Rotating your wheels is the perfect activity for a rainy day — you know, like when your outdoor skating event has been canceled due to rain. It happens.

Anyone who has bothered to read the skate manual pamphlet included with a pair of brand new inline skates knows that it’s usually recommended that in addition to flipping the wheels over, you change their positions within the frame. Most pamphlets also give a simple formula as to which wheels should be moved where.

You don’t have to be that anal about it — simply flipping over the worn wheels and wiping off the bearings is generally enough. How do you know when it’s time to flip the wheels over? Here’s a great example from my own, beat-up skates:

Notice the slanted edge of the wheel in the center of the photo. If your wheels have that slant (originally described to me as a “lipstick slant”), it’s time to flip them over to give yourself a new edge to skate on.

Removing the wheel involves taking the included wrench or a skate tool and unscrewing the bolts, sliding them out of the frame, and pulling the wheel out of the frame.The process is pretty straightforward, and every inline skater should feel comfortable in servicing their own skates.

When you remove the wheel, you should also take a cloth and wipe off any dirt that’s accumulated around the skate bearing in the center of the wheel. If you skate a lot, or are lazy about skate maintenance like I am, your removed wheel might look like this:

This wheel needs a major wiping down, that’s for sure. In some cases, you might even want to open up the bearings and clean out the dirt inside of them. But for now, we’ll stick to the bare minimum of maintenance and simply remove the wheel, wipe the exterior of the bearing off, flip it over, and put it back on the skates. We’ll save the full cleaning for another entry. And another rainy day.

In addition to our majestic Three Bridges Skate, we have another borough-hopping skate route in our arsenal: The Brooklyn Bridge Skate, which takes us from lower Manhattan, over the Brooklyn Bridge, around the waterfront, and back home over the Manhattan Bridge.

Much like any skate that takes us over a bridge, this route offers many fantastic vistas of the New York skyline. And of course, the Brooklyn Bridge itself is iconic. Many skaters report that their first time skating over the Brooklyn Bridge has been courtesy of the Wednesday Night Skate.

However, the bridge itself is not a favorite among skaters, due to the boardwalk-like wooden slats that line the entire pedestrian/bike path that we use. After a few minutes of rolling over these wooden slats, skaters begin to feel an uncomfortable sensation in their feet and legs from the vibrations. Also, the slats are often slippery, as they are made out of well-worn wood, and even experienced skaters may slide a bit while kicking out.

However, these few minutes of discomfort are worth it, for the views provided by being on the bridge. Once over the bridge and rolling again on concrete, the uncomfortable sensations subside and the group is able to explore Brooklyn.

Part of the trip includes going to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which not only offers an amazing view of the glitzy Manhattan skyline, but also of the Brooklyn Bridge itself. “Is that the bridge we just skated over?” is a common question. Indeed, it is!

On July 22nd of 2009, we had another good forecast featuring a diminished chance of rain, and were able to do this fantastic route. A crowd of around 50 skaters sucked it up and rolled over the wooden slats with few complaints, and were treated to a truly unique New York experience.

Recently, a member of WNS needed to replace her worn out skates with a new pair. I tagged along to offer advice. She preferred shopping in person rather than online, since she wanted the skates immediately.

Unfortunately, due to the relative decline in the popularity of inline skating in the U.S., there aren’t many good brick-and-mortar stores to buy inline skates or skate parts, even in a large city such as New York. Many well-known stores have closed completely or scaled back their offerings.

Lucky for us, Blades still exists. Blades has two locations: one uptown at 156 West 72nd street, and another location downtown at 659 Broadway. We went to the downtown location.

The store was very nicely laid out, clean, and bright. It was well-stocked with apparell, skateboards, gear (helmets and such), and inline skates. The brands available were K2 and Rollerblade.

The sales rep was very helpful and patient while Our Shopper tried on various skates, and knew what he was talking about. Though he mentioned he was really a skateboarder, he knew specifically what issues plague inline skaters when it comes to finding a proper fit and how to avoid them. After trying on various sizes and rolling back and forth on the carpet, Our Shopper found her perfect new skates — a pair of women’s white Rollerblades, trimmed with a color I like to describe as “Girlie Blue”.

The price was competitive with what you’d find online, especially given the cost of shipping that one usually must factor in when dealing with a .com store.

Our Shopper has since skated several WNS events with these skates, and they are just fine.

Dirk Auer from Germany on custom inline skates, skating on a rollercoaster track. Gizmodo has the full story, but I figured I’d post the video here.

