An Ounce (a few grams) of Prevention
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@s-leon i want to bomb every damn hill i come across but pushback reminds me we're not there yet...
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@notsure -- Interestingly, caution -- going slow and using your brakes -- while going downhill at full battery will more likely result in overcharge cut-out than Onewheeling with abandon. The braking regen is the culprit. Onewheeling slowly uses less of the battery, allowing it to be more easily overcharged by the regen when you do brake.
Onewheeling with careless abandon or acceleration UPHILL is a different story. In that case it is too easy to overwhelm the battery and end up rolling on the pavement (and rarely with laughter at your mistake)!
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@s-leon yeah i just rip it! id like to just go nuts n bomb it, but that cutout scares me. would love to be able to just ride out those moments at minimal cost to performance (if possible), but i hear its a technical challenge. not my area of expertise so i have to wing it sometimes. getting the motor to spin fast n not lose torque or fry stuff is understandably challenging.
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Hmmph. Today, Onewheeling around sunrise in soupy early morning fog through the woods and wetlands on the Greenway, eye protection off because it was fogging up so bad, an insect — a bee? — came at me at its full throttle, and me at mine, and we collided, it hitting me just below the eyebrow and into the eye socket. The impact itself was a sharp, blunt hurt — but then the hurt kept getting more intense. Stung with a chemical sting! Oh my! A half inch lower and I would be blind in that eye.
Turned around, Onewheeled the five miles back to the bicycle, ratchet-strapped the Onewheels on the rear bike rack, and pedaled home the four miles. The distended swelling around the eye did not really start until I was home for more than an hour. Now it looks like I had been in a fist fight and took a hard blow. Do they sell safety glasses with heating elements in the lenses? To burn off condensation? Perhaps I should get a helmet with a face shield — or at least an eye shield.
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@s-leon ouch. Lucky it wasn’t worse as you say. Phew.
Once many years ago I was on my motorbike and a bee climbed in through a gap in the visor on my helmet. I nearly lost it trying to stop on the side of a main road, it had small stones (like on a beach) for drainage which as we know are not really good for driving on. I avoided being stung, just.
You may still find fogging with a helmet, but maybe the type which is open face but with a visor would be suitable indeed. I just know that motorbike helmets fog up, and unfortunately holding you breath isn’t an option ;)
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@s-leon I’m so happy you got back safe and wasn’t blinded by that!
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Twice bloodying the same knuckles on my leading hand (a couple years apart), I have come up with a solution. An old Triple Eight knee pad with one elastic strap wrapped around my wrist and wrist guard covers the knuckles nicely without interfering with finger movement.
After this latest fall, too, I am stuffing a CE level 1 pad under the knee/shin guard I that wear right on my leading hip. That should take care of the mild soreness I have noted there after each fall. I also put an extra CE level 1 pad in the shoulder -- even though I have not felt any soreness there. A couple years back I added an extra pad at the leading elbow.
Why a chest bruise (left, leading teat) on this most recent fall, and how to protect against it? -- I have no idea. The one time I cracked ribs was from landing on an EGO battery in a shoulder bag -- now, I no longer carry a shoulder bag or a backpack.
And although I have never injured an ankle in a Onewheel fall, I have taken to wearing a child's knee pad on the outside of my leading ankle -- partly because I attached a flashing red bike light to it, for moving visibility while bicycling on the rural roads. That and fear of ever being laid-up with a shattered ankle.
My goal is to be able to fall hard -- and laugh with no injuries! It has happened more than once!
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@s-leon I ate my fair share of shit today! Was cruising around, enjoying the beautiful weather. I saw one of my neighbors walking down the street, so i took my eyes off the road for a moment, failing to notice an unusually deep pothole concealed by a tree shadow overhead. I hit the bowl like depression cock-eyed, the wheel rotates out from under me and i basically trust fall the pavement at a few mph. Knocked the wind right out of me! Just writhing around on the ground trying to catch my breath for a few minutes. Visited the ER as a precaution... Gonna be sore tomorrow but probably fine.
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@notsure Oh no I hope you're okay! Heal up soon!
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@notsure -- Very scary when air won't go either in or out of lungs.
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@s-leon Yup that's exactly what happened! Took quite a while to get it back too.
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@notsure -- How're you doing a after a couple of days now?
I'm curious, too, what gear you were wearing? And whether it prevented or mollified some of the injury?
