JoeyBike

I would love to use my skates but the wheels are so danged expensive and wear out fairly quickly, and need to be continually rotated for wear - a real hassle. Back when inlines were THE thing I had a nice pair of speed skates (5 wheels each skate) and could do 60 miles in one day without too much problem. For the past 20 years I have used inline skates with removable wheels (nobody makes them anymore to my knowledge) so I could just walk in the boots once I arrived to my destination.

Hypno made some nice skates at one time:



I have been using Rollerblade Natures for 20 years. Thankfully, I bought a few pairs of them in my size and still have one pair in great shape:



^^These work like mountaineering boots with crampons. They work great. A tad heavy and a little clunky to walk in at first.

I also skated to all of my classes in college. The minute urethane outdoor wheels were invented (yes, I am THAT old) I used blood plasma money to purchase a pair of outdoor skates. Here is a campus newspaper photo at LSU of me keeping my grade point average well below 4.0:





Trust me...at an A&M college in the late 1970s, I was the ONLY student skating to classes. And this was not how I dressed for going to class. I was just out for a skate after class and bumped into some friends tossing the flying disk. I am wearing my skates but standing in a grassy field near the Student Union. Dig the short-shorts and tube socks! (Yes kids, that is how we dressed for sports!)

Now that New Orleans has bike lanes all over the place I have considered upgrading my skates again. Problem is, it is ILLEGAL to skate in the street here. Cops generally don't seem to care but I have been banished to the sidewalks many times in the past. Good quality wheels cost about $50 a set and I go through them in a month. When I played roller hockey in Santa Monica, CA I would go through an entire set of wheels EVERY HOUR! Back then I could get wheels from Venice Rollerworks for $1 each. Those were the days!