#reidell

so I ordered my first pair of rollerskates on august 28th. as of now it's sunday, september 15th and I still haven't received my parcel. the owner of the store said it should be in, in a week. a week passes, bummed out but just expecting it a couple days later. second week passes. i call the store, "the skates just came in and we're shipping them out now, should be there next wednesday". excitement is flowing through my blood at this point because I know for sure my skates are on the way. another week passes. i receive an e-mail.

"Hey Gabriel, we've got a tracking number for your skates, they have been shipped, but apparently the distributor we get them from forgot to include customs paperwork with the shipment, so they are sitting in customs. I've contacted them to get the customs papers to Fedex so they can clear customs, but it can sometimes take a couple of days... Last time this happened it took nearly a week."

My league supports Junior skaters. I support Junior skaters. They are awesome. And fast, and they don't give up. 

Anyway, a junior I know, Molly Hatchet, won a pair of boots at a tournament our league hosts each year. She decided to go with a Riedell 965. Nice boot. Well made, comfortable. Lace cover, the whole nine yards. I happened to have a pair of 6.00 Luigino F-16 plates and no boots to put them on, so I decided to let her have a go on them. She came over one afternoon and we got them mounted up. I like this plate. The quality of the machining is very good, the truck adjustments are easy and hello, stainless steel adjustable pivots! Great price point and they are light. About 400 gr. for the 6.00. That is a guess as the 6.25 is 412 gr. (I will double check this as I weighed a set a couple weeks ago.)

I will note that the "factory recommended" method for mounting these plates has them biased to the inside of the boot by quite a bit. I was informed that to function properly they MUST be mounted with this bias. I think that is a load of you know what so I used my regular method. Guess what? They work the way plates work.

You might recognise the wheels as the Radar Bullets from my last wheel review. These were put on for the pictures. She normally rolls a set of Rollerbones 85A.

This kid is awesome.

Seriously???

The first few times she rolled these skates, she ended up with massive blisters. The factory cushions (red) are a bit stiff for a skater of her size. I figured her feet were moving around a bunch in her boots as she was trying to get the plates to turn, so I picked up a set of the softest available cushions (green) for the F-16 plates and she put them in.

Who?