Why You Want Ceramic Bearings In Your Inline Skates

 

I used to work with someone who decided to mess with my head.  He said "Why are you still skating, nobody does that any more?". 

I responded with "When is the last time you could see your toes without a mirror?".

I know.  Catty.  But hey, never compare your 100th session with someone else's first.

The thing is that I still skate.   I still measure the distance in fractions of Marathons.  It is August and I have not stopped.  Resting heart rate is 48.  I think that guy is still casting a large shadow at noon.

Jus' Sayin'.  Trails are filling up with skaters again.  This is the second "rebirth" of inline skating.  It isn't like in the 90s but you can find friendly faces out there again.

And that is the point.  I do it because I like to.  I do it because the beta endorphins are a great rush.  I do it because I have a distance goal of "Once Around The World At The Equator" and I am within 250 miles.

I skate once a week, bike twice a week.  Skating is 1.5 times more calories burned than Biking at my level.  1500 calories per hour.  I'll drop it when I'm "old" and I'm not there yet.

There are a few things that I picked up over the years.  You don't skate 24659 miles without learning a few things about a sport.

I am endurance, not speed, not tricks.  I go to log miles, as you might have gathered.  I pick a pace and "just go". 

August in Florida is hot, it was hotter in my native Philadelphia last week.  I found that taking a break every 45 minutes is a requirement, not "nice".

I bring a LOT of water.  My home park has lots of water stops, as did the park in Philly.  I time my breaks to be near water.  Getting through the heat in August wherever you are (February in the upside down world of the southern hemisphere) is helped by this strategy.

Stop, dump water on your head and clothes.  Don't get the bearings wet for the love of the skating gods.  But definitely do the water dump.  "Room temp" will feel nice and cool.  Ice water will send a chill up your spine.  Then dump a similar amount down your waiting gullet and enjoy.  I also bake brownies for my water stop since I'm stopping very close to an hour and it burns up your blood sugar.  Once you get going that water will evaporate and you will get about a half hour at "your pace" of being cool.  Trust this "Senior Skater" on this one, you will like the feeling of the breeze on your head and chest.

Second thing to mention is Bearings.  If you are still on your original bearings consider an upgrade.  I am in a wet climate.  I got very tired of having to tear down bearings every week, even up North.  That is about 100 miles in my old pace of 4x25 miles on the trails.

Hybrid Ceramic is a big improvement and they cost online about $25 a set.  You still have to keep them dry but they are a little better at rolling resistance than a steel bearing.

I know some out there say ABEC 7 or Bones Swiss but I disagree.  I have two containers of formerly useful bearings that were ABEC 5 and better.  ABEC is just a measure of precision of the bearings within the race in the bearing themselves, not a durability rating.   Once you hit the dust or wet on the trails, they will rust up and are no longer smooth. 

Hybrid are only good as long as they are maintained.  Degreased, Dried, Reoiled after a session.  

A much better solution is the more expensive Ceramic bearings.   A set of Full Ceramic bearings cost me about $70.  With the orange menace adding tariffs and taxes on anything he does not understand, I am sure they have gone up.

But do consider them.  Add a cheap Ultrasonic Cleaner to the purchase price at around $35-50.

Why?  They are made of a ceramic mixture like your coffee mug.  They are designed to never need lube.  Lube will pick up dust and corrupt your shiny white or black ceramic bearings.  Care is simple - Put them in the ultrasonic cleaner with water and a drop of dishwashing soap and let it run through a cycle.  When through dry them out with a hairdryer and reinstall.

The difference is a roll test or spin test.

You take a pair of skates and flip them over.  Run your hands, quickly, over the wheels to get them to spin.  Watch your clock to see how long the wheels spin.  My rule is 1 minute spin on steel bearings.  2 minutes on Hybrid is a good number although I see regularly upwards of 2 minutes 30 seconds. 

