocking down 5 chavs at 100 yrds with a pulse of 140bpm
🙂

That sounds like a pretty tame estate to me. I daren't venture through the ones near me on a bike, let alone some sort of deviant contraption, regardless of whether or not it's made out of awesome.

roller skis are for potty weirdos, there are no brakes at all. they need dedicated circuits to use them properly.

You've got me on the first one. I do have brakes though, and as you should have been able to deduce from my original post, you don't need a dedicated circuit – can use them on pretty much any road (the one through the chav estate is good as there's not much traffic), or even on easy off-road. That's because these are what I have:

http://www.velotique.com/rski-el.htm#XL150S_Skate

Good fun, but I mainly have them to train for XC ski racing (you'll find all the top racers, including those who could pop the chavs at 100yds). You can now get Skikes which are much the same thing as I have, except you can use them with normal shoes.

Oooh! I like the look of those! Do you reckon they'd be good for out of season Telemark practice? The Skike video looks like they'll turn parallel, so I'm guessing there's a good chance.

Hmm, not really – they don't exactly turn fast. Certainly no carving hard round the turns. I can telemark on proper kit, but wouldn't really like to try on those – they handle pretty much like track skis, and whilst I can skid teles on track skis, I'm not quite sure how to skid roller skis!

The bloke in that video does seem to get slightly tighter turns than I manage – though he's doubtless much better. Still not really the sort of turn rate you'd want for a tele.

Drat! I figured that would be the case. 🙁

Still, 'twas worth asking! Cheers! 🙂