Hey guys,

I'm pretty new to skating - just got myself a longboard last fall and learned to ride well enough to get around. It was a $150 sector 9 and was always great, and nice and fast, but it was really longer than I felt I needed and a bit awkward to carry around sometimes. I also found a crummy old plain skateboard with small hard NOISY wheels, but that did alright for a while. Ended up giving it away though. Anyways somebody stole my longboard from me at a train station a month or so ago, so this time, I thought I'd do better even though I really didn't know much about equipment.

I went to my local board shop, and got myself a Sector 9 Joel Tudor board, which is really sweet - it's like the perfect cross between the longboard and regular board styles, while staying nice and short. Got Independent trucks (I'm pretty sure that's what I had on the longboard), and Kryptonics Route 70's. I thought that would make for a nice fast board, and I love to skate fast down the hills. Also got Swiss Bones bearings - which I'm familiar with from rollerblading, so figured, "yeah, this'll be sweet!". Coughed up almost $200 for the complete kit. I rode it for a while, but it was just too slow. It was very hard to maintain speed on level ground, uphill was nearly impossible, and even going downhill was sluggish. I couldn't understand why, because the wheels looked the same as the ones I had on my longboard, and I don't see how the length of the board could make any difference. I guess there's different hardnesses though. I found that the Route 70's presented problems when trying to turn hard, too.

So I went back to the store, and asked - they told me that the Kryptonics should be very fast - and couldn't understand why they'd be slow. I decided to go for less drag in a narrower wheel, and bought up a pair of Route 65's. Okay, they're a lot better/faster, but I've been riding on them for 2 days and one wheel has a huge gouge cut into it already, and another wheel seems improperly manufactured because it wobbles and wears unevenly.

I may not know too much about the equipment yet, but I've learned one thing - screw Kryptonics. I hate these wheels.

But I don't want to spend any more money without knowing what I'm doing, cause I've already wasted too much. Given that I always always ride on the street or sidewalk, don't really care to do crazy tricks, and just love to skate fast as possible, what are the best wheels I can buy?

I don't really care how much they cost, as long as they're good and well worth the money.

So if you guys can offer up any advice, I'd really appreciate it!

if you looking for longboarding wheels to cruize, carve, slide and stuff, you should check out the abec11 site. Type it into google. They have a large selection of wheels made for every type of longboarding, and plus everyone loves them, so thats kinda a guarantee that they're good. They're bright green two.

Well it's a short board I have now, but I use it mostly just for cruising so that's why I still have larger wheels... I figured the larger the wheels, the faster they'd be...and just generally better at taking on cracks and holes and grates and such.