I have seen one wheel spin 5 minutes on ceramic bearings.  I shoot for 3 minutes 30.  I tend to get bored when I do a spin test.

Anything less than those numbers and into the ultrasonic they go.

Steel gets lube.  I'm not sure of the Hybrid but since they feel a little oily, I would tend to put more lube back.

Lube for me is "Tri Flow" oil.  It has Teflon in it, and it is a light machine oil.  I have been using it for the majority of my 24700 miles.

Ceramic Bearings do not get oiled.

Let me repeat that.

Ceramic Bearings do not get oiled.

You dry them off as much as possible, and put them back into the wheels.   My own ceramics are open bearings, unshielded.  The Steel and Hybrid are both shielded and I have stuck myself many times with the push pin to get the C Clamp off the individual sides of the bearings.

Steel Bearings have gotten so cheap that there are many out there that just get a new set rather than refurbish a set of steel bearings and take the hours of time to do it right.

Spin test them.  You will never get a set of steel bearings to spin the 2:30 of a hybrid let along the 3-5 minutes of a ceramic.

Ceramic bearings are smooth.  It makes for a much better feel on the trails.  More like you are on Ice than on asphalt.  More of what you are putting onto the trail gets converted to speed so this is not for someone who is just "taking up skating".  As an upgrade, I can't think of a nicer one other than perhaps a harder or larger wheel.

Both of my pairs of skates are hard wheels.  88A durometer.  My small set of 80 mm wheels are pure urethane - creamy colored plastic.  The 100 mm big wheels are probably polyurethane but they are 88A. 

Softer wheels will give you more grip but will wear out faster.  They are also stealing your momentum.   Higher durometer wheels will last longer, roll further.  You choose. 

I chose hard wheels.  A long time ago, that is.

I've been at this so long that the terminology has changed.  The "Frame" or "Skate Frame" where the wheels are bolted in was called a "Truck" from the old quad skate designation.  I still slip and call the Frame a Truck from time to time.

But I prefer a long frame, and I have a pair of Rollerblade Twisters from 2023 (I think) that I installed a set of 4x100mm wheels on that look like a demented set of skis.  They have the feel of riding on a rail because of the length of the frame but I don't do tricks.  If you do, you will want to get a custom shorter frame.

For me, and my distance, I'll stick with the longer frame.

(Or Truck)  Long frame on a big heavy boot is a heavy skate, a beast of a skate.

But definitely, if you can find them at a good price, get the ceramics.   You will appreciate the smoothness.

Better to roll than to talk about it.  Find yourself some trainer's tape and tape up the hot spots.  Then get out there and enjoy a workout, I know I will!

I have an economics joke, but it is not in demand.

 Economics is fascinating.  The Dismal Science they call it but it explains a lot of things.  Just keep that in mind.  If you think things are wrong, they probably are.




 A man & his wife are flying...

A man & his wife are flying in a 4-engine jumbo jet to vacation in the Bahamas. Soon after they depart the captain comes on the intercom and says "Good day ladies & gentlemen, we have a great flight for you today. We should be arriving to our destination in about 2 hours". The man & wife settle comfortably into their seat.

About 30 minutes later, there's a loud "KURCHUNK" and the plane starts to shake a little. The captain comes on the intercom and says "Nothing to worry about folks, we just lost one of our engines, but it's okay. We have 3 more. We should now be arriving to our destination in about 3 hours." The wife looks around nervously and her husband appears angry saying "oh, great..."

About 30 minutes later, there's another loud "KURCHUNK" and the plane start shaking a bit more. The captain comes on the intercom and says "Nothing to worry about folks, we just lost another of our engines, but it's okay. We should now be arriving to our destination in about 4 hours." The wife grips her husband's hand tightly even more nervous while her husband gets even more agitated saying "Are you kidding me?!"

