One ride, fourteen months, scroll to roll
Start
On July 1, 2025 a $699 electric skateboard showed up at the door. On September 5, 2026 it rolled past 600 miles. Eleven of the rides were recorded with GPS. I've stitched them end to end into one line, so you can ride the whole thing top to bottom. The odometer in the corner counts every mile, recorded or not.
Leg 1 · Belle Isle
Ten days in. Belle Isle, the loop road, six miles at lunch. The board is brand new, the wheels are still the color of wheat, and the remote is upside down in my hand.
Leg 2 · Lake Michigan
Muskegon, mid August. A short one on the far coast, the only recorded ride that leaves the east side of the state. Sand in the bearings.
0.0 mi drawn
August 22, 2025 · unrecorded
Some of the best ones were spent a board-length back on a quiet street, trying to keep up and film at the same time. None of this went to Strava. It went here.
Leg 3 · The long one
Saturday evening, September 6. Down through the neighborhoods, across to the island and back with the sun going. Top speed for the whole year: 46 mph on the GPS, which is either a downhill or a glitch and I'm keeping it.
0.0 mi drawn
Leg 4 · Lake St. Clair
Lunch break, five days later. North along the lake through the Pointes to St. Clair Shores and back. Nine miles, thirteen miles an hour, no hills because there are no hills.
0.0 mi drawn
Legs 5 to 8 · October
Four rides in four weeks. Morning laps of the island before work, jeans instead of shorts, the leaves turning. The October 17 ride is the last line of the year.
0.0 mi drawn
Intermission
October 17 to March. This is Michigan. The board goes in the garage, the battery gets a top-up once a month, and the line on the map goes grey. Nothing recorded because nothing happened.
0 of 135 days in the garage
March 2026
First warm day and the board comes out of the garage. New bearings, a remote that briefly decided forward was reverse, and a few hundred miles that never touched Strava. That's the point.
Leg 9 · Summer
First recorded ride of 2026 on June 18. Ten miles through the Pointes, the first line on the map in eight months.
0.0 mi drawn
Leg 10 · The International Jaunt
August 11. Down the river to the Gordie Howe bridge and up onto its path, the Detroit River under the board, the Ambassador Bridge and the skyline off to the left and Canada at the far end. Ten and a half miles, ninety minutes of moving time, and the slowest average of the year because you stop for the view.
Leg 10 · continued
This is what the bridge looks like from a skateboard: a covered path that goes on long enough to make you check the battery, and a white harp of cables overhead the whole way.
Leg 10 · Historic Fort Wayne
Then the detour: Historic Fort Wayne, brick gates, a cannonball plaque about Lake Erie, and a path that was built for marching, not rolling. The most photographed day of the whole 600, by a mile.
Leg 11 · September 5, 2026
Skating home from my parents' house after we chopped up a branch the storms dropped in their yard. Fifteen and a half miles up the Shores and back. Somewhere on that stretch the count rolled over.
0.0 mi drawn
Strava saw 97.8 of the 600 miles: eleven rides with a GPS track. The other 502 are estimated between them, spread across the days the board was rideable, which in Michigan means not from mid October to March. The odometer above is that estimate, honest about being one.
The stitched line. Each ride starts where the last one ended. Dashed ring: where winter happened. Red: the ride that crossed 600. Streets removed on purpose. Tap a leg.
Eleven rides, one line
97.8mi
Tap any stretch of the line to see the ride it came from.