Growing up as a skater kid, I’ve been pretty comfortable on boards with wheels for a long time. Thankfully, the muscle memory is still kinda there. Without wheels… that’s a different story. I tried snowboarding once when I was like 42, and it was terrible. Like, I truly hated it. Just sliding around with no control, while being strapped to the damn thing.

I tried skating again as an old, but it didn’t really stick. My mind wanted to do all the tricks I could do as a kid, but my body was like nah dogg, come on. It was pretty frustrating, and I just didn’t have the drive to build back up to any sort of reasonable level that would be fun again.

Another factor is that living in Portland in 2022 means the options for skating are almost entirely outdoor skateparks during the months it’s not raining, which is a far cry from growing up in SoCal where weather was never a factor. We skated literally every single day unless we were sick or hurt or something. On the rare occasion it was raining, we’d hit up a parking garage. We didn’t have skateparks at all, so we just went to schools and malls and parking lots, skating curbs and doing tricks down stairs. Transitions, whether ramps or concrete, were an exotic rarity for us, which means skating the parks here in Portland feels super foreign.

Anyway, skating didn’t stick as an old man in a new environment, snowboarding sucked, and I wasn’t interested in hiking or cycling. I wanted to ride a board. I considered standup paddleboarding, which is pretty huge around here, but my only experience with it was in Hawaii on the ocean, and that didn’t go very well. I was still interested, but it just seemed like such an … ordeal. With skating, you just grab your board and go outside, and you’re good to go. Paddleboarding seemed kind of tedious, always having to inflate and deflate the boards, and, well, you have to go to a lake or river. That’s not that hard around Portland, but still.

Onewheeling addresses just about all of this:

  • it’s a board sport
  • my feet aren’t strapped to it
  • don’t have to inflate it
  • doesn’t require snow
  • doesn’t require water
  • small and portable

What I didn’t realize were all the things I hadn’t even thought of:

  • it can go off-road!
  • it’s fast
  • it’s smooth
  • it can go up hills
  • it’s… liberating

The off-road part is the most important. Living in Portland for 11 years now has been great, I really love it here. But, I’ve never taken advantage of what the area has to offer. Everyone here is a Hiker™, taking advantage of all the trails and nature the northwest has to offer, and, well, I was just never interested in taking walks on dirt. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool every once in a while, but it’s not a hobby or anything to me.

The onewheel being able to go off-road changed all that. Riding all these trails are like the best skatepark I could imagine, except even better. They’re organic, almost alive. I know they’re technically manmade, but being out in the woods, made of dirt, imperfect and raw, just makes them feel like they’re supposed to be there, and we’re lucky enough to have stumbled across them to experience them.

Back when I was a kid, I loved making marble tracks in the dirt. My brother and I would make some wild ones on the hill in the backyard of one of the houses we lived in. We’d make berms and tunnels and jumps and connectors, and then drop the marble down to see it go through, swerving and gaining speed. Riding trails is the closest I’ve come to that feeling, except now I get to be the marble, and the tracks are way more creative, beautiful, and fun than anything we ever came up with.

A few weeks back I went out to Post Canyon in Hood River and rode the El Dorado trail. It was right when all the trees were turning orange and dropping onto the trail, and the dirt was a bit damp and smooth. The whole time, the only thought going through my mind is “man, this is so cool” as I rode through terrain I never would have enjoyed otherwise, listening to the subtle, soothing sounds of the wheel on the terrain. It forces me to just about forget anything else going on in my life and just enjoy the present moment, the place I live, and the opportunity I have to just float through it. And, well… it’s just so cool.