SunSurfer

Just another way to keep challenging yourself.

All my family safe after last night's big shake. It was the strongest and longest I have ever felt. At the worst I didn't want to be standing and was crouched under the lintel of the nearest doorway.

Place: Captain's Basin @ Cardrona in Central Otago, NZ, It's 9am and the run has just been opened by ski patrol, midweek, mid-August. Board: Coiler NSR 182 extended UPM inserts, Bomber 4mm BBP interaxle distance @ 69cm, fixed axle at front, TD3 Intecs. Bindings @: 54cm (approx 0.6 X my inside leg measurement) C-to-C, 7cm from front binding centre to front axle (so it sits underneath and midway between ball of my foot and the tip of my big toe). 6 deg rear heel lift, 3 deg front toe lift, both discs set at 60 deg. Front binding plate @ 65 deg (effectively a tiny amount of outward canting), rear binding plate @ 60 deg. Rider: 57 yrs, 182cm, 82kg, 90cm inside leg, heavily modified Head Stratos Pro boots, fixed position front with lower leg approx. vertical, BTS blue rear. And all the tech melts away and in 2 turns we are flying.................

I was thinking more of the video I posted at the start where there are a range of angles in use, and the riders show static stance poses at the end. Agree the female rider in the second vid has forward facing bindings, and the guy in the 2016 Infinity vid has a front foot angle up around +45 degrees. Whatever, the riders are far more flexible and rotated than my 57 yr old spine is capable of riding comfortably (60Rear, 65Front).

I had the same thought, carving optimised boards being ridden well in soft boots. Also impressive core rotation flexibility to manage the sideways stance and the mostly forward facing upper body position.

If it was me, if i was happy where I had my boot flex, and didn't have a specific change in function I wanted to make/try, I'd leave well alone. Spoken as someone who likes to analyse/understand his equipment, has made numerous mods ands likes to experiment.

Have to drill some holes.

Hi Duncan, great to see a Kiwi doing well! From your blog it looks like the boards you have for sale are with you in the USA? Might help the chances of a sale if you make that clear.

Like b0ardski I go outside the square. Hand armour. If your curiosity is piqued search BOL "hand armour".

Saw this and thought it deserved to be here. These riders carve with impressive style.

Ski poles & a hookah? I'm so tempted now!

I'm always amazed at how much deshaking the human eye and brain manages to produce in real life. I generally set Deshaker, when using a GoPro or other fixed focal length camera, to make no/minimal zoom compensation of any kind in either the first or second stage of Deshaker processing. Try playing with the motion smoothness, I quite like 200 for taking out the worst shakes without making the black borders too big, while 10,000 makes for very smooth video but large borders. I set the zoom motion smoothness to 0.0001. Get hold of the Cineform codec to use in Deshaker to allow your .avi output to be directly accepted by GoPro Studio for further editing.

This is a good place to start reading.

Noticed that cracker has no cheese on top. I've found that mature NZ cheddar has great damping properties when the groom gets chopped up later in the day. But hey, if you only get to ride perfect groom you'll probably prefer a "naked" saltine.

Loved the bodysurfer and the rage scene!

To be consistent Jack's 2016 Poll thread should probably be locked or removed.

SES 2013 Intermediate & Steeps Clinic videos have been reuploaded to YouTube.

If I wasn't in NZ and didn't have a place in BVs build list I would be all over this. I had an old stiff Avalanche (retired) that was great fun as an all mountain carver in hard boots that this Coiler would make a great replacement for. Have you ridden the Coiler in your hard boots? I would second the idea you may regret selling one of Bruce's works of art.

Best: Rusutsu Tower, a 2 level hotel suite all to myself right down to the heated hi-tech japanese toilet, onsen, restaurants of all descriptions, powder dumping out of the sky 70% of the conference week I'm there. And then there was the bed.... I swear it was at least 8 feet wide, enough room for a sizeable orgy, and so comfortable... All a bit over the top for me. Like Corey, the Snowmass Inn and its' ilk are all I normally need. A clean bed, a warm room, a place to store my gear. It's not like I'm planning to spend a lot of daytime in the room on a snowboarding trip. In NZ at Ruapehu I'll stay in the communal bunkhouse accommodation of the ski club I belong to, or stay in a backpackers when I'm in Central Otago.

Hope your Aspen forecast guy is right. In NZ we've just come through a very short mild winter. The actually seriously cold phase with good snowfall was just 5-6 weeks centred around August. Mt Ruapehu, our North Island mountain for skiing is now reporting snow conditions are so soft that their grooming cats are having problems. The previous year had seen heavy snowfall when the strong El Nino coincided with our winter. Historically that pattern is associated with good NZ snow seasons and accumulation of long term snow pack in our mountains. Hopefully the promising pattern of conditions for Colorado this year will bring a good season for you guys.

Yes, think hard about why it is offered for sale. The significantly cold part of winter for our North Island ski fields lasted only 5-6 weeks this year. And the owner of those fields has now removed their snow making guns supposedly because they were "a waste of money". More likely it was no longer consistently cold enough to usefully use them. Having seen recent years sea surface temperature maps for the north west coast of USA & Canada (search for "JPL sea surface temperature") I wouldn't want to be hanging onto Grouse Mountain as an asset into the longer term future.

Hardbooting: Snowboarding for grown-ups.

Edit your post above by adding https: ahead of the //www.youtube.com/.........., or just copy and paste the link path from the YouTube page Menu line.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2016/sep/15/britains-silver-surfer-a-photo-essay Once you start surfing.......... ----------------------- Link from softbootsailer above, plus second video of Kai Lenny that includes him pumping his hydrofoil surfboard back out to catch the next wave. The up & down pumping motion presumably increases the speed of the foil relative to the water thus generating more lift.

Gutted for your loss Nigel.