About 30 minutes later, there's another loud "KURCHUNK" and the plane shakes around more violently. The captain comes on the intercom considerably more nervous this time and says "Uh, nothing to worry about folks, we just lost our 3rd engine, but uh it's okay. We should be uh arriving to our destination in about um 5 hours." The wife is frantic and starts crying. Her husband jumps out of his seat and yells out "OH, COME ON!"

The wife looks sharply at her husband and asks, "What's wrong with you?! Why are you so angry?". He looks at her and says "I want to get to my vacation. If we lose that last engine, we're going to be up here all day!"

Age is not a number. It is clearly a word.

I really can commiserate with Paddy here.  I was outside playing sprinkler tech before the heat went from onerous to punishing, and there's always something to do with this house of cards!



 
Paddy is known to be a hard working lumberjack. He fells one hundred trees a day all with his axe.

Watching him cut a swathe through the trees one day the foreman tells him, "Paddy, you're a wild man with that axe, but it's time to modernise. You should go get yourself a nice chainsaw. You'll triple your work easily and it'll be easier on the body."

Paddy thinks about it s few days before deciding to take the advice. He heads into town to the hardware store and buys himself a new chainsaw.

The next day he only manages to fell eighty trees. "Well, that's to be expected," he thinks. "I'm still getting used to it."

The day after he's only managed fifty trees. Paddy decides to tough it out until he gets the hang of it. The third day, only thirty.

That's the end of that then. Paddy takes the chainsaw back to the store and complains that its not working.

"That's odd," the salesman says. "Let me have a look then." He takes the chainsaw, pulls the start cord, and it roars to life.

"Holy fooken shite!" Paddy shouts. "What the hell is that noise?!"

I haven't bought a new cell phone since day one, but a New To Me phone needs a parallel test.

I'm fine with having somewhat old, or at least "older" electronics.

My long time friends might be surprised about that.  At one point I had to have the newest items.

I came to the realization that these things are tools.  I simply need them to "just work".

I am fortunate that I have a ready supply of these "older" electronics come through my sticky little fingers.

I am using 5 year old laptops running Debian Linux and they just work.  As in Super Fast.

I giggle at the people standing in a line at the gadget stores before dawn.  Sure, that's a bit rude but... come on.  It is manufactured demand.  Perhaps "manufacturing demand" might be the point.

I am using a phone that is 4 versions old right now.  I hate the thing because the Apple Walled Garden concept is faulty.  At least it is faulty to me.

I resent being told that I must back my phone up, and pay them for the privilege because they are giving me a "generous" 5GB of space, while the phone has 128GB on it.  Let me back the damn thing up to my own computers, or somewhere else, and step the hell off.

Every time I try to get something off the phone, I have to start a third party program to get my photos off the thing.  It is a computer.  If I plug it into another computer, it should come up reliably as a drive.  It does not every time, and it gets confused.

Anti-Apple rant aside, the newer versions are evolutionary and not revolutionary.

Slightly better camera, slightly better speakers, slightly more spyware I assume. 

I don't trust them.

More important I use the thing for a few very important, to me, items.

Photography.  Most of the pictures on this blog are taken by me, for my own entertainment.  Occasionally I'll grab something from elsewhere.  I try to remember to attribute the original person but I do forget.  Those pictures get big fast.  I have to get the third party software started, bring them into a browser, cut, paste, annotate them with a title and my URL and post them.  The camera does get better, but it tends to be a few steps behind the state of the art for the time the phone was put out.

Athletics.  Once upon a time, I was "Picked Last" for sports.  I was kid who had no clue about "ball sports".  I still am not good at those.  Doesn't matter, I had a resting heart rate of 50 yesterday and I regularly bicycle and inline skate at a heart rate above my theoretical maximum for my age.  My personal motto is "Lead, Follow, or Get Out Of The Way".  I will help you along, and give you information on nutrition and training to get to my level.  For my age bracket, I am in the 99% percentile for inline skating - my goal is 25,000 miles in my career and at 24645 miles, I am very close.  Once around the world on Inline Skates.

