There are times when you can’t get out and skate. Sometimes the problem is a raging downpour or a four-day blizzard. Sometimes a cold or flu is keeping you homebound, or a broken limb from your most recent attempt at the “Leap of Faith”. Sometimes you’re just grounded.

Being stuck at home rather than at the skate park doesn’t have to stop you from skating. From flash games to X-box skateboard games, virtually every video game format offers a variety of intricate electronic versions to challenge your reflexes and wear calluses on your thumbs.

Flash games are the latest rage for a few reasons. They can be enjoyed on any device with internet acces, so you don’t need to buy a special player. They are usually free to play, so you don’t have to break into your new skateboard fund. And finally they offer a level of interactivity not seen in other formats. Shockwave Flash is evolving with every update from Adobe Macromedia, so you can be sure that the technology will be moving as fast as the pavement beneath your (virtual) wheels.

Be sure to have all other applications and windows closed before playing Flash Skateboard Games. Here are a few of the best Flash-based Skateboard games we’ve found:

Thrash n’ Burn Skateboarding: From Splash Wave. This game takes a minute to load, due to the ads and high-quality graphics, but it’s well worth the wait. The controls are simple, making use of arrow keys and the space bar for basic movement, with tricks being accomplished with arrows in conjunction with the C, B, and V keys. The game lets you select the gender, clothes, race, and style of your skater, giving you choices between conventional and superhero avatars.

You also get to choose from among board styles. A few of the designs are a little cheesy and would be better suited for a baby’s bedroom. Fortunately there are a few hardcore designs as well.

You’ll want to practice first in freestyle mode before tackling the course, taking a moment to get used to the keyboard commands and how they respond to your pressure and connection speed.

G-Max Skateboard: This one gives you seven board style choices, much better than the design on Thrash ‘n Burn. Another bonus is that each design page shows the individual concave, weight, speed, flex, turning and size specifications for each skateboard.

The advantages end there, however. This one doesn’t include any avatar options, and the play course is a simple half pipe that gets old really fast, although there are three options for location. The “How to Play” link wasn’t working, and the game is also annoyingly slow because of a pop-under which appears at some points. Take a couple extra shots of spam repellent when playing this one.

EnviroBoarder: from Clever Media. This skateboard game is a little corny but strangely addictive. The graphics are pretty old school and you only get one avatar option, a rather dopey looking blonde skater boy, but you’ll find yourself jammin’ to the soundtrack. The point of this skateboard game is to skate around the city picking up cans, newspapers and bottles off the ground and dropping them in the recycling bins that you pass periodically. You can go into the street and even jump over oncoming traffic, just don’t hit the girl on the bike or get run over.

The Satori Movement is more than just a company which manufactures skateboards. The founders built vehicles to move not only the body, but also the soul. They have created a brand which is the favorite of astrally-minded skaters, and a force for conscious change in the world as a whole.

Satori is a Zen Buddhist term meaning realization, enlightenment, sudden awakening, or to be at one. The word is associated with beat culture and evokes images of swamis achieving Nirvana while contorting their bodies into impossible configurations. The skateboard manufacturer of the same name has made a unique contribution to the culture as well as to the hardware of skating.

Unlike other companies who strive to maintain a clean image and appeal to the mainstream side of skating, Satori openly embraces a psychedelic, herb-friendly approach to the lifestyle. While not endorsing dangerous and destructive habits, the logo has become a symbol of the liberated “neo-hippie” skater, who rides the board though the narrow confines and unexpected bends of the path to enlightenment.

Satori Movement Skateboards is a grass-roots company based in Arcata, California. The city is a haven for new-age thought and home to a different breed of skateboarder. Satori borrows from traditions as diverse as India and the Caribbean.

The company and its icons rely heavily on an awakening group of skaters who identify their quest for the perfect ollie with the transcendent journey of the soul. These are the skaters who define the sport as a spiritual activity, relating it to Yoga; uniting the mind, body and spirit. The now infamous company logo is written in a font which imitates the look of Sanskrit while reflecting the red, gold and green of the Rastafarian Lion of the Judah flag.

