Skating in the rain with UnderCover Blank Team wheels

Our Belgian winter has been quite wet so far. Due to circumstances, I had been riding for a while with fair‑weather wheels (this time the Undercover Movies Nicola Torelli wheels). So I kept an eye on the weather forecast and tried to sneak in a ride between two showers, when the surface had dried up reasonably well. Unfortunately, the Belgian weather has been even less predictable this winter than it usually is, and several times I ended up in a (heavy) rain shower. With my fair‑weather wheels, riding back at walking pace was the only option, and even that was (too) difficult.

But recently I put my trusted purple UnderCover Blank Team wheels back on my skates (in rainy weather I prefer my Seba High Light Carbon skates). What a difference! After riding for too long in winter with my fair‑weather wheels, I had almost forgotten that it is possible to skate on a wet surface completely normally and in the same way as on a dry one. I only slow down a little in tight corners, and actually more because a “responsible person” is supposed to do that because it feels dangerous.

Following this blog post (and my renewed awareness of how well these UnderCover Blank Team wheels perform on wet pavement), I updated our Rollerpedia article Wielen om in de regen te inlineskaten and officially labelled this wheel as a rain wheel (even though on dry pavement it really behaves like a proper urban wheel).