Terryw

Great conditions continued today. Great cord in the morning. Stayed carveable all day. Chair 7 was very good today and consistant top to bottom. As long as this weather pattern continues, it will stay fun at Summit. Hey Ray. Aaron and I are going to try to get back up the hill on Friday. I think his plans are more solid tham mine are at the moment. I just have high hopes . I am amazed at how good the snow is staying. Pray for low temps!!

I had the same feeling. It is just wrong to have to carry two tools to adjust my binings! I am so spoiled with the TD-2's and the ease of adjusting them.

Love the look of those flames! That is a great improvement over the old flames. Had I seen those as an option, I would have been torn. But I still love my Ruskola Red. It had its first ride yesterday. Performed beautifully. It is a pleasure to ride something that rides as good as it looks!!

Just got back from Summit. It was very good conditions. The coard was awesome today. Very carveable. We actually had 4 hardbooters on the hill today. Started out at about 19 degrees and no wind at 8:30. Warmed up to around 30 by 12:30. Chair 7 also opened today. Watch out for the death cookies on the west side of the run in the shade. The far east side of chair 7 looks like it will be open soon also. They are blowing lots of snow over there today. But watch out for a hugh patch of ice right in the middle of that run just east of the chair line. I would imagine if temps don't get too warm, Summit will be very fun for at least a few more days. I will be going back up on Wednesday and maybe Friday if it stays cool. And by today the roads were in very good shape. Cal trans is doing a great job on them. Another day or two of sun and they will probably be dry all the way to the resort. No traffic problems today.

Usually 1 other rider. But last year there was one day when we had 6 or 7 of us up at the same time with no prior planning. Very unusual. But grat fun. I hope we can repeat that this year!

Been skunked 3 times due to the poor snow conditions. But no more! Old volvos rule and I are going up tomorrow morning (Monday). My new Coiler has been talking to me for weeks. Conditions should be awesome. Any one else with plans?

Hypertrophy II workout "B" was brutal. But for real torture you have to do the giant sets in Fatloss III! Alwyn is a genuius at making you work incredibly hard.

Hey Allee. Are you still following the NROL workouts? How is it going? I took about two months off to play volleyball and just be a bum. Been back at it now for two weeks. Man, you sure can back slide fast!

Thinking about going up to Summit tomorrow (Monday). Any reports? Any one else likely to be up there with me?

I am looking for new glasses and goggles too, and I came acorss that web page for habervision. Have you tried them, and are you reccomending them? They seem to have pretty good prices and look good too.

Ooooh, pretty! Metal seems to be the dominant theme this year.

You see much that is hidden, O Jim. I have been out of the gym for a while, so I am down to about 190. Had him build the board for me at 200. I think it is time to hit the gym and be ready for the season ;).

Here you go. Sorry about the second image.

That is what I am talking about! Man I wish the snow season would start here in So Cal. The waiting is killing me.

The waist on this one is 20 cm. I will admit that I have never ridden a Coiler. I have purchased the AM with metal based purely on the opinions of many people here on Bomber whom I consider to be experts on Alpine equipment. Bruces AM design is a proven shape with many riders singing its praises. The metal only seems to enhance an allready great performer. I believe that this will be a board I can take every where. It may not be the best in every category, but I think it will still be fun in every category! Bottom line is I just want to enjoy as many days as I can without having to carry a car full of boards every time I hit the slopes. Besides, it just looks cool.

Bruce has a sense of humor!

Check out my new baby! Bruce has out done himself. Coiler All Mountain 177, Metal, 12 scr, 20cm waist.

What are the spacers on your Kessler? Hard to tell from the image. And it appears as you have doubled layered them. Just curious. They sure don't look like the Catek spacers!

Hey Skategoat, I am glad you are improving. I hate back problems. It seems as though backs and knees become the bane of our existance. I hope your recovery is rapid and allows you to play the way you want to. I have often wondered if Golf predisposes one to injuries. You only swing on one side of your body, and you rotate relatively quickly when you do swing. Of course I guess everything we do physically can lead to injuries (sneezing! Damn) so we might as well enjoy our sports while we still can.

I asked Bruce about this also, and he said pretty much the same thing to me about the young rider on the other metal board and TD-2 Bindings. I am still going to put the suspension kit between bindings and my precious board ;) . I bet Bruce is getting tired of answering this question over and over again! Oh well, if you want to be on the cutting edge sometimes you have to take some risks. I am sure this topic will come up again after we all have some real world experience to report back on. Hope I am smiling when I make those reports!

You guys are making me worry. I have a new Coiler 177 AM T that is due to be dellivered next week. I was planning to mount TD-2 Si with the yellow elastimer on top of the suspension system. Also riding suzukas with yellow springs. Nice and soft all the way around. Do you think I should still be worried?

For me it was just a natural progression. My first soft boot setup felt too sloppy to me. So I switched to some Burton Torque bindings with a third strap over the shin bone and felt better. But I still felt like I wasn't able to hold as good an edge as I would like. Then I saw a friend with hard boots on a snow board. Started on hard boots and never looked back! I will admit though that I didn't relly make great gains until I hooked up with Bomber and the community here.