Satori Skateboards presents their philosophy while showing off their talented skate team in the full-length movie, Satori Movement: In Search of Roots and Culture. Set to a rocking Reggae soundtrack, this high-quality video features Satori team skaters Brent Atchley, Aaron Suski, Jake Rupp, and Matt Pailes.

Satori regularly brings their team to local skate parks around the world for interviews and performances. After performing on the island of Jamaica in 2001, Satori Skateboards opened up the Jamaican Skate park Fund, in association with several non-profit organizations, which is dedicated to building the first free public skateboard park in Jamaica.

In accordance with the values of the company’s founders, the Satori Movement now offers clothing made from blends of organic and recycled hemp as part of their commitment to conscious living and a sustainable, ecological lifestyle. Yoga pants and mats are also featured in the catalog, which expands the scope of Satori’s mission beyond the skateboard itself.

Satori is the skateboard of choice at jam-band festivals and around the natural food store. Being featured in Heads Magazine’s Surf and Skate issue brought the label into the limelight for the many open minded skateboard devotees who share Satori’s enthusiasm for the ineffable glory of skating.

When not at the skate park, the local skater communities tend to congregate around the local premium skateboard shops, where every conceivable type of gear for board and body can be compared and purchased at a premium price.

Many shops practice crossover with other board-oriented extreme sports, stocking equipment for similar forms of recreation like surfing, snowboarding, water sport,s dirt biking, and roller blading. But for the serious skater, none of these variety stores can match the selection and staff of a dedicated skateboard shop.

While general sporting goods might have a rack of boards and a shelf of shoes next to the T-shirts and hoodies, they aren’t likely to be able to help with customization. The boards will be commercial models, which are sold as complete sets without options. The staff will probably lack knowledge about such subtleties as the different needs of street and vert skaters. While the prices will be lower, the quality will be too. Unless you’ve already decided on your board and see it on the shelf for a bargain, skip the “all-purpose” store and focus on skateboard shops where they speak your language.

Plenty of skateboard shops sponsor their own teams that compete in big skate matches. Skate team Zephyr, named after Zephyr Surfboard Productions Shop, were the first sponsored skate team to achieve widespread fame, and brought quite a bit of recognition to their benefactor.

Skate shops have a reputation for being active in the general community as well. PUSH Skateshop, for example, has become a creative hub in North Carolina. Beyond selling a carefully selected array of the highest quality skateboard parts and supplies, PUSH sponsors their own award-winning skate team as well as up-and-coming artists, providing a venue for the creation and distribution of rising stars in the iconic contemporary art world.

Because the skateboarding community is still skating by on the fringe of acceptable society, skateboard shops also function as critical hubs of activity for those who don’t fit in so well at the coffee shop or the library.

Cal Skate Skateboards, one of the oldest and certainly the largest skate shop on the north coast, also runs Zeitgeist Art Gallery and helps to maintain a number of local skate parks. Cal Skate produces its own line of political as well as more abstract artistic skateboard decks, providing local artists with an opportunity to get their art flying all around town under the feet of countless skaters.

Skates on Haight, now known as SkateboardSF, has been doing a lot for the skater image since they opened their first store, called Skateboard City, on world-famous Haight Street in 1974. They’ve changed their name a few times, but are still located in the heart of skater country, hilly San Francisco, and stick to their same old-school ideals.

Whether you’re a street or vert skater, on a longboard or a concave trick board, newbie or pro; slams are an uncomfortable inevitability that come to face to face with anyone who dares to mount a skateboard. Sooner or later, whether through slight miscalculation in timing, a sudden gap in the terra firma, or simply bad luck, just about every board misses a scheduled appointment with the pair of feet that rely on it.

Whether the outcome is a sheepish smile and a wince of pain or a visit to the local emergency room will depend largely on the grace and presence of mind you bring to your bails.

Recovery technique is part of the art. Despite widespread warnings and ample close calls, the vast majority of skaters have stubbornly refused to adopt helmets and padding for recreational board play. As such there have been a rash of bone-cracking mishaps amongst the skating public.

Fortunately, unless the impact is from several stories or involves a skateboard crash with a moving automobile, such incidents are rarely fatal. Even the ugliest of slams usually break nothing more serious than the wrist of the hand absorbing the blow. This only increases the daring of young skaters, who are often filled with an illusion of invulnerability with the power of flight beneath their feet.

