Baka Dasai

One athlete who successfully crossed over into another sport: Anthony Mundine. Went from Rugby League to boxing, and became a world champ.

I always think "angulate", which I guess is the same as "square the shoulders". A drill I always come back to is ride with both hands held together behind my back. Without being able to use my arms for balance I find I have to keep very good form with my upper body. The image that runs through my mind when I do this is of my upper body being a plumb line - from hips to head, pointing straight up. And the challenge while doing this is to carve harder and tighter turns. And then when I go back to being able to use my arms I start riding about 100% better than before.

I'd like a pair of shorts in 7. Hell, why not a get a one-piece to match your topsheet!

I've been told when going for an x-ray immediately after an injury occurred that the x-ray won't be conclusive - that if it shows negative I should go back in 10 days time for another x-ray as sometimes breaks don't show for a week or so. And that's exactly what happened - the first x-ray was negative - the second was positive. Maybe, but not for the reason you mentioned. Assuming the situation is the same for a hip (trikerdad) as it is for a thumb (me), upon getting a negative x-ray the doctor should have told him to go back for another x-ray in 10 days time. Or at least one of the other doctors seen after the initial x-ray should have suggested this earlier. And perhaps practiced the precautionary principle of treating the injury as if it was broken. Anyway trikerdad, get well soon! It must have a been a great bruise. Here's a skateboard-induced one: http://charliedontskate.com/bb2/viewtopic.php?t=2233 (don't click unless you're comfortable looking at a naked man's arse)

Increase the forward lean on your high backs. OK, that might not be THE answer, but it's the one thing I consistently see missing from most soft-boot riders' setups that prevents them from doing good heelsides.

I started with snowboard (carving). Then I got into skateboarding, particularly slalom. The similarities are obvious. And then I got into skateboarding in skateparks, and realised that pumping the transition is really similar to pumping turns - it's just that one is in the vertical plane and the other is in the horizontal plane. (One thing I notice is that good transition skaters pick up slalom skateboarding very quickly.) For those thinking of getting into longboarding - a looong board will have a big turning radius, which really reduces its versatility. I agree with the advice about getting a slalom-sized longboard - something with a wheelbase between 20 and 25 inches. It's just a lot more versatile - the only disadvantage is that it isn't so great for straight bombing of hills - but the whole point is to turn, right?

I wear an ordinary old pair of Oakley O Frames. If I wear glasses I have tears streaming down my face.

I don't think it fell off - I think it was a Japanese prankster with better-than-average English skills.

I've been meaning to post this for a while: I took the photo at Hunter Mt in Japan. No photoshopping.

When I read the title of this thread I thought "huh?", but then when I read more I realised just how much I miss snow (now that I'm in Australia), and how much I loved a snowstorm, even if I was not in the mountains. A snow-covered landscape is beautiful and serene, even in the city. The novelty never wore off for this boy brought up in a year-round warm-weather climate.

I'm an interested reader cos I have similar problems with my heelside turns. The general technique wisdom on this site is for your body to be in alignment - hips and shoulders in alignment with binding angles. In this case, the shoulders are aligned with the binding angles (good) but the hips are not (bad). The hips, as you say, are lagging behind (counter-rotated). How to fix it?

Can you explain what it is you don't like about non-tapered boards, and what advantages taper gives you?

<p>I think of it as keeping myself small rather than making myself small. Basically, at the apex of the turn, when the force is great, I'm compressed/small. But as I come out of the turn and try and transition to the next, I try and keep myself small, ie, only stand up the absolute minimum to give me the room for the rebound of the board to drive my knees up to my chest.I can't say I always get it right - sometimes my knees get driven into my chest which throws me off balance, and sometimes the rebound of the board seems to propel it too far, too quickly, to the other side of my body, throwing me into a laid-out turn that I never intended and am usually unable to recover from. But it sure is fun putting so much energy into the board and trying to control the energy I get back in the split second before the trees at the side of hill loom too large, or my speed gets out of control.

