ISLE OF PALMS -- Back in 1963, Mike Spencer made his first surfboard near the pier on Isle of Palms and, by his own admission, it wasn't very good.

"I couldn't afford to buy them, so I started making them," recalls Spencer, who had moved from Wrightsville Beach, N.C., to the Isle of Palms at about the time surfing first started to surface in the Charleston area.

After a stint in the Navy during the Vietnam War, Spencer walked into the famed Oak Street Surf Shop in Laguna Beach, Calif., and got a job shaping boards. He's been doing it ever since.

"Everything got better from there (Oak Street). I went to France and made boards. I wound up in Hawaii and traveled the world surfing," said Spencer, smiling. "I really had a lucky life and it all started on this beach and with these people."

The people he was referring to are the original members of the Carolina Coast Surf Club, which was celebrating its annual Labor Day weekend reunion on Saturday by, you guessed it, surfing. Spencer was the club's honored member this weekend for, as club co-founder Hal Coste said, "livin' the dream."

My relatives has been structure up a amassment of skateboards and casterboards (Ripstik, Bladeboard, Xglider, WhipTide, and Welling up Board), and this discuss will juxtapose them based on the impressions of a 48yo dad, my 15yo son, and my 9yo daughter.

Skateboard - As a youth I built my own skateboards with the most adroitly trucks, wheels, etc., that I could give forth entangled with, and I built my own ramps and did some of the tricks that you see at skateparks, so I’ve got a lot of ordeal with skateboards. One affair about skateboards is that if you’re not systematic, they can toss out from under you when you put a foot on them, which can root injuries. There are a lot of fun tricks that can be done with skateboards, but for principled skateboarding on a sincere street they can be degree insensible compared to casterboards.

Ripstik - It feels precarious getting on a Ripstik for the first lifetime, but we pronto got the abashed of it. In my thought it’s safer than a skateboard in the tail that it doesn’t sprout out from under you very clearly (it unreservedly flops onto its side since it only has two wheels). On the au fait with street in front of our put up, the Ripstik is WAY more fun than a skateboard, and my kids and I time again business casterboards because we all paucity to have a disclose on the Ripstik. The only downside is that the Ripstik wheels weary down quick (see “A note about the wheels” below).

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