Edit 08/10/09: So the video has been pulled from YouTube due to copyright issues. Good luck with whatever marketing plans you have for that video. Yeah.

We had another great night on July 15th. We had some great weather, with very little humidity and a gentle breeze — it felt like a warm September day, even though it was still mid-July.

Due to this ideal weather, we had our largest turnout so far for the 2009 season, with 70 (seventy!) people coming out to participate in the event.

It’s great to skate with a group that large, and certainly quite a sight for the people in the city to see that many people rolling along and having fun on wheels.

Also noteworthy was the amount of new people who showed up, ready to take their first trip around New York City with the Wednesday Night Skate. Reaching new skaters has been a priority for WNS, and it’s nice to see the marketing efforts paying off.

We skated a special, twisting, city-crossing 12-mile route that included Rockefeller Center, Columbus Circle, Central Park West, and Riverside Park. Quite a workout, indeed.

Riverside Park is always a favorite destination, as it offers spectacular views of the water and new New Jersey’s skyline. There are also many sailboats and yachts on the water. Certainly, sailing and yachting is a great way to spend a night featuring good weather — if you’re not out skating, of course.

It was the night we had been waiting for — one that gave us an unambiguous, totally for-sure, completely rain-free forecast. We’d been waiting for such a night because we wanted to do our famous Three Bridges Skate for the first time in 2009. Amazingly, this was possible at last on July 8th — deep into our season and a testament to how much the threat of rain had affected our event up until that point.

WNS won’t leave the borough of Manhattan if there’s a threat of rain. It’s one thing to get rained on while in Manhattan — skaters can always bail into a nearby subway or hail a taxi if they aren’t comfortable skating in the rain. But it’s quite another thing to get rained on in certain parts of Queens and Brooklyn, where finding an appropriate subway line or hailing a taxi becomes far more problematic. So on rain-possible nights, we play it safe.

But July 8th was different. Nice day, nice night, no rain at all in any forecast. So the Three Bridges route was on.

Whenever we do this route, we get a lot of questions, ranging from “what bridges are you talking about?” to “where the hell are we?” after crossing each of the various bridges. So, let me try to give as much information as possible here.

First, we skate up to the Queensboro Bridge, usually by way of 1st Avenue. The Queensboro Bridge is our link from Manhattan to…yes, Queens. There is a bike line on the bridge that we use.

My good friend Wikipedia has this tasty snippet about the Queensboro bridge, for those interested:

The Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge, is a cantilever bridge over the East River in New York City that was completed in 1909. It connects the neighborhood of Long Island City in the borough of Queens with Manhattan, passing over Roosevelt Island. It carries New York State Route 25 and once carried NY 24 and NY 25A as well.

The Queensboro Bridge is the westernmost of the four East River spans that carry a route number: NY 25 terminates at the west (Manhattan) side of the bridge. It is commonly called the “59th Street Bridge” because its Manhattan end is located between 59th Street and 60th Streets.

After crossing over the Queensboro bridge, we skate briefly in Queens, and end up at the Pulaski Bridge (which IS a bridge, despite the fact that it seems more like an unimpressive overpass to elite skaters such as ourselves). In this instance, there is a narrow pedestrian walkway that we carefully use. Once again I direct you to the comprehensive information available at Wikipedia:

The Pulaski Bridge in New York City connects Long Island City in Queens to Greenpoint in Brooklyn over Newtown Creek. It is named after Polish military commander and American Revolutionary War fighter Kazimierz Pu?aski (Casimir Pulaski), probably because of the large Polish population in Greenpoint. It connects 11th street in Queens to McGuinness Boulevard (formerly Oakland Street) in Brooklyn.

The Pulaski Bridge, designed by Frederick Zurmuhlen and opened to traffic on September 10, 1954, is a bascule bridge, a type of drawbridge. It carries six lanes of traffic and a pedestrian sidewalk over the water, Long Island Rail Road tracks, and the entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

After a break at a gas station, where we load up on water and snacks, we skate through Greenpoint and make our way to our final bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge, which will lead us back into Manhattan (and, for the weary skaters, a much-needed beer). The bridge is spacious by comparison to the narrow lanes of the previous two bridges. However, it’s still important to remember to be careful as there are usually many cyclists and pedestrians going in both directions on the bridge, especially on nights featuring nice weather.

The Williamsburg Bridge is a suspension bridge in New York City across the East River connecting the Lower East Side of Manhattan at Delancey Street with the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn on Long Island at Broadway near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (Interstate 278). It once carried New York State Route 27A and later Interstate 78.

