Longboarding is an effective form of stress relief. When one’s angry, sad, trying to cope, or just for fun, one can longboard as long as they want to. It’s not self-destructive, it is fun exercise, and you can meet a lot of friends and longboard with friends. One doesn’t try to cover up the real problems when longboarding by buying things they don’t need or stuffing their face. It is also a form of stress relief in that you don’t need a car so you don’t need to dedicate more of your short life to working for the insurance and gas of a car. And you can’t get pulled over on a longboard!

Other endeavors that are similar to longboarding is snowboarding, skateboarding, and surfing. With snowboarding you have to practice a lot, spend money on a mountain pass, be in the cold, and be in an area that has snow, in Michigan, that’s only a couple months out of the year. Skateboarding is fun but also takes long hours of practice, is dangerous in that you’re always attempting more complicated tricks off of higher grounds, and they break fairly quickly. Surfing requires practice, an expensive surfboard, and to be by the ocean or a lake the entire time. Plus nobody wants to drown! With a longboard you can simply get on and go wherever there is road or sidewalk, which today is almost everywhere. You don’t really need to practice; you can go down a big hill without buying a pass, and is the safest of them if you are wearing the proper gear such as a helmet. For the price, a longboard is a great alternative to any of these and they last very long.

This is why I ride my longboard.