Unlike most other sports, skateboarding does not necessarily take place in an environment created specifically for the activity. Even when it does, it occurs on a surface of concrete or metal, on props designed to enhance acceleration without softening landings.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that approximately 50, 000 people end up in American hospital emergency rooms each year because they didn’t know how to safely bail. The statistics show that a third of these accidents involve new skaters; kids who have been skating for less than a week. Most accidents of this level take place on rough, discontinuous skateboarding terrain.

An ounce of prevention can save you a pound of hurt. Build up to new tricks gradually, mastering each move before signing up for the next ollie impossible contest. The vast majority of skateboard crashes are the result of impulsive challenges tackled too soon.

The art of falling is nothing new. In fact, many martial arts, particularly Judo, emphasize making sure that the inevitable impact misses vulnerable body parts. Skaters who have also received some training in Judo will not only be better equipped to handle violent drunks or muggers; they will also be likelier to walk, or at least limp with dignity, away from a skateboard crash.

The most important skill when it comes to bailing safely is knowing when to quit. Too many skaters lose the groove at the worst possible time and at high altitude, while still trying to finish the trick. Switching at high speeds from a center of gravity appropriate to riding to a posture for rolling away from your board requires more than just balance. It demands lightning fast reflexes and an automatic adjustment to the unexpected mistake.

It doesn’t matter if you roll on sidewalks, in the urban jungle gym, or at giant vert parks; on a longboard or a compact street model. You are in all likelihood rolling on four rubber wheels just like Tony Hawk.

The skateboard deck gets a lot of attention, but the foundation of the skater’s world rests on those tiny little wheels. Many board-hoppers hardly ever think about it, but those wheels have become a highly engineered piece of technology. They are durable enough to absorb the astonishing punishment a skateboard receives during its lifetime, yet pliant and smooth enough to convey delicate human cargo across the most improbable and perilous of landscapes.

Virtually every major skateboard company offers a unique take on the skateboard wheel. Hundreds of varieties exist, each capturing the flavor of a different ride and covered with some of the most expressive logo art in the industry.

Skateboard wheels are gauged by two primary key factors: “durometer” (how hard the material is) and diameter (how wide the wheel is). The greater the diameter, the faster the board, as larger wheels will more rapidly cover ground with each revolution. Phatty wheels are favored by vert skaters for the zippy ride over ramps, whereas more compact wheels are conducive to tricks, being both lighter and more proximate to the terrain.

Boards which are used primarily for getting around are typically outfitted with wider, softer wheels. These are generally made from semi-hard rubber. This type of wheel moves fast and forgives high-speed surface variations.

Other critical stats which help classify the mountain of different options are the wheel profile, an indicator of the ratio between height and width, and the rebound factor, which is a measure of the elasticity of the material.

The choice of skateboard wheel confronts the skater with a decision of values; when favoring a harder wheel, a certain amount of control is sacrificed, whereas softer wheels gain manageability at the expense of speed. New dual-element technology attempts to integrate the best of both worlds by containing a soft inward-facing surface complimented by harder urethane substance on the outer face of the wheel. Such wheels make grinding and sliding easier, because although the purpose of the grind is to ride the truck along rail, the inner wheel surface will frequently drag along the grind surface as well.

Regardless of what kind of skateboard wheels you have, your safety may depend on proper maintenance and cleaning. Care should be taken to ensure that all bolts and bearings are optimally tightened and lubricated. Skateboard wheels, just like automotive varieties, should be regularly rotated to mitigate uneven wear.

With literally hundreds of varieties now available, it’s easy to forget that early skaters had to make do with recycled roller skate wheels. The first urethane wheels were patented by Frank Nasworthy in 1972. These new wheels brought with them the first huge boom in popular skateboarding. Along with the concave deck design that also appeared around that time, this invention made trick skating as it is known today a reality.

Skateboard wheels are like clocks. When they’re working right, you don’t even notice they’re there. But after riding a half-pipe at warp speed, you’ll be glad that your four little friends are there to keep you rolling on.