SunSurfer

@lonbordin where on the x-ray is the painful point? Is the pain on one side, both sides, in the middle, all the way through?

I can vouch for Rusutsu on Hokkaido. Deep powder in nicely spaced trees, and freeway/autobahn wide pistes that allow GS boards to run full throttle.

@st_lupo you missed slough (pronounced either sluff (to shed), OR sloo or slou - rhymes with cow - (wet swampy ground) thorough thought And it's far more than 3 languages stacked on each other now. Just about every country in the old British Empire has had words absorbed into English.

@Jack M Only the cognoscenti will appreciate exactly what you're riding. Blow all their minds with what you can do with that beautiful setup Jack.

That photo is alpine boarder PORN!

Not a direct answer, more of an explanation for the limit. Most heat moldable liners use EVA foam as the moldable component. EVA gets soft and moldable above about 50 degrees Centigrade and above about 70 degrees Centigrade the foam structure starts to degrade, and this process becomes more severe with higher temps and longer exposure. Ideally you find a way of evenly heating the liner to more than 50 C and less than 70 degrees C to minimise the foam degradation.

My Riot Supercarve 178(? length, take a bow @Corran) pimped with extra inserts and a UPM plate still gets ridden alongside a Coiler Nirvana Energy T+ 174 and a Kessler KST 162 slalom board. It's still a lively, responsive, rewarding ride.

Nah. You just wear your poor boards out! 100+ days a year riding. (Jealous!!!!!!)

Interesting to see where the edge of the board is actually engaged as the rider's path crosses in front of the camera. To my eye there's a gap of light between nose and the edge just in front of the rider's rear foot. And the ice spray points would seem to confirm that. Looks like a handy drill for practicing carving on real ice (Turoa powder!)

Andrey, good as the video is, watching you in action in real life at the Aspen sessions was a pleasure.

Two different styles in the videos above. Different tastes, different goals in riding. For me "good" form has an aesthetic, movement that is graceful, economical, flowing. I've seen freecarvers and extreme carvers whose riding, to my eyes, is a thing of beauty. That aesthetic drew me into this sport and keeps me here.

Not necessarily not necessary. Rather you might like to try a different approach and possibly discover something new.

Just doing a little math to put a context on your proposition above. To create a 1 degree base angle on a 3 mm steel edge requires the removal of .05 mm of material.

I had read and heard the same thing many times. But I wondered how such a tiny change could make such a big difference especially given the large, and by comparison relatively imprecise, angulation changes made by the rider. The chance to try a board with 0 degrees on the base was part of what led to me trialling the board as it was delivered. Over the course of my 35+ year career in my professional life, much of the "received wisdom" I was taught in my training has been replaced by guidance based on experimental evidence, and often counter to that received wisdom. In my snowboarding I've enjoyed the analytical thinking and the experimental aspects of my riding almost as much as the actual riding itself.

Got a new Nirvana from BV a couple of years ago. Came with 89 on the side and 0 on the base and the storage wax. BV provided the edge treatment details. Decided I would try it as delivered without any extra tuning or wax treatment. Brilliant to ride from the get go. Easy to side slip, hockey stop, manoeuvre at low speed, initiate turns, and edge hold was fantastic. I no longer add in any base angulation when I clean up the edges on any of my boards. I'm more with Dave Redman above when it comes to tuning. Make sure the base is well waxed rather than dry. Make sure the edge is an edge and not rounded or burred, but I no longer obsess about the actual edge angle. I suspect base/edge tuning is a little like buying and listening to high end audio equipment. Rapidly increasing costs for increasingly little return. That doesn't stop lots of people buying high end audio gear and being convinced they can hear the difference. Each to their own. Enjoy your new board!

