SunSurfer

Skiing, riding a chairlift at Mt Hutt in the early 1990s. An Asian hardbooter below me rides down leaving a sinuous, graceful, smooth line behind, looking like mercury flowing down the mountain. "I have got to learn to do that!" Started in 2008, and expect to be learning till I take my last ride. Carving is the most beautiful way of descending a mountain, it has an aesthetic all of its' own.

Sorry to pour cold water on you guys but your spectacular handicaps are a website glitch. Read my original post above and compare your personal page raceday handicaps with those shown on the overall list.

Nice work! I've tried the same before using F2 Intecs and a home made wood core/glass plate and pulled the inserts right out of the plate at the rear heel. Would be interested to know what the engineers here think about using heel and toe pieces with a smaller footprint and made of metal, not plastic, mounted straight onto a carbonfibre plate like the BBP. Thinking of directly mounting TD3 toe pieces as an example. Would the more concentrated forces applied make the plate more likely to fail? The SnowPros that are being used here have 4 bolts per component, and have some flex being made of plastic.

7 Mix of old and new school Slalom: Kessler KST 162, Hot Blast 160 GS: Coiler NSR 180 (symmetric core & plate optimised) Free carve: Riot Supercarve 180, Pale Spook 170 All Mountain: Coiler AM 177 Twin tip: Avalanche 167 The Avalanche is my test bed for experimental stuff. It has UPM inserts added, took my first isocline plate, and it's currently set to become my first plated skiboard. Apart from the Spook, which was only recently bought, the rest are all active rides.

Those bindings look like rebranded SnowPro Race bindings, right down to the inbuilt 3 degree canting.

There's a bug in the software. Click the race record of the number 1 male snowboarder. As I write this on 7th Jan 2014 in NZ, he has raced 1 day, the same results are recorded 3 times. His final handicap is one third of his actual (platinum) race handicap. Similar problem happened last year. On that occasion I e-mailed the folks at NASTAR and they rapidly fixed the problem. You might want to do the same as I won't be in the US this year to race NASTAR :(

Carving is all about using the edge of your board to ride the whole turn. You don't need lots of speed to to carve. You don't need to turn sharply to carve. These things come later, as your confidence and skill grow. You do need good balance and technique from the beginning. The basics of that are best learned on green runs where you can concentrate on your technique without gaining too much speed. The speed will come anyway because a carved turn has the absolute minimum braking effect. Aim to leave fine lines behind you in the snow. When you make a well carved turn, you will hear, as well as feel, the difference. No scratchy tail skid, no sideways scuffing. Twenty odd years ago, when I was still skiing, I tried a day on a soft boot board. I wanted to be able to ride the mountain like I rode roads on my slalom skateboard. Duckfoot stance felt completely unnatural to me. So I pulled out the screwdriver and rotated my bindings forward to match the stance I use on my slalom skateboard. Lots of falls, and one very puzzled snowboard instructor later, I was starting to make gradual carved turns. You can learn the beginning of carving technique on a soft boot board. And, as the guy in the video shows, it is actually possible to carve very well in softboots.

http://www.bhsi.org/helmet14.htm

Just read an interesting review of the latest bike helmets on the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute site. They are a non-profit cycle safety advocacy group. They are not convinced of the additional benefit of a MIPS type helmet given that almost every helmet slips/moves on impact. They are clearly in favour of helmet use but are trying to evaluate the manufacturers hype to help consumers make informed choices about helmet construction and price.

<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/9606839" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" width="500" frameborder="0" height="281"></iframe> Игора 19.02.10 from Salomeya on Vimeo. In this fun video, that is familiar to a number of the people here, one of the riders is carving beautifully using a soft boot set up. This screen grab shows his bindings have both been rotated forward into a position more like a hard boot setup. So read the article on setting up your stance, and set up your bindings a comfortable distance apart, angled towards the front of your board so that your boots won't protrude over the edges. Make the front binding about 5 degrees more forward facing than the rear and go for it!

I've read the tech articles on the New Carvers page Fin linked you to. I'm a pretty much self-taught carver, who has used those articles, heaps of YouTube videos and my own head to learn to carve from scratch in my 50s. I can now consistently run NASTAR courses in a Silver time and occasionally Gold. One thing that made an enormous difference to my ability to make clean carves on toe and heel sides was learning how to get my weight properly onto the carving edge. Doing the Norm 2 exercise, practice making the knee on the outside of the turn push sideways and down towards the carving edge. Keep your upper body upright, and your hands forward and balanced. This puts your weight onto the carving edge and gives a clean carved turn. My avatar photo has me doing exactly that. As you progress try searching YouTube for the Intermediate and Steeps Clinics videos from SES 2013.

Someone, posting as Snowfun4you, had a video (Progression from Thedo's spring camp) up for a while that gave pointers about how to practice the outward tail slide on both toe and heel side to give the extra turn on hard to make gates. There is an link to the original video page in a thread on Bomber dated June 8th 2008. I found a copy on Vimeo. After that video disappeared/was removed, I reposted an unlisted copy on YouTube. <iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/TzNZqvL1RLg" allowfullscreen="" width="420" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe>

http://www.torpedo7.co.nz/torpedo7/catalogindexsearch.do?org.apache.struts.taglib.html.TOKEN=2d543cdf550e79846c8885ef7a786c2f&org.apache.struts.taglib.html.TOKEN=0136879cfec1bb662af318c4238cbbcf&formAction=search&searchString=contour&brandString= A New Zealand online store I've used with no problems.

