biodiesel

My first commuter skitch the other day. Riding my xtra through town on the way home, small street, small town and slow enough i usually beat traffic on my xtra. Pulled up behind a flatbed landscapers truck and leaned on at a stop light. Let them pull me a few blocks, until he had to stop then used the accelleration to slingshot into a lane split and past a blocks worth of traffic.

Ahh,
Now i just need a pocket fisherman, some bungie cords, an Acme horseshoe magnet...

Matt Gaunt

I've never had the balls to do that. It looks like so much fun and yet so dangerous! Are you clipped in when you pull stunts like that? Just so I know what I have to beat!

jyossarian

I've done it and it's fun, even skitched through a left turn. I wasn't clipped in, but I had platform pedals. Watch out for potholes, and doorings though.

It's also fun when there's snow on the ground and you skitch on your feet.

2manybikes

No, you need the ACME rocket powered back pack.......................beepbeep.

bennyk

I prefer to be clipped in so that I have better control. If I went down, I'd come unclipped anyway, so it's not like that's a risk. Just concentrate on not crashing.

bk

biodiesel

Unclipped and on a commuter rig.

This big truck next to me, me slowing next to it to trackstand. It was a moment just built for skitching.

LóFarkas

I've only had the guts to have a truck pull me the first few metres. When it started to pick up speed I let go. Now that I ride a fixed gear, it's not really an option...

edtrek

I was very interested in the title : "Skitching"
When I grew up in Brooklyn we skitched behind buses
in the snow, and I always thought it was just a NY word.
Seems like it's all around.

biodiesel

I first saw the word skitch in a street biking survival book written by a NYC courier and heard it from a NYC friends that used to blade to work and skitch the cabs.
Seems it's officially migrated to the west coast.

bison33

Up here, at least when I was a kid, we called it a hitchie. We'd do it in the winter with only our boots on, in the summer with out skateboards or bikes. It seemed like a passage that all kids did, and if you grabbed a hitchie on a cop car, you were the man...til they stopped and yelled at you. Or worse, a driver saw you and sped up. I look back now and think I'm lucky I was never seriously injured or killed. Where I live, I'd never try it now, too many idiotic drivers here. They hate us commuters as it is.

bostontrevor

skitch = skate + hitch

It's an old skateboarding term.

Me, I used to skitch when I was an inline skater. A friend and I once hit 50 mph hooked to another friend's car.

dedhed

In my neighborhood we called it bumper jumping. Usually during a fresh snow and on foot. I will say a good friend of mine lost a younger brother to an accident where he was doing it on a skateboard.

jyossarian

Same here. I grew up in Brooklyn in the 70's and the older kids used the term all the time.

TreeUnit

Yes, skitching is much fun especially for commuting purposes. I mean, if there is one person in an SUV with a towing capacity of 4 tons, it is ludoucris not to take advantage of the unnecessarily used energy.

cooker

"Car-hopping" or "bumper-hopping" (Winnipeg, Canada).

ahpook

i think the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games brought the term to a wider audience...

i have come damn close a few times but haven't gotten the minerals to grab on. i think i'd want to do with with a known-friendly vehicle a few times to get the feel, especially riding fixed...

ctoddrun

Crazy! We used to call that hooky-bobbing when I was a kid in the northwest. No idea where the term came from, and I've always been too chicken to try it under any circumstances... Though I have been tempted a time or two on my commute, I think I'll stick to my own predictable pedal power (or lack thereof...) The wife and small kids at home are great motivation to be able to walk in the door at night. Not that I always enjoy walking in the door, but I'm committed to continuing to have the option...

cerewa

Yeah, it just doesn't feel safe enough to me. I don't know/trust the drivers, and usually there's nothing that's easy to hold on to. Even when there is, I think about all of the possibilities for injury (and there are quite a few).

I've come close to getting squashed between a bus and a car and skitching seems to make that sort of situation a little more likely.

brunop

**** dude! you da MAN!! i skitched inline one time and hit around 30 mph and almost be****tled myself! 50 mph! you da man!!!!

TrevorInSoCal

How 'bout off-road skitching?

One of the favorite local trails around here ends in a 3 mile fire-road climb (Not bad considering it's preceded by 15 or so miles of singletrack.). There was a group of us riding there last summer that consisted of about 3 or 4 of us Expert and Semi-Pro XC racers, and another other guy who was a coworker or friend of one of the guys. We get to the top of the climb out and someone says something along the lines of "Think we'll be waitin' a while, dude was suffering...". Not two minutes later a jeep cruises up the road with the guy holding on to the window-frame and sporting a big, sh*&-eating grin.

Skitching's not just for playing in city traffic .

-Trevor

MMACH 5

Not sure what they called it back in the day, but here's a vintage, trolly skitcher.

literocola

HAHAHA, funny.

I love skitching whenever I can. I'll skitch on anything possible. Busses, cars, trucks, vans, mopeds, anything.

I lived at a college mountain town for a while, and the best way to get home from the bar in a drunkin stooper was to skitch our way back. Good times, until my friend got his handlebar stuck in a Ford Exploder door handle opener thingee, and went down pretty hard. The car ran over his bike and destroyed his front rim, the front disk was trash. But nothing serious.
Until it was time to fix it. When he was adjusting his new rotor, he decided it would be a good idea to stick his finger in the rotor while it was spinning, and managed to take off a good 1/2" of his finger. Good times, good times.

MacG

ow.

OUCH!! One more vote for "rim brakes save fingers" thank you very much.

csnyder

So, biking + hitching would be...

max-a-mill

that sound like fun till the car realizes your there, gets scared, and accidentally swerves...

i'll stick to pedal power thanks. plus; touching someones car in this city is asking for a fight.