Was playing around with 9 degrees of lift (front toe/rear heel) vs. 6 degrees at an indoor ski slope a couple of days ago. Setup: Boots: UPZ RC10s with an inside boot sole slope (zeppa) of current estimates 11 degrees. Bindings: Intec heels, F2 race with custom wedges @ 6 degrees, vs. Bomber TD3 with custom 3 degree wedges under the toe and heel blocks plus 6 degree cant discs. Binding angle 60 degrees front and rear with no cant. Stance distance 2 X my zero cant distance so no cant needed. Impressions: Rear foot: Comfortable with either 6 or 9 degrees heel lift. Possibly a little easier to get my centre of mass lower @ 9. Front foot: I'm used to riding with 6 degrees. My front boot is normally set with the minimum forward lean and tight springs for minimal forward flex. Going to 9 without any other change made me feel a little more on the tail of the board, not as well controlled and balanced in the exit from each turn. Moving the ankle position lock for one notch of forward lean preload returned my normal nose/tail balance over the board and was comfortable to ride. It felt like that the angle of my front lower leg was a more crucial setting for completing a clean controlled carve than the slope of the sole of my front foot or the degree of ankle flexion. Only a relatively few runs were made with each combination. Longer term comfort/function checks will have to wait till August 2020 for me. My experiments with using a skwal setup with outward cant and front toe/rear heel lift utilising those same 9 degree TDs will have to wait till then too.

@Corey I don't remember coming across your comment above when I was developing my more formal geometric approach to cant and lift, but it's fundamentally the same way of thinking about the problem.

Bump. Sean Martin's advice above could be usefully re-read every season.

All well here. About to pay for my pass for the NZ 2020 winter at Cardrona, where I have 2 weeks of sliding planned for August. The only thing I'm suffering from is "flight shame". Made a personal decision that long distance travel primarily to go snowboarding is no longer justifiable to my conscience. Sad that I am unlikely to see again a whole lot of people I have had the pleasure of meeting and riding with.

You look pretty comfy. Did your anesthesiologist give you a nerve block +/- catheter & infusion?

That's what happens when you can only propel the right wheel! Looks like a ZTR design to me

An addition to the list of potential shin pain/bruising/blistering causes & solutions. Spent yesterday at an indoor snow slope experimenting with setups and getting a sliding fix. (Hi, my name is Alan and I've been a snowboarding addict for 11 years. It all began when I first climbed on a Burton PJ 6.2......) I ride regular, with Intec bindings, UPZ RC 10s. I had set a pair of F2s to 65 degrees, 5 degrees higher than I normally ride, to ensure there was no boot out on a narrow board I have. Rode for a couple of hours on 2 different boards, aiming for hard low no touch turns. Stopped for a rest because my front, left, lower leg was hurting so much. Took my boots off and limped across the cafeteria for lunch. Tender spot was on the left side of my left lower leg, it was visibly swollen. Reset the bindings to 60/60 and put my boots back on. Rode the same angles for the next 3 hours, experimenting with different lift combos. End of the day the left leg pain was much less and the swelling had gone down. --------- My take on this is that with a laterally stiff Intec binding setup even small changes in stance angle, especially to higher angles can create a need for small amounts of canting to align the lower leg and boot angles again. My normal stance distance and 60/60 angles is a neutral cant setup. Going higher creates a potential need for a small amount of outward cant because, side to side my feet are now closer together. The change from 60 to 65 degrees reduces the distance 4.2 cm. The F2s have no capacity for incremental cant, it's 3 degrees or nothing. Not providing the cant created extra pressure on the outward side of my front leg, hence the pain. Restoring the neutral 60/60 setup relieved the pressure and allowed me to ride and the leg to start to recover. Bail bindings and TD Sidewinders have more lateral flexibility, and will therefore be more tolerant of changes in binding angle and the resulting changes in leg lateral angulation and boot alignment. (This explanation is based on my geometric theory linking stance distance and binding angles to the need for cant and lift.)

Having to get to the indoor ski slope early so you're ready for "First Tracks". At an indoor ski slope today for a sliding fix and some experimentation. Results of the experiments will be posted later and in the appropriate area. But discovered today that there are people who actually have this problem!

Eat well, exercise, if you smoke then reduce, or better stop, in the lead up to your surgery. Any long term health issues e.g. diabetes, you have should be stabilised. These are simple things people in general can do to make the chances of a good outcome significantly higher.

The hip replacement operation and technology keeps improving. Postop precautions recommended in the past appear to be overly cautious. This study comes from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, an internationally recognised centre of excellence. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190312170818.htm