markbvt

The Farmers Almanac seems to have more in common with reading tea leaves than actual science. And it's about that accurate. Occasionally it gets lucky and hits the mark, other years it's way off. I place a little more stock in the National Weather Service. Their seasonal forecast, which is based on computer models taking El Niño into account, looks rather different from the Farmer's Almanac prediction for the northern half of the US, although they do tend to agree for the south. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/seasonal.php?lead=4 --mark

My theory is that most people's riding simply plateaus at a certain point. Constant improvement requires constant practice, and the vast majority of people aren't dedicated enough to the sport to be riding that much. For that majority of riders that just wants to have fun those 5 or 10 days a year they get on the snow (if that), the lack of stylish riding is no surprise at all. But I do suspect that the teaching methodology, gear, and setup that's been fashionable for some time now does play a big role. Back in the '90s, the common wisdom was that snowboarding had a very steep initial learning curve, but once you learned how to link your turns, you were able to progress very quickly. Stances were almost never duck; you saw a lot more 30/15 than 15/-15. Good instructors had a well-thought-out series of exercises to teach students how to use their edges, how to position their bodies, and how to get the board to respond through a turn. I haven't observed any recent snowboard lessons, but it sounds like they're much less effective at teaching snowboarding's fundamentals, allowing the currently-trendy gear to mask lack of technique. But at the same time, that gear prevents decent technique from developing. Several of us are avid motorcyclists as well as snowboarders, obviously. The funny thing is that there are actually a surprising number of parallels between the two sports. This has turned out to be a fascinating thread. --mark

Yeah, I owned a DL650 (aka Wee-Strom) for 40,000 miles. Good bike for touring, but still crap off pavement. I know because I rode it over those hundreds of miles of Labrador gravel. I rode the same stretch a couple of years later on the bike I replaced the Strom with, a Triumph Tiger 800 XC, and it was a night and day difference. The Strom is a streetbike tarted up with a 19" front wheel and upright riding position. The Tiger is actually in many ways a better off-pavement bike than my Honda XR650L, and ate up those gravel miles with confidence. Sure, you could ride the Trans-Lab (or a woods trail) on an SV, but it's more fun when you use the right tool for the job. Sorry for the thread hijack, but that guy started it…. :D --mark

SVs are great bikes, no doubt, but there are plenty of questions starting with that to which an SV would NOT be the answer. For example: "…riding single-track through the woods," or "…riding hundreds of miles of loose gravel on the Trans-Labrador Highway." Even "…comfortably touring the backroads of the Appalachians for a week." But for general purpose street riding and commuting, yeah, I've recommended SVs to quite a few people. That's exactly right. Burton's R&D was focused on the boards that sold in greater numbers, for obvious reasons. They had a few standouts in the Factory Prime lineup (the '97 FP 5.7-180s was a terrific board; I still have one), but for the most part, their alpine boards were far behind what companies like Prior were making. I only learned recently that Burton contracted Prior to make custom race boards for their racers such as Mark Fawcett, but it explains a lot. By the late '90s Burton obviously already realized that their race boards wouldn't be competitive; I'm actually impressed that they kept making alpine boards for as long as they did. I demoed a few later-model FPs and Ultra Primes at the time and was never impressed with any of them. By that time I was riding a Mistral Sonic 167, which was a super fun board that held an edge incredibly well and felt very responsive; it was an interesting design with a huge amount of camber. By comparison, Burton alpine boards of the time were wider and flatter and just felt sluggish and a little lifeless. In retrospect, I feel like Burton gave the alpine market their best shot and continued to try to support it long after it made financial sense for them to do so, but eventually they had to concede that the small custom builders were doing a much better job with it. --mark

I was actually implying, in a tongue-in-cheek way, that a battle might ensue between the East Coast Madd faithful and this previously-unknown Italian impostor. I was hoping someone else would come up with something appropriately humorous. I'm bored at work today… :) --mark

