My Bont Jet Adventure (Inline Skating Speedskating Boots, Skate Brakes, Stopping, Frame Placement)

Well if I understood, the arguments are similar to head gear ones. Some think it's cool to have skates with no brake, and I agree that's pretty cool. I like my hair blowing in the breeze too but I don't have to skate to get that feeling. I can get a Fiat Spider 2000 1979 DOHC 2 litre with Weber carb and rusted floorboards for that...but a hair dryer or box fan is cheaper.

Some say crossovers are harder with a brake on. Yep, if you do them wrong, maybe. I can see where indoors a brake would put a serious style cramp on, especially in a pace line indoors. And if you left a big black mark on the rink, well you might be in there gently scrubbing or some such. But I think for outdoor situations where turns are generally not that tight and if they are you might not be XOing anyway, having the brake back there is no problem.

Some say the brake is a bummer if you're behind the person in a paceline outdoors. I've felt that bummer myself once at least on the SCT (Silver Comet) with eebee, coming back late one evenight, and just at that point where I shouldn't have thought "we're back," but I did anyway. I got too close and my front wheel spun on her brake and it was tumbletime. As I recall it was not such a bad fall but better no falls at all. The main thing is you just have to watch for a brake when you get behind someone in a paceline.

Some say the brake is heavy but I never notice this. I notice a lot of other things, but can't recall once thinking that brake is heavy. Hope I don't start now. The brake IS a bummer when it comes to changing wheels. We still haven't designed a great one yet.

HOWEVER, once you remember you have a brake on and stop using wheels to brake, you'll preserve the profile of your wheels much longer and wear them more evenly on both sides most likely, unless you are an amazingly even wheel-brakeer on the left and right. It is a HUGE savings of money and time overall to wear out a brake pad instead of wheels, unless you bought the wheels already and want to burn through them for some reason.

There are sometimes alignment issues with some brake and frame combinations, but in general, a flat frame surface and flat brake surface work well together. I think my K2 speed frames were convex on the sides and that caused some unwanted rub/alignment issues. I resisted even when reasonable people were using a brake. It was less macho and more not wanting to hassle with more hardware. In the long run I've found less need to do wheel rotations (in the "swapping wheels" sense) required meant less overall work with the brake.

One cool thing is that if you use the brake on some really long downhill and those particular muscles start to cry, you can always go back to wheel-braking (t-stop drag) and use those particular muscles, changing legs left and right. On some very long downhills like we saw in Randolph near the Zoo, this turned out to be mentally useful at least, if not physically. I don't think I did any wheel burn, but it was good to know I still had that trick in the bag. Once I could see the rest of the road, I let it fly, and I think that's where I hit something that flew up and hit eebee on the arm?

Anyway, those are most of my thoughts on the brake. I've almost tripped because of it maybe a couple of times, but so far, have not. You spend very little time braking once you've been skating awhile, but that's some of the most important time in your skating life.

ALSO and this is not to be underestimated: I think wearing a brake even if you never use it sends out a signal to the biking and law enforcement and event coordinator communities that you are safety conscious...even if you can brake better with a wheel-burn. (Oh and if you use the wheel-burn t-stop, make sure those wheels are rotating still or you'll have a flat-spotting problem too).

If you can get a GatorBrake and a leash, I say go for it. After that, I say an old Miller. After that, check for something from your manufacturer. Some K2 units have add-on brake assemblies (plastic I think, but that's better than nothing in this case I'd think). Sometimes, just making some noise with the brake lets someone know you're with them (if you're not feeling like talking), and again, that's cheaper with a brake pad. Those are my biased views once more. Hope it helps. Others?