First of all, let’s clear something up. The term longboarding no longer refers exclusively to riding waves on a massive fiber-glass platform, hanging your toes off the front, waxing big turns and slow carves in order to look like the mellowest cat in the water. As with surfing, different disciplines exist in skateboarding, one of which is ‘longboarding’ – riding a longer board with bigger wheels, longer wheel-bases and all round increased stability and speed. With the recent international explosion of the sport, if someone tells you they ‘longboard’ these days, they are as likely to be referring to pushing along the tar as paddling through the surf (read: how to downhill skateboard).
Within longboarding there are multiple ‘disciplines’ – downhill racing, free-riding, dancing etc. However, as with its multi-disciplined cousin the bicycle, people are as likely to use a skateboard as a form of transport as anything else. This video is the trailer to a series documenting an epic trek around Bolivia and Peru on longboards (Read about Defying Bolivia’s infamous death road). This is the type of day-dream journey you fantasize about taking. It’s the kind of thing which forms the focus of misty-eyed discussions amoungst groups of friends. It’s the kind of thing which (as the video quite clearly demonstrates) requires a certain amount of insanity to undertake.
There is something attractive to people about pushing yourself to the limits of your endurance. It has to be said that to endure the manic nature of the travelers in this video might have been be a push too far for me, let alone the 2,400 kilometres of repetitive one-legged propulsion. But if I were ever fit, rich and well-accompanied enough to attempt such a journey, I think the sense of satisfaction at the finishing point would be unparalleled.
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