Puddy Tat

These look interesting. CNC'd trucks specifically designed for LDP and Slalom. They are currently under the last stages of design/testing before release next week. From stuff I've read on Paved Wave and the 'Fish, the front truck is going to be 55 degrees and the rear is 20. I saw them on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/DontTripSkateboards) yesterday. He definitely has a spherical bearing in the pivot cup, and either the slalom or the LDP truck also includes a spherical bearing in the hanger. I'm really interested in ordering a set to try out as soon as he says they are available. Dave

LDP keeps me from going bat sh!t crazy during the summer when I can't snowboard. It feels almost exactly like doing fast cross under carves on an alpine board. I had a couple of relevations this week I'll post some pics of my board set-up tomorrow and talk about wedging stuff I changed around. Cheers, Dave

Shhhhh! I was trying to get as much mileage out of the "Cherry-popping" line as I could ;). That is a weird place for a break. Dave

Yeah this was a Bennett 5.0 hanger on a 15 degree Cindrich baseplate. What I found really interesting is the taller bottom bushing (using Riptide tall barrels on Griffin array washers) reached exactly the height of the break, so my hanger was also torquing on the threads directly above the breakpoint. I actually noticed this damage at the start of the season when I installed a Delrin spacer into the Bennett (which is frickin' awesome BTW). :-) Anyways I'm going to start replacing these aircraft bolts every 1000km (8-10 weeks) or so now as I would hate to have this happen at speed. Also the nice thing about the aircraft bolts is they have a much longer shank, so the hanger isn't torquing back and forth on the bolts threading. Dave

Well I popped my kingpin cherry this morning about 250m from my house. This kingpin had about 1000km (~10weeks) on it but was the original grade 8 bolt that came with the Cindrich 15 degree plate. I'd been reading about this happening and was getting a little concerned about this kingpin so I had ordered 15 AN6-24a aircraft bolts from Wick's. They actually arrived last night, but I didn't get home until 10PM. And as I'm busy taking an MBA in the evenings I was thinking I was going to change this on the weekend . Here's a pic of the broken kingpin, you can see it snapped right where the threading starts. I'm going to chalk this up to good luck, as I was just warming up and wasn't yet up to speed (not that I'm that quick anyways), I basically heard a schnick sound and felt the front end of the board go loose and I stepped off and jogged it out. When I turned around to look the front end was in two pieces! Anyways fortunately this happened this morning rather than late last night when I was carving hard downhill on bike paths to get to my house in the bottom of the River Valley . Anyway I've pressed the bolt out and put in one of the aircraft bolts so I'll be good to go again this evening when I get the truck back on. While the aircraft bolts are apparently much stronger I'll be keeping a mileage log on my kingpins from now on and changing them on regular intervals. As well as buying a press to make swapping them easier. Cheers, Dave

Been at it for about a month and a bit this season. Ordered a bagful of bushings from Riptide and have been tinkering with those. Running APS bushings all around tall barrels and barrels in the Bennett and then chubbies and cones in the Tracker in the rear. I'm interested in starting to screw with my wedging angles, maybe increase the rear to deaden that truck. Think I'm at eight degrees now, I'm considering pushing that up to 10-12 degrees and see what happens. I need some longer hardware to play with the wedging. Currently climbing hills and pumping in flats I'm running close to 12km/h average speed. Dave

Props! I'd been considering doing this with my 187 metal topped WCRM, but you obviously beat me to it. Also I was a little hesitant to go with the full on body wax (shudder). Maybe I'll see you at Sunshine next season. Dave.

My only concern would be how easy it would be to get the boot on without being able to put it in walk mode anymore? Dave

Mondo size?

Going to be hitting Sunhine in a couple of weeks, stuck studying until then. Nice riding. Love watching you or Bruce rail a heelside. Dave

Rate calculator shipping from Canada into the US. http://www.canadapost.ca/cpotools/apps/far/personal/findARate?execution=e1s2 Dave

I've found hardboots and steeper angles (to a point) make riding in crud and chop easier. I normally ride my 24-25cm waisted AM boards around 50/45 for angles (Mondo 28 boots no overhang). A couple of weeks ago I tried running my hardboots (UPZ ATBs) down around 30 degrees thinking it might make it easier to running steep moguled runs where I had to skid or jump the board around quickly. I found that as my angles reduced the board got twitchier, in that it was easier to slide it around, but at the same time it was getting deflected by crud and crap. I ended up going back up to around 48/43 as I like the stability it gives me and I can still throw it around when I need to. Dave

It should work. Corey uses one of those short leashes that clip straight to a boot as well. And there's no requirement to set-up a new binding. The leash will got through the slot once the binding it fully installed. Dave

And here's hoping jng is male otherwise you just totally threw their technique out the window...

I do what Corey does (though clearly I did it first) with a leash similar to what Longbordin is showing above. I also put it on the inside of my leg otherwise it drags in an annoying fashion on heelsides. Dave

I'm 220ish lbs and 6'2". When its too fresh, I go to a 171cm Donek Incline (171cm/24.5cm/10-12m SCR) with TD3s SI and yellow e-rings. I ride this with UPZ ATBs stiffened up with a black tongue at 48/43 angles. The Incline is basically Sean's normally cambered VSR all-mountain slayer. Awesome board as far as I'm concerned. It loves the steeps, rips pow, and shreds moguls. When the snow turns to icing sugar or slushy it is super fun as well. Carves respectably if the snow hardens up too. As an aside for really soft snow... I tried splitboarding this season in softboots ....I'm going to get a set of TLT6's this year and some Phantom bindings (hopefully in Nov) before I do that again. Dave

Jack, thanks for everything you did and do around here. The articles, the comments, all of it. For someone I've never met you've improved my riding quite substantially. Interested to hear how the 'loaf banked slalom goes for you this year. Bryan and Corey, there's two of you. Do I get to try with you guys what my daughters are now doing to me? "Awww Bryan... Corey totally said we could do that!" Dave :D

The claim from Sunshine is 39cm in the last 24 hours. I'm not bringing a carving deck today. Dave

Allee, Will see you, or anyone else who can make it tomorrow at Mad Trapper's at 10AM. Dave.

Look at the toe piece of the bindings. in certain type of snow (spring and wetter snow) I've found that snow will build up in the screw holes/slots of the td3 toe pieces. Eventually this packs into ice and mounds up a little and acts as a fulcrum point under your toe that makes it difficult to get the heel piece down far enough. The snow/ice only has to mound up a couple of millimeters to make it difficult to get the heel to seat. Chipping the ice out of these screw holes/slots with a car key immediately solves the issue for me. It's something I just keep an eye on nowadays. Dave

Great! See you outside of Mad Trapper's around 10AM then. Dave.

Apologies, I just got an email from the Sunshine ski school. The Freeriders lesson program is having their race day on Saturday, where the kids are racing in a short gated course on Snowsnake at 1PM. I'll still be up there carving at 10AM but at about 1PM I'll be going to watch Zoe take a run or two down the race course. Allee, or anyone else who was thinking of coming out, if you've got other stuff to do, I totally understand. Cheers, Dave

Sweet that's potentially two of us. Looking forward to ripping with you this weekend Allee. Weather is currently looking nice. Dave

Well the Weather Network isn't anticipating any new snow until Sunday. So at this point it looks like Saturday will be a carving day. Dave

Does Bruce still warranty his boards after he knows you've done that to the nose? :D Dave