Her Indoors bought The Lad a £30 all-in-one skateboard on holiday a couple of years ago. The deck was fine - they are all the same nowadays; nice 7.5" trucks - when I was a kid they went to 6.5"
But the wheels were tiny hard things and the bearings were useless. It wouldn't even accelerate going down a modestly steep road on the caravan site. Give yourself a good push and it ground forward a few feet and then stopped again. We tried going off the ramp at the site skate park; I managed to stay upright, he fell off. The 'board was duly relegated to the shed.
I have finally got round to upgrading:
- OJ Super Juice 60mm 78A wheels - the largest and softest they had in the shop (I'm sure these used to be in orange only - they had any colour except orange. The shop doesn't stock the Kryponics Reds, which would have been my first choice), so I chose yellow. £41 a set.
- Bones REDS bearings. Bones are the industry standard at just under £20 a set, so I went one better and got the REDS. £27 a set.
- plus some 'speed washers' they had kicking around in the workshop and a three-way skateboard tool. £5.
- the bloke in the shop said there's no need to bother with spacers, and he didn't have them in stock anyway.
- to be honest, I think the trucks could do with new rubbers as well. You can only adjust between 'straight ahead' and 'wobbly' - you are supposed to be able to adjust how much they respond when you lean into a curve. I have ordered a new set from eBay for £4.
I am pleased to report that it is now disconcertingly fast, even down my garden path that drops about 2" over a 20 yard distance, and hits the house wall with a reassuring clack after you've jumped off in a panic. I'm sure all this stuff costs about the same in £s as it did in the late 1970s. Back then, this lot would have costs year's pocket money. In real terms, it's now basically free.
Monday, 9 May 2022
Skateboard upgrade
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9 comments:
'Now basically free'. Capitalism. Doing more for less every day. Despite the best efforts of the collectivists/bureaucrats/bankers/Marxists/prodnosers etc etc.
Apparently, I have read, that across the 19th Century prices halved, quality went up exponentially and real wages increased by about a factor of 4. Then we got The Fed, WW1 and the rise of bureaucratic welfarism...
L, hooray for free market competition and innovation, as ever. That's why I put that bit in.
But I'm not sure what the Fed has to do with this. Ignoring recent blip, over the last few decades there has been the same overall fall in prices/increase in quality for most things (if you measure prices in terms of average hourly wages). Except housing of course.
Fed founded in 1913. Specifically to bail out bankers at the public's expense. It's all gone downhill since...:-(
Well, the value of GBP/USD etc etc has collapsed since 1945 / 1971.
But yes, what's left of the free market has done exactly that. My favourite comparison is between and 1950's Ford Popular and a 2022 Ford Focus. Worlds apart technically. And both roughly the same price in real terms.
Bloody Keynes and his inflation / unemployment trade off cobblers.
L, yes bankster-ism is a bad thing. As is regulation-ism, Home-Owner-Ism, socialism, bureacracy and everything we moan about.
But none of this seems to stop the onward march of 'nicer stuff for less effort'. It's like magic. Imagine what we could have achieved in the absence of all those ism's. I would weep if I knew.
MW. That's the magic that Adam Smith was banging on about.
In my trade i already know and I'm in floods of tears - regulationism is destroying my clients wealth every second of every day.
And we have excellent test beds. Hong Kong under J J Cowperthwaite v Venezuela under Chavez, e.g.
The problem with socialism is that it combines a good idea, the the more fortunate should help the less fortunate in society, with a really bad one, that there is a magic sieve that you can pass through the population that will sieve out the good guys and put them in regulatory charge of the remaining bad guys.
Jim Callaghan had a go on one all those years ago, and look waht happened to him!
Bayard. It's a bit more subtle than that. A subtle as T-72. You mnissed out a few key words, thusly
"[One of] The [many unsolvable] problem[s] with socialism is that it combines a good idea, the the more fortunate should help the less fortunate in society [but then set out achieves this by coercion and ultimately always violence]....."
[but then set out achieves this by coercion and ultimately always violence].
It's the need to find the right people to do the coercing that generates the fallacy of the magic sieve, I suppose. It's the same problem as people who refuse to tolerate intolerance.
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