So I monitor my heart rate, distance, and speed.  Assertively.  The phone does help.  In order for it to help I measure out the trail on the phone via GPS.  It tells me the trail is 4.5 miles.  I verify that aggressively via mapping software and obsessively measure that out.

Entertainment.  Music.  I have a data plan that lets me listen to international music for unlimited time.  I am also using it to watch video internationally in two languages.  News as well.  I see nothing wrong with walking the dog an hour and a half before dawn listening to the CBC for news bulletins and switching to BBC for in depth coverage.

When I was given a New To Me phone, it was because my old one had a battery in it that was wearing out.  I could have had the battery replaced, but the New To Me phone had a brand spanking new battery with "96% health".  More importantly it is slightly larger and a number of generations newer.  Faster processor, although frankly, I did not notice that.  Once upon a time I had an android phone that I could snap the battery in and out, and repaired the daylights out of it.  Tech is not getting better, it's getting more annoying to maintain.

I am in the process of migrating onto that phone.  It means I have to proofread the thing and make sure that everything I depend on works.

I listened to my preferred music which is surprisingly diverse.  Classical, Classic Disco, Happy Hardcore, and EDM as well as Norteño from Mexico, and news outlets in 5 different countries.  I could do that from my chair, and did.

Then I had to workout "in parallel".  I had once been given a New To Me phone that had a bad GPS.  It told me that the 2 mile walk I had with the dog was actually 1.9 miles, roughly.  I knew better.  But I also knew that phone was damaged. 

Tuesday I had a workout on the bike.  Along with the GPS enabled sport watch, the GPS enabled bike computer, and the GPS enabled phone, I had the second phone with me telling me where I was in a woman's voice to let me know it wasn't the main phone which was in a man's voice.

The differences were .01 mile over a basis of 27.18 miles.  52 feet or less than the distance across the front of the house, and I can live with that.

Good workout Tuesday as well, but I won't strain my shoulder patting myself on the back.

So the New To Me phone seems to pass the athletics test.  The only thing I need to do is try a different sport and see how the walk is with Mr Dog. 

Some folks are less demanding, they just slide it out of the box, charge it up, and shrug because it works.  Me... nothing is simple.

Mind you, yesterday?  I was taking my old daily driver laptop with a bad USB C power port apart.  I used the monitor to repair a laptop that was dropped and shattered the screen, the hard drive was swapped, and it was tested to be completely functional. 

Yes, Ramblingmoose runs on old stuff. 

Now! Let me tell you about my 23 year old car!

I have a facebook joke, but it is not true.

Listening to a program(me) about security on CBC Radio One this morning before dawn.  The presenter mentions that she was getting ads on her phone about the topic of secured email hosting.  She was researching the topic and discussing it aloud with colleagues.

I'm reminded why I do not use apps where possible.  I don't like ads, especially where ads are being generated because your app has been listening into you.

Revoke access to the microphone in any app you can.  This is one way that they do it, this is not in your benefit.


On the other hand, when I was a programmer, I was known as the Programmer Of Record in two different very large organizations.   If you had a problem you could not figure out, they would get me involved and I'd solve it.  Friday afternoons, we'd hit a "Tavern" in Philadelphia.  I'd have a Roast Pork Sandwich and a glass of Stout.  Roast pork in Philadelphia is particularly excellent. 

But I'd return to the office, ready to solve your problems.  It was well known.




Once there was a regional darts champion, who found that his darts flew with even greater accuracy after he’d had a drink or two.

Unfortunately, all of his local mates quickly learned to never wager against him, especially if he had been drinking.

One night, he arrived at the pub to find a stranger standing on a bench issuing a challenge. “I reckon I can beat any one of y’all in a game of darts, and I’ll put up the money to prove it,“ she said. “I’m fixin’ to wager $1,000 on a simple game of darts. Three throws, and if ANY of your throws beat a single one of mine, you win the whole pot.“

The crowd murmured, and all eyes turned to the dart champion. “OK, stranger. I’ll take that bet…but let’s make it $10,000.”

