canmanski

Hi All, I love this thread. Had some good time reading it today. I'm the slackline video person, Bart. First of all - thanks for an interesting discussion. Since a lot of points were stated above, I'm not going to argue them much. But I do want to clarify a few things. 1. Some people referred to "scientific point of view". I'm not a scientist. I'm an engineer (MSc in Robotics, few years in a humanoid robotics lab). There's a subtle difference between engineering and scientific approach. Here's a joke, that explains it well. An engineer and a scientist stand about 2m away from a ice cold beer. They can drink the beer, if they get close to it. The trick is - that each next step they take must be half of the previous one (ie. 1m, 0.5m, 0.25m). The scientists just stands there. The engineer takes 3 steps and drinks the beer. So they ask the scientist, why he did not move. He said that it was a geometric progression, converging 'at the beer', but would require infinite amount of steps. And when they ask engineer why he took 3 steps and drank the beer, he replied " I was close enough". So the slackline video takes the engineering approach. It's close enough to snowboarding. 2. As someone noticed I'm not good at walking slackline. If I was any better, I could fake it. 3. The original video in this thread. The riders are skilled, without a doubt. My knees hurt, just by looking at this. 4. xyIA (x = insert country of your choice, y = insert sport of your choice, IA = Instructor Association) is a great business model. Scaleable, repeatable and guaranteed success rate. If I was the king of BongoBongo, the first thing I'd do is start BongoBongo Snowboard Instructor Association to roll in the extra $$$. There are obviously strict rules that apply ie our teaching method it the best, the rest is rubbish etc, etc,... I always have connotations with Richard Dawking's stuff when dealing with xyIA (eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind) 5. I actually enjoy riding duck, on a true twin tip board, butters, flat tricks etc. I will never understand why anyone would even consider riding duck on a directional board - board specifically designed to be ridden in one direction. Thanks again. Cheers. Bart

Yes. Could not agree more.

JT, Thanks. Coal is a stiffer board, agreed. But it's also pretty good torsionally. It's a very good board, just not my preferred ride... 1. The biding angle makes the difference. Duck is totally different to directional. Highback angle - I adjust it so it fits and supports my boot. 2. Yes. There are good reasons to ride duck. Like teaching/learning beginner to intermediate, freestyle, general slope fun. But when you decide to buy a directional board for carving - it makes no sense to me. If we assume that 'unstable toeside/stable heelside' theory works, duck is the worst case scenario - knees work perpendicular to the board, so when you flex/extend your legs you influence the angle of your board the most. As you mentioned - when you lock your knees the front edge comes off - your board is on the heelside edge. When you are in heelside turn, locking your knees will put the board on the edge the most... but you do not want to ride with knees locked. Can't be healthy. With duckfooted setup, the heelside turn promotes extension of legs through the turn (putting the board more on the edge) at the same time toeside turn promotes flexing of the legs through the turn. So the result turns are a weird mixture of cross-over, cross-under and Carving God knows what else. I've tried riding like this and it does feel quite OK and lets me be quite aggressive on duck stance... no pictures/vids of this yet, but i'll try to fix this season. Otherwise, when duckfooted I try to ride cross-under as much as possible. Neil, Yes, they're mine. Thanks for pointing this out. I'll update the lot. Any other comments are welcome. Well... I think it's not all that simple as I made it look in the first post. There are more reasons that I have gone soft: 1. It's not permanent. I intend to ride hardboots - that will not change. 2. I have this personality thing. I have to teach people. Just love it and makes me feel better. I also want to convert people to carving, like some sort of a missionary bringing the Good News. It's a good thing I haven't lived in the Middle Ages - I'd join with The Crusades... There are number of people around that should be carving - I've noticed that when I'm on softboots I have a better conversion rate :) Quoting the classic "I'm on a mission from (carving) God". 3. I hate the elitist, close-minded attitude of some people in our local hardbooting community. It's a huge turn-off for me. Need to give myself a bit of rest from it all. Or change community... Cheers Bart

JT, 1. I ride 33/18. I generally ride in quite soft boots (Vans Aura flex 5/10) and I find that with bigger angles (more directional) I have too little side support. At the same time smaller angles (more square to the board) I do have some toe overhang on most boards. 2. I usually ride directional boards with setback. I do believe that directional boards with setback call for directional angles. I carve fakey as a practice drill. Unless I'm teaching beginners or teaching myself buttering/flat tricks then I ride my LibTech TRS Banana rocker with +12/-9 or similar setup. 3. I had to look it up. It's not metal (http://www.voelkl-snowboards.com/en/products/snowboards/freeride-all-mountain/coal-xt.html) . It's not even my Coal - I do not own one. It's a demo board. My weight then was 187lbs. I'm down to 169lbs this year and it feels much better... 4. That's a tricky one. Not sure if there is an easy answer to that one. I do have this theory about stable backside/unstable frontside. It seems to work for me. Might as well test it on others... Unstable Frontside: http://megustasport.com/index.php/riding/45-the-unstable-frontside Stable Backside: http://megustasport.com/index.php/riding/51-the-backside-chill I could be wrong on this one. It's just a theory. 5. I can ride Coal with hardboots at the same angles and often did. With softboots I prefer longer, softer flex boards with ridiculous torsional stifness. Like Radical Double Triaxx (probably the most fun board I ever rode in my life) or Swoard Dual. Coal was fine or even great but it was not my sort of board. Slightly too stiff. Not fun in soft snow. More here - http://megustasport.com/index.php/stuff/39-swoard-dual-vs-voelkl-coal I generally like to keep softbooting soft and hardbooting hard. There is a tendency to soften hardboots with spring systems or harden up softboots with plastic parts. Neither works for me. I hope this makes sense to you. Otherwise ask. Cheers Bart EDIT: just to add to 4: I try to be as active on frontside turns as possible - trying to keep my body over the board. On backside - passive. I just sit down on the snow and let the board work for me...