And there you have it. This was our night on July 8th, 2009. Some skaters balk at the idea of skating over three bridges (and thus visiting three boroughs) in one night. But the reality is that each bridge is no more difficult than skating over a moderately-inclined hill, and the distance spent skating in each borough is minimal. We spend more time skating up to the Queensboro bridge from Union Square than we do skating in Queens, for example. Once they’ve completed the route, all skaters usually agree that it was an enjoyable and unique experience.

With the arrival of July 1st, we hoped to shake off that horrible rainy pattern of months prior.

No such luck.

It rained most of the day, once again. Fortunately, the weather reports for the evening and night ended up being totally wrong: they called for continued rain, but things dried up and the rain held off until the next day.

We took a nice, leisurely stroll through streets we’d rarely traveled on and arrived at our first stop: the famous Washington Square Park Arch. Naturally, it was WNS group shot time:

Leaving the park and the magnificent arch, we skated west until we hit the Westside Path, using the entrance at Christopher Street. The group was treated to a lovely view of the water; it was still light outside.

We took the path down and ended up at the South Street Seaport again, later returning to Mumbles by way of Chinatown and Little Italy. It was a nice, relaxing (and rain-free) evening.

I was searching for information about celebrities who inline skate (or “rollerblade”), possibly for a future “just for fun” blog article. I couldn’t find much at all regarding this topic, as I guess it’s not intrinsically newsworthy to see someone famous out skating, but I did come across an individual I’d never heard about before.

Apparently, a woman named Jennifer Moss (also Gennifer Moss, Earth Friend Gen, or Earth Friend Jen) has gotten herself into trouble the past few years for skating and biking around West Coast cities completely naked.

The last incident I could find information about happened in 2008. Seems like I’m always late to the party.

I found a lot of blog articles about it and was looking for a top-level news site, for journalistic integrity. Eventually, I found an article in the LA Times archive:

Moss moved on to Ojai, working for a time as a waitress at a vegan restaurant in Ventura. For most city residents, last year’s Fourth of July parade was her public debut. Jaws dropped as she whizzed past startled paradegoers on in-line skates, wearing not all that much more than suntan oil.

And documentation about the incident in 2008 comes from a Fox News article titled “Police Arrest Nude In-Line Skater ‘Gennifer Moss’ When Construction Workers Complain“. Fascinating that construction workers complained about a naked chick on skates.

I tried to find more recent information about this young woman, but it seems links to her MySpace page, YouTube channel, and main site are either gone or are wrong. It’d be interesting to know what she’s up to lately. I didn’t include pictures, since this is mostly a G-rated blog, and you can easily use Google to find them if you’re curious. There’s one picture out there where she’s wearing nothing but a pair of skates and balancing on one leg as she rolls forward. Oddly, I couldn’t help thinking about the WNS rule that “helmets and wristguards are required”. Safety first, after all.

Rain seems to be an ever-present feature this season, and on our June 24th skate things weren’t looking too good. It had been raining at times during the day, and the forecast was calling for more rain. By some miracle, things cleared up just long enough for us to at least attempt to have our event, which would later be dubbed “The Rain Defiance Skate”, at least on Facebook.

Nights that potentially feature rain tend to scare off many skaters, thus resulting in smaller crowds. On the bright side, the smaller crowds allow the WNS Staff to experiment with routes, since typically only the most die-hard skaters show up on such nights — and they’re always up for just about anything that involves skating.

We did a route that included skating past the United Nations, into Rockefeller Center, and through Times Square. Further experimentation with the route came after the trip through Times Square: we cut across to 9th avenue, and skated south until we got to the Bleecker street area. A different, but successful, way to connect various areas of the city within one great skate.

And it never did rain on us.

During our June 10th skate, we had visitors from many places join us here in New York City. The Delaware skaters were back, and we had visitors from Spain, France and Germany.

It’s always great to meet skaters from other countries, and hear about their experiences skating in other cities, and how New York compares. Typically, the skating events in Europe are much larger, but also much slower. Our event here in New York is much smaller by comparison, but apparently moves along at a quicker pace.

Despite the recent growth in attendance, WNS has so far been fortunate enough to still be able to complete full routes in under two hours. Would we rather have a slower paced event but with a very large crowd? That remains to be seen. I say that the more skaters we have, the better, since socializing is really the main idea behind this whole thing.

During the event that night, we once again went through Times Square. Enjoy the photos!