Strider

Ha! I do my turkey hunting and some pheasant hunting on a friends land outside of Highland...off of Q. I'd meet up for some turns on Sat., but my son's b-day party is that day. Hope you have some fun.

I haven't been to Cascade yet this year, but Tyrol is my home hill and conditions are great. They just got 10 inches of new snow on Sunday and the hill has been awesome all year. Haven't had a single ice day yet. It is supposed to warm up this weekend and be sunny so I would suppose that it will be a tad harder in the mornings, but we're over 90 inches(new record) for the year now so the hill should still be in great shape. I may be out Sunday morning. Drop a line here if you come up.

I'm actually glad to see called it off. I was a feeling a bit guilty for not going out, but I spent the better half of the day chipping the 1 inch of ice off my sidewalks and porches,.....and then shovelling the 5 inches of snow that fell when it changed from rain to snow....bleah. Hopefully I can ride with you later this year yet.

Jim Lease called us out on an e-mail list for Monday nighters. He said you were ready to kick our butts if we weren't too afraid :lol: Anyway, I plan to be there unless family things come up. Would be fun to ride and I'll probably crash a few gates too. Brett

Not to break up the party...but can you guys say paranoia??? I'm a diehard PAckers fan and was pissed when we lost, but they just plain beat us. The PAts have had close games for their last 4 prior to this. Maybe their luck just ran out, they got tired......there were a few injuries, and maybe the Giants just gameplanned really well like they did in their other playoff games. I just don't see there being some kind of big conspiracy to make the Pats lose here.

Well, it was pretty fun. It could have run a little smoother, but it was the coordinator's first event. The course was a lot of fun, if you let it run too much you'd fly out of the course. 45 second course on a 300 ft hill. Technical only in the sense that you needed to know when to let it run and when to hop a gate. Overall, worth the $10. However, I had to leave early so I have no idea how the door prizes went...anyone stay around long enough for that? Oh....and an all-mountain board would definitely have worked better than my race board.

Cool.....but I remember doing the same thing in my red plastic sled when I was a kid 30 years ago. The negative keel idea is great though...used to take a lot of leaning and hand steering back in the day. Maybe those of us who grew up out in the boonies just needed more stimulus

I've been asking myself that question. We had our Monday night race league last night and the boardercross course with the banks was still up from the weekend. I took a few runs down it between race runs and it was interesting. It was okay on the race board, but as I picked up speed I ended up having to slide a lot of turns because the banks get pretty close and tight. I think without the rollers hardboots would work fine, but probably on a BX type board. I think I'm going to bring both setups and see how things go, but I'll probably try my hardboots on my freeride BX board. I'm not sure how much the course will be like the one that's up right now, and I'm not sure how much this helps you, but those were my thoughts.

I've got a few guys on our recreational team down here who have been looking for pads....they might be interested(as well as I) in this.

The problem I have with the stubbies is actually the tall gate coming around and smacking me in the backside. At first I thought it was the stubby, but we shot some video and at our hill the tall ones whip back as you go through the stubby and smack the crap out of you. I tried shin guards for awhile, but I found I was usually hitting the stubby with the top of my boot and I didn't like the way they felt so I gave up on them. Just like you said with the skier gates...I've got a lot of dents in the back of my helmet from the same thing happening with them. Unfortunatley, the only time we get to run snowboard gates at our hill is on days of USASA races, so I take what I can get and do the skier race leagues and NASTAR to get runs in. You definitely gave a better description of how the skier moves through the gate...it just look like they are pushing it when they are actually positioning their arms and shoulders in a place that they come through it on the side and it slides out of the way without wrapping around and smacking them. If you only need arm protection I found a Descents top with padded arms/shoulders that takes a lot of the hits and it was only $60. Its nice because you can fit it under a jacket for days you are only training.

I watched the boardercross this weekend and they had 2 rollers, about 8 banks and 2 tabletops. I talked to the guys who run the events and they said it will be 18 gates all with banks. Not sure how they are going to fit that many banks into the run, but I can tell you that the ones there this weekend for the boardercross were a lot of fun. I plan on running it since its only $10. I didn'y hear much about the format, but apparently there will be a bunch of prizes. I know they're trying to raise money to build some new permanent features for the jibbers.