“Sound good,” she said, “but I have one condition: each one of us takes a drink before we play, and we each choose the other’s drink.”

The dart champion’s face lit up, as he couldn’t believe his luck. “Fine by me, stranger. You’ll have bourbon whiskey, a double.”

“And you’ll have absinthe, a single shot,” she replied. The bartender served them up, each downed their drinks, and the game was on. She was the first to throw, scoring a double eight. He smirked, believing that with a throw as mediocre as that one, she had already lost the game. Aiming at the bullseye, he let his dart fly, and was shocked when it hit the numbered ring on the outside perimeter of the board, scoring zero points.

Next, she threw a triple two, and his throw went wide, the dart impaling the the wood panel the dartboard hung on. He was aghast; it was the first time that he had missed the dartboard in years.

On her third and final throw, she threw a double five. Concentrating all of his focus, he aimed at the exact center of the board, and was shocked when the dart missed both the board and its wood panel and lodged itself on the bathroom door, barely missing the head of an exiting patron. She smiled. “Good effort, friend! Thanks for playing!”

As he wrote her a check for the full $10,000, he stammered, “I just don’t understand what happened. I’m the regional darts champion, and a drink or two always improves my aim.”

She gave him a wink and replied, “I reckon you learned a valuable lesson today: Absinthe makes the dart go yonder.”

I have a civil engineering joke, but it is still under construction.

Being 6'4" I just smile and nod and say "Everything is proportional.".  I, of course, do not say what I am referring to but hey, you get what you pay for.



  A man and a woman were out on a first date together.

Everything was going great and they were getting along really well, when out of nowhere the woman commented on the size of the man’s hands and feet. "I didn't notice earlier, but you have remarkably small hands and feet!"

The man taken aback by such an unexpected observation thought quickly and replied somewhat flirtatiously, "Well, it’s because my testosterone focused on other parts of my body, if you know what I mean..." giving the woman a cheeky wink as he finished speaking.

The woman, rather impressed and turned on by his smooth response slides across closer to the man and puts her hand on his thigh, at which point the guy continued, "Yeah, I have a really hairy back."




If that was not suggestive enough, here's more!



As I slid my finger inside her damp hole, I could immediately feel her getting wetter and wetter. I took my finger out and she started going down on me.

That’s when I said to myself, “I think it’s time to get a new boat."

Mrs Monarch Butterfly Takes Her First Flight

This is a case of if you annoy someone enough, you may just get some truly fascinating pictures.

I have enjoyed watching Monarch Butterflies since I was a wee brat.  Literally all my life.

They were the beautiful jewels of summer when I was growing up on the Prairies of New Jersey.  You never saw many of them, and when you did they were always special.

I did take some time to read up on them, and their life cycle is well known.  The butterfly is one of a few stages.  Egg, Caterpillar, Pupa, Butterfly. 

I had a thing for growing flowers, specifically Zinnia.  They would grow freely in our yard so it was a matter of tossing a few seeds and keeping the soil moist.  You would be graced by a bloom in time. 

The butterflies would eventually arrive from the South on their trip Northward.  Have a meal at my Zinnia buffet, perhaps lay a few eggs elsewhere and disappear.  There would be more coming from the North later on in the season, heading Southward.

When I moved to Florida, I found that there is a permanent population endemic here.  People enjoyed seeing them, so they would plant things in their gardens to help them along. 

I am, of course, one of those people.

Zinnia seeds in hand, along with the Bougainvillea that helped sell this house to us, I made sure that there were plenty of things here for the little visitors to have.

Bright idea!  I would grow milkweed and watch them progress through their life cycles from egg through emergence from their pupa and fly off.

