Questions about PIC skates

[Christy]

With all local rinks closed and many removing ice it's a very early end to my skating season and I've got quite a few months to fill. I'm debating getting some PIC skates and would appreciate hearing about different experiences please. The biggest issue I have is trying to work out what surface I could use - our driveway is gravel and slopes anyway so can't see that working. I suppose our rink parking lot could be an option as it's asphalt, but it's not exactly level.
Also I tried inline skates a few years ago and found that I could go forwards in a straight line but that was about it. How different are PIC skates - do they actually have edges? Can you spin, and if so, how please?

[Bill_S]

Having an incline of any sort makes skating MUCH more difficult. Level parking lots, playground surfaces, outdoor basketball courts, etc. are all good candidates.

Most inlines have the wheels set in a straight line with no rocker. These will not feel similar to ice skates at all. PIC skates have the wheels set along a curve, mimicking the rocker of an ice skate. To just stroke around, they feel amazingly similar. Three turns are a little different, but very doable.

I've done spins on mine, but the feeling is very different from ice. They require a different technique to do.

And falls are much more unpleasant on pavement. Most of my PIC skating was done on a smooth wooden floor in a roller rink, but I skated on some parking lots and bike trails once in a while. Harder, outdoor wheels should be used if you plan to do much skating outdoors to prevent excessive wheel wear.

EDIT: There have been other threads about PIC skates on this forum in the past. I recall some of them got fairly detailed. Don't forget to try a search for additional threads about PIC skates or other rockered inline brands like Snow White, etc.

[Bill_S]

Here are a couple of the older threads that had PIC Skate in the subject line...

http://skatingforums.com/index.php?topic=1696

http://skatingforums.com/index.php?topic=3375

I didn't search for "inline" in any topic, but these should give you a bit to read.

[Bill_S]

Here's a very short video of a spin on PIC skates. I made it back in 2009. You can see that the entry is different per instructions in a book about jumping and spinning on inlines.

https://www.afterness.com/skating/images/pic_spin_09.mp4

[Christy]

Thanks so much for the links. Loads of useful information there, although have to say most of it is making me a bit leery of trying PIC / inline skates without a Michelin man suit 

[dlbritton]

A trick that can be used with inline skates to mimic a rocker is to use slightly smaller wheels at the very front and rear.
Some of the high end RollerBlade brand skates have interchangeable wheel frames and they sell one that can be rockered. It is intended to be reverse rockered with smaller wheels in the middle 2 positions for riding hand rails, etc. look at the Urban line.

All of the above info came from a RollerBlade rep at a ski instructor Skate to Ski clinic I attended in 2018. I tried a 3 turn on a regular inline but never accomplished one and quit before I injured myself. The clinic leader was able to do one but said he didn't think you could spin at all on the street skates. 

[Loops]

Ditto to what's been said above.  Parking lots and hard tennis courts, preferably without nets, are good.  Get knee, wrist and elbow pads.  I have a set of intermediate level protection from the skateboarding section of my sporting goods store.  I've used it, but not truly tested it yet.  I don't have access to nice hardwood basketball floors or actual proper roller rinks where you'd slide after a fall (they all skate on concrete gym floors here too).  Falling is a scary prospect.

One thing I've noticed with mine- I tend to skid on the tails when doing even simple swing rolls.  This very well could be due to alignment issues, or poor technique, but it is absolutely more apparent (and scary) on smooth polished concrete floors.  It was a phenomenon I was not expecting. 

I hope you take the plunge and have fun!  I have the pic brand.  there are some others out there too.  I like my pics.  I would probably like the others too.

[Bill_S]

A trick that can be used with inline skates to mimic a rocker is to use slightly smaller wheels at the very front and rear.
Some of the high end RollerBlade brand skates have interchangeable wheel frames and they sell one that can be rockered. It is intended to be reverse rockered with smaller wheels in the middle 2 positions for riding hand rails, etc. look at the Urban line.

All of the above info came from a RollerBlade rep at a ski instructor Skate to Ski clinic I attended in 2018. I tried a 3 turn on a regular inline but never accomplished one and quit before I injured myself. The clinic leader was able to do one but said he didn't think you could spin at all on the street skates.

That's a really good tidbit. Even on PICs, which are naturally "rockered", you can still experiment with different diameter wheels, essentially changing your rocker.

I wish it were as easy to change from a 7' rocker to an 8' rocker and back on skate blades!

Loops: I concur that polished concrete doesn't provide the most grip. I skated mostly on a painted wooden rink floor. The owner used a special gloss paint that provided good grip, and the surface was kept free of dust. Even that was still not equal to the grip and deep edges that you get on ice though.