I haven't found anything that is snowboard specific yet. Maybe Phil or Bordy know of something. I'm almost to the point of sewing something into the back of my pants because I'm sick of getting smacked on the backside when you hit the stubby. If you ever run skier gates the big problem is that the gate hits just behind the shoulder blade on a heelside if you come through the gate like you would on a stubby. Unfortunately all the skier padded tops are mostly arms and shoulders since thye can push the gate out of the way with their arms as tey come through.

We play mostly evenings (6pm central and later). It seems the TF2 server goes in streaks. There will be weeks where its full all day, and then others when people are only on at night. We do have a tradition dating back to the early days of CS called "thirsty thursdays" where we all hop on and drink beer and play. Mostly just started as a night when we all knew we'd be on, and now it just happens every Thursday. Right now my rig can barely handle TF2 so I don't play too much, but everyone else is on quite a bit. Drop a post in the forums and get a reserved spot :) See ya online.

For those of you out there that play TF2 and CS:S a couple other snowboard/geek buddies and I run a TF2 and CS:S server. The main guy (Dr. Him) has been running a CS server forever so we have a good crew of regular people, and we're all in our 30's so we seldom get the annoying teenie's who've never heard of the word teamwork. Here's the link to the website for the IP;s and forums. http://www.drhim.com/ Oh...and Portal is awesome.

Pretty much. A swallowtail that was designed that way has a core designed and shaped that way too. Cutting the core will will definitely make it a lot more flexible in the tail, but you might want that in deep pow anyway. The post with the glass on the tail is a nice idea to stiffen it up, but I've done a lot of glass work on canoes and its hard to know how far you can go without over-stiffening it which will just cause the glass to crack anyway. If you can't get a warranty on it I think you should just give it a try.....not like you'd be losing anything. Just be sure to use a high-quality somewhat flexible epoxy to seal it all off. Good Luck ;)

I'm sure it would radically change the performance of the board, but what do you have to lose? As long as you use some really good epoxy to seal all of the cut edges to keep water from getting between the layers you should be able to do it. Not sure how long it will last though because the epoxy might not flex so well and break off.....eventually you'll get a delam.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/breakdown/080116&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1 Debate amongst yourselves......... Here's hoping the Packers make it the '86 Celtics :-) Go Pack Go!!

I'd be in for sure. I would have been in for MES, but my wife had a work trip this week so I have to stay and watch the kid :-(

We have a big group of riders at Tyrol. Unfortunatley, we're mostly out at night, especially Monday which is our race league night. You'll also find us out on Sundays a lot if you're looking for daylight riding. Brett

Sweet pic, although your outfit looks a lot like what I wear deer hunting :) So, riding a rail while trying to hold the kite, not fall off the rail, and make a grab...you're definitely going for the gold!

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sea/471479867.html :lol:

You can do it by really being aggressive and decambering the board a ton........or by the usual method..skidding :D Really though, it is still tough to make those split second small radius turns needed in tight quarters on the really big boards. I would also guess that a lot of the people who disagree with that have not ridden on a small hill with a big weekend crowd. Imagine the beginner area on a western hill with about 600 people spread over its 4 runs and you have what we get here on the weekends.

Well, it seems most of the people on the board live out east, or out west where they have more than 300 vertical to ride on. I may be totally wrong, but this would definitely influence my decision. I ride a Coiler 178 with a 13.2 sidecut when my hill is not too crowded (300 vertical, narrow runs). However, I am on my AM board with a 9.5 radius a lot because when you pack a ton of people into a little space you just can't lay down huge arcs, even when you wait at the top for a good opening. I know when I go out west I can ride a whole different style and turn shape because it feels like the mountain is a mile wide with no one on it compared to at home.

I've been considering trying to do the exact same thing for a new board next year. I like the waist width and the sidecut on the specs you posted, but have also been considering getting a tail that has a decent upturn to it so I could ride switch when I wanted to. The board I really want to make would carve well, but also handle the bumps, inconsistent snow, and the occasional forray into the halfpipe. For out west I think you're length works well too, but ireally was looking more for a 169 since most of my riding is here in the midwest. I'm psyched to see what you come up with. I think the hardest part of this is figuring out the flex pattern that will work well across the board.

Developing your sense of motion analysis, and the things you need to do to correct problems are huge and can take time to learn. You should also remember that there are different learning styles, and while most people teach the way they learn, you will have to know how to teach to the different learning styles out there.