Tactile paving - The bane of any electric skate boarder's life

Tactile paving they call it, and its there to warn pedestrians with visual impairment that they have reached  the edge of the pavement. This paving comprises small round bumps and boy they sure vibrate your board and body as you ride over them.

Now, with the weather being more sunny than rainy these  weeks (yes despite that statement I still live in Wales),  I've been using the board a lot more to get to work. However, there have been two recent and unfortunate incidents as a result of riding over these bumps. First my speedometer stopped working and then a couple of weeks later my board suddenly stopped working. I will discuss in later blog entries about my fixes. But basically upon investigation, both problems were due to a solder connection between wire and electronic circuit board breaking off.

This tactile paving is scattered around various parts of the urban landscape. But in the newly built train station by my work place they seem to have gone overboard, with a total of eight  tactile pavings to negotiate in the space of three minutes.

The multitude of these tactile pavings is rather akin to the test tracks that auto-mobile manufacturers use to test their new vehicles:- They make different road surfaces present  to intentionally "exercise" the car.

I'm sure every time I skate over these humps I am subjecting my poor board to an equivalent  of five years extra wear and tear.

The design of the sloping pavement kerb means its not possible to skate to the left or right hand side of the tactile paving. This is highly  annoying, as avoiding the tactile paving means travelling a further distance to bypass these tactile paved areas. Grrr.....