I see I'm not the only one who's transitioned to motorcycle mode now that it's above freezing outside. That said... I would argue that this claim can't be made about Ducati anymore. They're very successfully marketing the lifestyle/fashion side of the sport, and drawing in plenty of well-heeled young buyers who love looking hip but haven't a clue how to ride. Triumph has begun going after this market as well, though less aggressively. Thing is, fashions don't last... Speaking of fashions not lasting, I think it's only a matter of time before snowboard companies realize that a lot of kids don't think it's cool anymore, and they'd be best off marketing boards at lifelong riders as well as n00bs. Step back and take a look at the companies comprising the mainstream snowboard market -- you've got the ski companies who make snowboards on the side like Rossi and K2, you've got the companies that have always gone after the freestyle kiddies like Lib Tech and Never Summer, and then you've got Burton. As much as people like to crap on Burton, they're the one major surviving snowboard-specific company that always made a wide range of boards for different riding styles (their abandoning of the alpine market notwithstanding, but that could easily be an entirely separate thread); Burton is the company that ran this perfect ad back in 1995: And despite all the industry trends, Burton is the one mainstream snowboard company that's still making a selection of fully-cambered snowboard models. Naturally they need to make what sells best, but they're run by a core group of dedicated riders who know what really works best and will continue to produce boards for more advanced riders. (I'm convinced that they left the alpine market in part because they knew there were specialist companies like Prior, Coiler, and Donek who could serve the needs of alpine riders better.) That rental Custom Flying V notwithstanding -- they do still make the traditional cambered Custom and Custom X as well. My prediction: as snowboarding's cool factor fades, Burton will be the first mainstream snowboard company to begin actively reasserting the benefits of camber and other "classic" technologies. --mark

How has it been four days and no one's picked this up and run with it yet? --mark

Reminds me of the Burton Torque binding from the '90s, except for the addition of the ski binding interface. --mark

I ride a motorcycle. Which actually means that it's snowboarding that gets me through the winter. :D The funny thing is how many similarities there are between the two. --mark

Your form in the video you posted looks a lot like the style adopted by European slalom racers in the late '80s/early '90s, when asymmetrical boards were all the rage -- upper body mostly facing down the fall line, board moving around beneath you. The advice to look in the direction of board travel is not an absolute; the idea is to get you facing the nose of the board instead of the fall line. Once you get comfortable squaring up your upper body with the direction of travel and it becomes second nature, you won't have any trouble turning your head independently to look at whatever needs looking at. Another good exercise is to pretend there's a steering wheel or handlebar attached to the nose of the board, and to keep both of your hands on it (you don't need to pretend you're turning it; the idea is just to get your rear hand forward and roughly level with your front hand). --mark

Vitelli turn… wow, there's a phrase I haven't heard in about 20 years…! --mark

I admire your dedication to convenience! --mark

Wow. That's pretty. --mark

I haven't ridden significantly-deep powder in a long time, but if we did have a powder day, I'd probably use my Burton Triumph 73. Or if I knew the powder would be a foot or more deep, I'd probably drag out the old Burton Kelly Slopestyle (which has a big spoon nose and more abrupt tail, so it floats well in deep powder). And yes, I'd stick with hardboots, though I'd use lower stance angles. But this is all idle speculation. Pretty much the only way I'd get to ride powder around here is to hike the backcountry, and I'm too lazy to hike when there's a perfectly good ski lift to carry me. And frankly, riding the alpine setup on freshly groomed packed powder is up at the same level of fun for me as riding the freeride board in powder. May not be as uncommon a treat, but it's a lot more convenient... --mark

Thanks for the morning laugh! :) A few weeks ago I rode my freeride board with my old Burton Step-In Race Plates mounted. Wonderfully convenient at the top of the mountain, but I discovered when I got to the bottom that getting out of them is a serious pain due to the tiny release lever that sits down lower than the heel of the boot. I admit it, I could stand to lose a few inches around the waist, and bending down that far and flipping that lever is no longer very easy. But then last weekend an old friend of mine rode with me on his Factory Prime with step-ins, a setup that he hadn't ridden in years, and he had just as much trouble getting out of the damn things. And he's thin, so that made me feel better. --mark