Sildenafil. Yes, really! Sildenafil (Viagra) dilates blood vessels in the lungs. That was what it was originally researched for, before the effects it is better known for were recognised. Low oxygen concentrations in the air spaces in the lungs cause the blood vessels to narrow. That limits the amount of blood that can flow through the lungs. Viagra is listed by the CDC as a first aid measure for high altitude pulmonary edema. It also improves aerobic performance for about 50% of athletes exercising at altitude.

Our age is always changing, our birthday never.

That's got to be cold!!!!

Shooting video with one would be almost as much fun as snowboarding. Almost...... :)

Tips like this would be a useful addition to the threads in the FAQ section.

Kieran, not ridden a recumbent. Riding out of the saddle, standing on the pedals is great exercise for me to strengthen the muscles and rebuild control of my right ankle. A recumbent wouldn't give me that option. Lowrider, I didn't spend my 8 weeks in a lower leg splint on the sofa. From week 3 I was mobile and fully weight bearing on the injured leg with a functional brace on it. I wore out two braces over the following weeks. Only the muscles in my right calf atrophied from not being used. My left leg really didn't take any extra load so no bulking up of the left calf.

John, have you got journal references for that? All NSAIDs have the same fundamental mechanism of action, reducing or blocking prostaglandin synthesis. Prostaglandins perform a wide range of functions in the body. These include playing an important role in causing and maintaining inflammation, enhancing the production of mucous which protects the lining of your stomach from stomach acid, and maintaining blood flow to the part of the kidneys that is crucial for concentrating the urine. All NSAIDs can significantly reduce kidney blood flow, potentially to the point of kidney failure requiring dialysis. For normal people who are not dehydrated this is not a problem with short term use of NSAIDs. If you are dehydrated from illness, treated for high blood pressure or heart failure, diabetic, have known existing kidney function impairment, or are taking them regularly in the long term, then NSAIDs carry significant risks and should only be used with medical supervision and monitoring of kidney function. It would be unwise to take them before a long day snowboarding in dry, cold, winter air, and then minimise how much you drank to avoid needing to stop and take a leak. Better to take them for your aches and pains at the end of the day when you are rehydrating and have some food in your stomach. That way you protect your kidneys and your stomach lining. P.S: Achilles rehab going well at 8 weeks out of brace. Up to 100km cycle rides, climbing up to 1 in 5 gradient hills out of the saddle, and no longer being passed by all and sundry. Still feels like I'm riding with one and a half legs though. Muscle shape and tone in gastroc and soleus improving but a very long way to go to match the uninjured leg. Patience is a virtue........

http://www.worden.fr/boutique-worden-snowboard-multi-inserts-9-mm-les-10-unites-,111624.html I've bought a number of insert packs from this company in France over the Net with no problems. I used them to put new inserts into four 4x4 mounted boards to create UPM pattern mounts for my own design isocline plates back in 2010-2011. Accurately aligned drilling is the key to this task. It's something you want to practice on an old board before you drill a hole in something really expensive. My understanding of metal board construction is that the binding insert holes are pre drilled in the metal plate during construction. Adding new inserts to metal boards is a very bad idea, and likely to lead to board failure. If in doubt ask Sean Martin (Donek on Bomber). The Worden sourced inserts are pre P-Tex'd, but the bottoms are not entirely flat. The board will need to be base ground once the new inserts are in place. My memory is that the inserts fit a 9mm hole in the top of the board, and a 16mm hole in the P-Tex base. I used a drill press to drill the initial 3mm guide holes in the top of the board. Then I free hand drilled the 16mm hole just through the P-Tex base using the brace bit. Then I free hand used a 16mm 90 degree countersink bit to create the taper to the accomodate the insert. I couldn't source a 110 degree countersink bit to exactly match the insert angle. I then used the drill press to drill a 9mm hole finally from the top. Used epoxy to hold it all in place. Aim to leave the insert P-Tex slightly above the base surface so that the base grind will leave you with a nice smooth surface

Is it a board? Is it a ski? I don't know what to call it. A hybrid, a mongrel, a crossbreed, a chimera, or maybe just an abombernation. The ideas behind it are in the thread of suggestions for Fin & Sean's Excellent Adventures video series, or whatever they're calling it. This is a way of testing the concept without building anything special. The board has a 17cm waist, and with the bindings where they are the outermost parts of the boots are just within the footprint of the board. Carpet carving, it flicks from edge to edge quickly, and body angulation is easy on either edge. Snow's all melting here, just as my Achilles tendon is starting to get strong enough to start to really do stuff. Right calf muscles are still weak and wasted but recovering. 6 weeks out of my brace and serious hill climbs out of the saddle on the road bike are just becoming possible. Hope it snows wherever you are soon. Postscript: Nov 17th 2013: It's an in-line snowboard.

Looks like a great concept for a terrifying fun park ride if you could get the engineering right! The whip round as the chairs make the turn would be wicked!

Lots of people have herniated discs, but don't necessarily have symptoms related to them. The views at right angles to the one you've shown, at the level of each of the discs, will show more about the degree of nerve root compression that may, or may not, be present. As always, the MRI findings need to be correlated with the findings on physical examination by your doctor. Wait till Thursday for your doc's opinion before getting too excited/upset/selling all your snowboards!

Sad we lost but no doubt that Oracle finally worked out how to sail their boat, and it's foil automated stabilisation system, faster than Team NZ. The faster boat won. For me it's been extraordinary to see the culmination of ideas I first saw as a teenager in a book called "The 40 Knot Sailboat". Aero-hydrofoils now sail competitively round a race course.