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@s-leon a coffee mug and a pair of sunglasses. nope!
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@notsure
To anyone that asks....
"Yeah yeah, I'm fine...." Ride off into the sunset.On the inside... 'Owwww ffffff that hurt....'
Well, that's what I do lol 😂
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@puzz360 said in An Ounce (a few grams) of Prevention:
Well, that's what I do lol 😂
I took a baby aspirin the next morning and I'm feeling much better now thank you.
I mentioned the ER... Purely precautionary! So was the ambulance!
Plus, my RN was hot, so...
I give the whole experience about 4 stars.
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@s-leon here's something interesting Im just noticing now... I've been experimenting with different riding profiles. Pint was Skyline, XR was Delirium, and up until a couple weeks ago- GTS is Apex. I wanted to try out the others so I've been using Highline the past couple weeks. First time falling after a few thousand miles was while riding something other than the most aggressive riding mode... I think that's interesting. Pothole was bowl shaped and I hit it off-center on my heel-side (I goofy!). Rolled right out from under me. I wonder if that would have happened in Apex? I switch mid ride just now and the difference was quite noticeable!
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Another fall today -- probably around the 22.5mph top speed I recorded. I think maybe I overdrew the battery, pushing too hard when I knew it would be low on charge.
But... No injuries! Or almost none. I did scrape and bloody the same two knuckles I have scraped in two other major falls, but not as badly as in those, So, the knuckle-covering old knee pad I wear did help some -- but it got pushed too easily out of the way. I will work to correct that.
My reactions as the motor cut out and the nose dipped?
Even before I hit pavement I was vigorously throwing myself onto my back -- twice, now three times, proven to keep me whole. Then I just slid on the hard plastic back scallops of the Fox Titan Pro that I always wear while Onewheeling.The fresh scrapes on my Scabs knee pads are the most visible. The shoulder pad has fresh scrapes, too. No noticeable new scapes on the knee-and-shin-guard I use as hip armor -- but the coat covering it on this unseasonably cool June day has fresh rips. And of course, there are fresh striations on the Fox Titan Pro hard plastic back armor.
I think my trailing foot grazed the ratchet strap ratchet that holds my wooden fender on the Onewheel. Maybe I'll put some foam over that piece of metal -- or else maybe an old knee pad.
Again -- No significant injuries to this hundred-forty pound, seventy-one year old body! I am overjoyed!
Edit: Oh! and I'm up from Onewheel Plus Leaderboard Daystreak number 50 yesterday to number 26 today. And I plan to ride again tomorrow.
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@s-leon glad to hear no significant injuries.
Phew. 👍👍👍 -
I guess I'll add my own experiences
I don't have lots of crashes or incidents, but here's a few I've had-- First one was getting launched off my board after a sudden drop in a really old and delapidatd parking lot. No damage but a really bad bruise on my hip.
-- Second was getting thrown head-over-heels off of my board when switching from pavement to grass for the first time. Helmet protected my noggin
-- Third was trying to do a trick and I sprained my ankle when i mis-judged a landing.
-- Fourth was hitting a bump at 20 mph and tearing up my shoulder and elbow. Palms and wrists were saved by wrist guards, knee guards protected my knees (But were rendered useless afterwards) and helmet protected my head. (I wear a motorcycle helmet. Tore off the visor, some plastic bits that acted as air vents and ripped out part of the visor mount mechanism as well.)the float life flannel is looking pretty nice for fall and winter...
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Ha! ...I fell again today -- certainly not on purpose -- No injuries to speak of. Too fast I hit a gnarly root ridge in the pavement on a less familiar section of Greenway, which destabilized the Onewheel ride. At first I thought I could ride it out... but in a foot-wobbly instant it seemed a good chance to fall uncontrolled -- limbs-akimbo. My body's simple, immediate reaction to that sudden realization was to relax, collapse forward, and rhymically roll, rather than fall hard on my face or fall scattered backwards.
Again, it worked! My armor took the brunt of impact and the slide from pavement to gravel. Sum total of injury: Two small, superfluous scrapes on different sides of my leading ankle... that's it... but again the surprise -- that I'm not even sore from the fall! Checked the board, straightened the fender, tightened the batteries, and Onewheeled the seven-and-a-half more miles -- of my twenty today -- back to the electric bicycle.