BlueB I am Polish. But you are thinking about my friend - Marcin. He's good at freestyle. I am into carving and raced FIS for South Africa for a few years. Won SA Nationals a few times. At some stage we even had a parallel slalom at SA Nationals. I do not know the Canadian, unless you meant Clive - he's Swiss and used to ride an asymetric. The para-Olimpian is Bruce, I remember him well. When were you at Tiffindell ? Cheers Bart

BlueB, The resort i mentioned was Tiffindell.. it was when i lived in South Africa. I worked at TiffSki and took part in Nationals in 1996,1997,1998,2005 and 2007. Cheers Bart

Hi, I worked once in a resort with a pretty good skier - South African Alex Heath. He trained in the US and had some pretty good results - top 30 in World Champs and Olympic Games in GS and Slalom. We had a deal going - I was teaching him snowboarding (yes, hardboots) and he would teach me some ski racing stuff. What happened, generally confirms all that was said before: 1. At the end of the first day (first time ever in hardboots), Alex was comfortably carving down on my GS board, high speed. It normally takes people years to get to that level. Snowboarding and skiing have a lot in common. 2. What he said about ski racing - it is all quite a simple idea. There is no time for anything complex. It's the execution that makes the difference. Cheers Bart

Hey, So... looking for skiboards on popular auction service I've found a mint condition Rad-Air Tanker 187, which I just had to have. For around $100 it was a bargain. Looking forward to riding Tanker in soft boots... It was a sign. Those skiboards are not for me :D Cheers Bart

Hi, Thanks for feedback. I generally like to keep hardbooting hard and softbooting soft, ie. I use UPZ RC10 for hardboots and Vans Aura (flex 5/10) for softboot carving. I've tried stiff softboots like Driverx or Malamute and found them neither comfortable nor stiff. All my softboot carving is done in Vans Aura. It's all about finding a compromise now. 1. I've thought about AT boots... My first board was an old Crazy Banana with ski boots and later some AT Koflach boots. That could be the one Boot to Rule Them All... it's worth testing this idea... 2. Skiboards with softboot binding look tempting. The only thing that worries me is that if you google 'skiboarding' you get this on the first page of the results: Skiboards are cool, I've used Big Foots for quite some time - they give me similar carving radius as my 5 year old daughter... I'm gonna look a around for something on this side of the pond. Cheers Bart

b0ardski, Thanks. Do you mean your Raichle 124? Or other boots? I've tried skiing in my UPZ RC10 with ski boot adaptors - but that means changing you heel piece all the time. And it does suck - the forward lean is different. Using shorties (Snow Blade) with my Raichle 225 wasn't too bad. I've put a spring system on them since and they would be way to soft for skiing... Cheers Bart

Hey, I've sold my hard boot boards - they were mostly F2's I've used for racing. I've kept boots and bindings - they are handy if there is opportunity to test new boards. I plan to buy some hard boot stuff in few years time. There are some new technologies out there - no point in keeping old stuff, unless it's classic/vintage/rare like my FreeSurf Highlander. Cheers Bart

Hey there, I'm Bart. I'm 38. Living in Poland at this moment. I've always been a dedicated hardbooter, but since I've got family and kids around I had to change a few things... First of all, it turned out that there is no space in the car to take a few boards with all the kids/family junk packed. It also turned out that I can get about 2 hours worth of boarding in the morning - then it's skiing with kids and my wife's turn to enjoy a few carves... My wife loves skiing and snowboarding, so sneaking away for a day or two of fun is out of a question. And I love skiing with my daughter (and hopefully in 3-4 years with my son as well) as much as I love snowboarding. So leaving kids behind is out of the question. I had to look for a solution: single board for all snow conditions - most likely powder or groomers in the morning allowing me to do what I like the most - carving those stupid-steep slopes and at the some time providing some fun on the crowded flat 'family' slopes The only solution I found feasible was to become a softboot carver and I am actually enjoying it. No, really. Here's a sample of my riding (2 years ago - my first season as softboot carver): I think I'm getting smother now: Cheers Bart