Except, there's a problem.  Since Milkweed is not exactly plentiful in the curated gardens of South Florida, when they found it, the butterflies would lay eggs.  Dozens of eggs.  That meant dozens of caterpillars.  Usually on one or two plants.  Since they don't have much food, the ones that hatched first would eat the plant and the eggs of the others would not get a chance to either hatch or get any food.

In a week, I was left with toothpicks in the soil where once a planter box had knee high foliage. 

I hatched a plan to build a cage around the planter box so that I would reserve a few plants and hopefully get some flowers and seeds.

That cut back the visits.  The butterflies would bounce off the cage and fly off, frustrated. 

Eventually the milkweed grew to touch the top of the cage and one enterprising Momma Monarch left an egg on the plant, before I could train the plant with some wire to bend it away from the protective cage.

The one egg hatched into a caterpillar, then ate away a plant all on its own.  Formed a jade jewel of a chrysalis, and the butterfly eventually emerged.

That morning I saw her, found a stick and she climbed upon it.  The cage was set aside and I put the stick in the croton growing in the front. 

Excitedly, I got the camera out and snapped off a few pictures.  Then a few more.

She did not like having her portrait taken.  I think that is universal, my dog does not seem to care for it either. 

Launching in air, at that point I thought I was done.  Except when I looked at the photos, I saw one very strange picture.  It was a Monarch butterfly Thorax and a bit of the wing along with the antennae.

I have a picture of the butterfly in flight.  I never expected that.

So it does go to say that if you are annoying enough with a camera, even a paparazzi can get an interesting picture.

I have jokes, but they're not funny.

Ok, maybe not jokes.  Today it's more like a Story.



 A 90 year old man was having his annual check up while his family was standing by in the waiting room.

During the check up, the doctor asked him if he was having any issues with wetting the bed at night.

The man responded, "No doc, no issues at all with that. On the contrary, when I go to the bathroom, a fairy or something turns the light on when I open the door. And after I finish going to the bathroom, the fairy or something turns the light off for me. It's really wonderful!"

The doctor looked concerned and scribbled some notes about this and continued on with the check up.

After the check up, the doctor went out to the waiting room where one of the man's family members asked him how the check up went.

The doctor responded, "Well Ma'am, his check up went OK. Physically, he's as healthy as can be for a 90 year old. But mentally, I'm worried he's coming down with dementia or something."

The lady, with a concerned look on her face asks, "Why do you say that?"

The doctor responded and said, "Well, during the check up, he told me that when he goes to the restroom at night, a fairy or something turns on the light when he opens the door and that same fairy or something turns off the light for him when he finishes. I'm just a little concerned about his mental health."

The lady with a horrified look turns to the rest of the family and says, "Oh no, Grandpa's been peeing in the fridge again!"

What do you call two diamonds out to dinner? Carbon dating.

Ok I guess this sort of thing is universal.  Just get your steps in!


 

Alex, Brian, Charles are best friends since they were kids, work together under the same company.

They got sent to the neighboring country to negotiate an offer. They slept that night at a random hotel.

The next thing they realized in the morning was the elevator are typically not working as the electricity got turned off. The hotel they are staying has 90 floors.

The fellas didn't have a choice and decided to use their feet to start walking down the stairs.

Alex suggested a brilliant idea to the other two. "The first 30 floors, I will be telling a funny story. Brian will be telling a scary story for another 30 floors. Charles will be telling the saddest story.

Alex started telling the funniest story for the first 30 floors. Brian took turn talking the scariest stories for the another 30 floors.

When it is finally the turn for the Charles, he proudly started telling his saddest.

Charles:

3 people went into a hotel that has 90 floors, the hotel's electricity got cut off but they have to got to work, they used stairs

Alex: Wait, isn't that..?

Brian: Nah, let him finish

Charles: so they finally manged to land their feet on 1st floor, and one of the three forgot the car keys on the tables.