I would say that I am an avid longboarder at this point, and a while back I came across this writing, Consider longboarding and thought that it'd be quite fun to write up my own little variation of it, derived from my experience in Waterloo.
Longboarding is a great way to get around here. Comparing this to others:
Walking - an act of misery when done in distance on a daily basis.
Busing - Waterloo has a quite convenient bus system, with it coming every 10-15 minutes during the weekdays, but still takes 15-20 minutes one way.
Driving - Too broke to have a car
Scooters - Fun but a little pricey, I'd beat the life out of my already thin wallet if I were to use the scooters regularly.
Biking - Stolen very frequently around Waterloo and campus(apparently), even with pricey locks.
Longboarding - The perfect medium!!!
It's on it's last legs now, but I bought my board 2 years back for $30 on FB Marketplace. Steal of the century IMO, considering how often I use it to go around. It takes around ~20 minutes via bus to go one way from my home to campus or vice versa, but takes a mere 5 minutes if I just longboard. If I go back and forth once a day, that's roughly 30 minutes I'm saving a day. Excluding winter months, I would say that I've used this for roughly 8 months worth of riding. That's roughly 240 days, and of those days, say I did longboard daily, that is 120 hours saved over its lifespan. During school terms, I usually would also make a round trip to campus more than once a day.
Not only is it time and cost efficient, the ecstatic, freeing sensation of longboarding late at night relieves an entire day worth of stress. Highly recommend!