I first tried hard boots by using them on my old soft-boot board. I think it's a good way to transition to hard-booting as you already know your old board and what it can do, and you won't require the extra speed that an alpine board needs to respond properly (although you might find that it only takes a couple of days to outgrow the old board and start wanting a proper alpine board). I always imagine that if I'd gone straight to an alpine board I'd have struggled more in those first few days.

Thanks for the cool first-day report. It really brings my first hard-boot day back to me - probably the most fun day I've ever had on a snowboard as I kept carving turns harder and better than I'd ever done before, but falling a helluva lot because my timing and coordination wasn't consistent yet. Cheers!

Here in Australia, the weather trend over the last few decades has been hotter and drier. Our snow season has gone from being generally mediocre to being outright marginal - there is now little snow each winter, and due to the warmer temps, as much rain as there is snow. There's a place where you can see the old runs that were cut through the trees in the 50s, and no snow ever falls that low down any more. It sucks. But I've made the adjustment to skateboarding instead.

I rode Flows back in the late 90s, and liked them except for one thing. I like to ride with a lot of forward lean, and the Flows seemed incompatible with that. Although in theory you can adjust the forward lean of the highback to the extent you want, if you want a lot more than the amount built in to the toe strap, the toe strap deforms weirdly, and the fit of the binding suffers. There was even a picture in the user manual warning about this scenario. But that was about 7 years ago. Are things different now?

When it's genuinely crowded it becomes almost impossible for me to carve turns cos I need a bit of speed to carve, and there isn't the room for the stopping distance that a bit of speed necessitates. Strangely enough, it's when it's fairly empty that I have most problems with collisions. The emptyish conditions encourage the straight-liners and other high-speed virtual fall-liners, and they constantly threaten to take me out from behind. When it's only moderately crowded the straight-liners are too scared to straight-line, and I get a bit more comfortable because the only thing I have to worry about is the people in front of me - and I'm confident enough that I can avoid them.

The metallic silver is a bit schizophrenic. On cloudy days, or in the shade, it looks dull. The colour is similar to snow and the board can be a bit invisible. But then there's the times when the full sun hits it and it sparkles like a mirror ball. 75% of the time it's understated, and then 25% of the time - WOW!

It all depends to what extent you want to replicate snowboarding, and to what extent you're willing to accept that wheels rolling over asphalt have a set of advantages and disadvantages vis a vis snowboarding. I tried the "replicate snowboarding" angle but gave up after a while and became more interested in the things you can do on a skateboard that you can't do on a snowboard, even though the similarities are still very strong. So to cut to the chase, or at least *my* chase, I've gotten into slalom skateboarding, and, to a lesser extent, bowl and park riding. It's a lot of fun in its own right.

I'll be in Thredbo for Sunday 27 August - send me an email thru Bomber and we can organise to meet up.

I'll be in Thredbo from Sun Aug 27 to Fri Sep 1. Happy to meet up and make some turns.

I view driving as a practical thing - getting from A to B - whereas riding a snowboard down a hill is pure recreation. Therefore the context of the rules is going to differ. When driving it's fair to demand a high level of "bonehead-awareness" because that awareness doesn't cause too great an impact on the practicality of driving - you'll still get from A to B, and it probably won't slow you down more than couple of seconds. But exercising large amounts of "bonehead-awareness" when riding a snowboard can take away all the fun, at least for people like us who like to go fast. I'd like to think that people will look uphill and make a considered judgment before resuming after a stop, but typically they don't and often end up moving straight into my path. It sucks, and the amount of "bonehead-awareness" I have to practice really limits the lines I can take, and the amount of enjoyment I have.

Write-in poll option: Idle rich

The resident "Freestyle on hardboots" guy here is NateW who hopefully will chime in. I think he rides a typical alpine board at fairly typical alpine stance angles, but it apparently doesn't stop him from going big.