That sucks. There is lots of hope even if you have to go the surgical route. I have had two friends who have had back surgery and they continue to enjoy sports. One of them had the actual disk replacement surgery. He was in constant pain until the surgery. After the surgery, no pain. He was one happy man! Keep your options open and study everything you can re back injuries. One man who seems to be the go to guy for back education is Professor Stuart M. McGill. Check his website: http://www.backfitpro.com/index.htm He runs the Spine Biomechanics Laboratory at the University of Waterloo in Canada. I have not read his books, but I have read some of his published papers. He is pretty impressive.

Allee, I loved this book. I have recommended it to several of my friends. I even managed to hit 315 on the flat bench press a while back. That was a goal I thought unreachable for me. The co-author of the book is Alwyn Cosgrove. He actually writes all of the workouts. They can be very difficult. The fat loss routines are brutal! They also have a great web page over at jp Fitness. http://forums.jpfitness.com/forumdisplay.php?f=61 A lot of the exercises are chosen specifically for their benefit to the core. Let me know how you like it. One of my favorite rules from the book is "Everything works, but nothing works forever." This is in relation to doing the same exercises and never really changing up the routine. I got into a rut and was getting bored and these routines got me motivated again. I sympathise with your injuries. I started playing volleyball this summer and my knees started to really hurt me. It has taken me months to get almost back to normal. I had to modify my workouts dramatically to protect my knees and let them heal. I can't believe how easy it is to screw up my joints since I passed 40! Oldvolvorules (Aaron) claims that this is the price we must pay to continue to be active. I hope he is wrong.

Sorry for such a long answer! I feel your pain. I too have delt with lower back pain for years. I did everything my chiropractor suggested, but still had cronic pain. Not enough to stop me from my daily activities, but enough to remind me to be "easy" on my back. I also do martial arts and strech quite a bit. In addition, I spent a lot of time in the gym lifting weights. Even with all of this activity, I didn't seem to be making much positive progress, I just didn't get worse. I had pretty much decided that this was just the price I paid for being active overe 40. Then last year I was in Barnes & Nobles and a new weight lifting book caught my attention. Now I have been lifting for years and I felt I was well educated in moving iron, so I don't usually bother reading any new books on lifting. But I am so glad I took the time to pick up this book. It is called "The New Rules Of Lifting", by Lou Schuler. The main idea of this book is to focus on 6 biologically natural movements: squat, deadlift, lunge, push, pull, and twist. To maka a long story short, after a few months of doing Lou's workouts, I realized that my low back pain had pretty much dissapeared. Now I believe this was the result of primarily adding deadlifts and squats back into my workouts. Prior to this I had tried to protect my back by avoiding what I thought were exercises that would be dangerous for me to do. But by avoiding these exercises, I actually allowed my back to become even weaker. Now the reason these exercises are so important is that they help to stabalise and strengthen the posterior chain. This includes the hamstrings, glutes, and lower back. So why is a strong posterior chain important? Well aside from stability, it helps correct allignment problems of the pelvis. Most people will have an anterior (towards your front) pelvic tilt. You can see this by observing how your underware fits. Look at your profile in the mirror, if your underware waistband is lower at your stomach than it is over your butt, then you likely have anterior pelvic tilt. Since everything is connected, a misalingment of the hips can cause several problems in your body. It can limit hip mobility causing pain in the knees and low back which try to compensate by using more range of motion than they should. Think of your joints as a series of supports that alternate between stability and mobility: ankle-mobility, knee-stability, hip-mobility, lumbar (low back)-stability, thorasic (upper back)-mobility. A limit in any joint causes trouble in the adjacent joints. It causes excess tension and strech in the hamstrings, and a decrease in length of the psoas in front of your hips. This unequal tension predisposes you to knee injuries. Excessive tilt will also cause excessive lumbar loridosis (curving of low back) which makes it difficult to maintain a strong neutral allignment of the back necessary for back health. Now I think of cycling as more of a quad dominant activity. So if this comprises the majority of your training, you would probably benefit from training the posterior chain. Deadlifts are excellent for this. Kettle bels are often used in this fashion. Picking one up off of the floor with one hand and elevating it over your head is a unilateral (one sided) deadlift. Single leg work and single arm work is good for your core as it forces you to brace diagonally across your body to support the weights. I would also bet that streches for your quads and psoas are more important than streches for your hamstrings. Also, check the credentials of your Yoga instructor. There are a lot of weekend course educated instructors who don't really understand the potentiaal danger of some of the positions. Keep in mind that stability for your low back is of paramount importance. Do not confuse lumbar hypoerextention with back health. Strech from the hips and never round your low back. A grerat (and cheap) tool for back health is a foam roller. Lay one on the ground and slowly roll back and forth from the midback to shoulders. Do not roll over the low back. Feels wonderful. Lots of other exercises for the foam roller are good too. But I really like that first one. You can usually find foam rollers in most sport stores next to the Yoga supplies. I have seen them for from 15 to 30 dollars. Good luck, and heal well.