me versus the mean streets of San Francisco
My Amazon order history tells me that I bought my Boosted Board on July 18, 2017. Less than a year later, I swore to never ride it again.
Look around any major American city and you’ll see some dude zipping around on one of these supercharged electric longboards. The striking orange wheels are connected by a belt drive to a powerful electric motor, which means these boards can hit speeds of 22mph, sometimes higher.
In July of 2017, I was about to start my job working for a startup in Menlo Park. I had chosen to live in San Francisco and I didn’t own a car, so I would have to use Caltrain, which was perfectly fine. The issue was that the startup office was fairly far from the Menlo Park Caltrain station, and thus I ran smack dab into what transportation planners call the “last mile problem,” which in my case was actually 3 miles.
I could bike, and as an avid cyclist, I loved to bike. But biking presented several issues. First of course, was body odor. In the hot summer Menlo Park sun, over the course of several miles with a slight elevation gain and with a MacBook Pro on my back, I would sweat. I did not want to subject my colleagues to this unfortunate side effect. Second was the Caltrain bike car mess. If you got in at 4th and King station, you would almost certainly be able to stash your bike on a rack, unlike those poor souls at 22nd Street station, who sometimes were turned away from the train if there was no more space. But since you were first “in the stack,” you really were gambling that the bikes stacked on top of yours were destined for stops before your desired stop. Otherwise, just before your stop you’d be engaged in a mad dash to extract your bike from the massive pile of other bikes, which by now had been compressed like a pack of sardines.
The Boosted Board sounded like an appealing solution to both of these critical issues. With regards to sweat, you simply stood on the board! No pedaling, no sweat. And it was small enough to fit under the Caltrain seat.
My first ride on the board was concerning. I had never skateboarded, longboarded, or snowboarded before, and so I immediately encountered speed wobbles, which is when the path of your board traces an “S” curve because of an incorrect weight distribution over the front and back trucks. Beginners, I suppose, are scared to lean forward and put more weight on the front truck. Instead, they put most of their weight on the back truck, which means that any slight shifting of the foot causes a larger than intended steering adjustment.
Nonetheless, through trial and error I managed to eliminate the speed wobble problem and gain more confidence. The board has four software modes that affect top speed and acceleration — I had started off in “beginner,” which had a top speed of a blistering 11mph, but soon I was in the “pro” mode with double the top speed. There is something so inexpressively exhilarating about flying down a road at 22mph, effortlessly passing cyclists who are huffing and puffing. I relished red lights. I would arrive, stare down the car next to me, and be first off the line when the light turned green. Instant torque, baby!
Perhaps I was getting too cocky. The last part of my commute home involved crossing some Caltrain tracks. Up until now, whenever I got to this obstacle I had gotten off the board, tucked in under my arm, and walked over the tracks like a normal person. But one day, I figured that if I got enough speed going in, I could fly over the tracks altogether, saving some crucial seconds from my finely-honed race of a commute. (Racing to optimize my commute has gotten me in hot water before — in 2015 I got a ticket from the Menlo Park police, who have nothing better to do, for blowing through a stop sign as I was trying to set a personal record for fastest time to the office. I was on my bike.) Anyway, my theory turned out to be partially correct. Since the diameter of the Boosted Board’s wheel just so happens to match the Caltrain wheel width, I did end up flying over the tracks — but only because my board had gotten stuck in the tracks, and my short-lived flight ended with ripped jeans and a bruised ego.
“OK,” I thought after scrambling up and brushing myself off. “This isn’t too bad! Although standing on a thin sheet of wood, magic carpeting around at 22mph sans helmet seems inherently dangerous, all I need to do is avoid train tracks and everything will be fine.”
Several months later, my face rear-ended a MUNI bus. By now the startup had a shiny new office next to the Exploratorium, so now my commute was just a straight shot down Market Street. On this fateful day, I was, as always, having the time of my life racing the cohort of cyclists who were pedaling their way down Market Street by being first off the line on fresh greens and flying through yellow lights at 22mph. It was at one such yellow light, at the intersection of 3rd and Market, where I decided to tailgate a MUNI bus through the intersection. The light had been yellow for a while, so at 22mph, my wheels just barely crossed the first crosswalk as the light turned red. I was maintaining a very small headway with the bus, perhaps only 1 second, but this would be fine as long as the MUNI bus didn’t stop. After all, why would anybody stop when trying to clear an intersection on a yellow-to-red light transition?
Well, the MUNI bus stopped. This wasn’t you run-of-the-mill gradual stop; the driver stomped on the brakes. As I saw the red brake lights turn on and the distance between me and the back of the bus rapidly decrease, I realized that my attempts to brake were futile. Although the Boosted Board’s brakes have good stopping power, whether you also stop depends on the friction between your feet and the board, and how far back you lean to maintain your balance. I wasn’t leaning back enough.
So I swerved. I leaned left, aiming to clear the back of the bus altogether. But alas, the right side of my face made contact with the left corner of the bus, and I toppled to the ground. I sat there, dazed, while commotion ensued. My glasses had flown away, so everything was a blur. I wasn’t wearing a helmet, so I wondered if I had gotten my first concussion. Bystanders rushed to help, but I realized they weren’t trying to help me. Wait what? As I stumbled over to the curb, I saw a cyclist, clutching his helmetless head and loudly complaining that the bus driver had hit him.
I did not get a concussion. And aside from the shattered glasses, I came out of that crash relatively unscathed. So I added one more rule to my list of things to watch out for and kept riding. In addition to not attempting to cross train tracks, I would also not tailgate MUNI busses.
More months passed. The app’s odometer informed me that I had racked up 1000 miles. And then on May 10, 2018, I crashed again.
I had been hanging out at a bar with a friend, and at around 11pm we bid farewell. I hopped on my board and started south down Howard St. As I had learned from the Caltrain tracks episode, any small divot could stop the board in its tracks and send me flying. Since it was so late at night, it was difficult to spot road hazards, but I had developed a novel solution — my right hand held the Boosted Board controller, while my left hand held a high-powered flashlight, which I aimed at the road. I was slaloming around plastic bags, aluminum cans, storm drains, and potholes. But while swerving to avoid a pothole in the bike lane, I ended up in another pothole. Or rather, my board ended up in the pothole — I flew for a brief moment and ended up with my chin on the asphalt.
At 1:07am, I checked myself in to the ER. I received 5 stitches for a gash on my chin. And it was then that I decided that enough was enough. I had crashed a bunch of times before, but those had all been “user error” and were minor enough that I didn’t need to go to the hospital. To this day, I’m not entirely sure that the final crash was preventable. My memory of that night is hazy — I reconstructed the pothole explanation by walking over to that intersection a week later, trying to replay the events leading up to the event. But here’s an alternative theory: immediately after the crash, I discovered that the wheels connected to the belt drive had locked up. Did that happen before or after the pothole? It would be immensely concerning if the wheels had locked up on their own. For their part, Boosted insists that my alternative theory is wrong.
Regardless of the real root cause for the crash, it had happened so suddenly and with consequences so severe, I realized the only way to keep riding safely would be to wear a full-face helmet, like the ones motorcyclists wear. So instead I gave up riding the board. It now serves as a plant stand in my room.