BryanZ

I'm not on here too much, but if you guys decide to get a few people together feel free to email be at bz9078@att.com, thanks

Buying a new car to save money on gas?

I use the iphone, 10 dollar app, little spotty when its in my pocket, but it tracks my elevation, top speed, average speed, and it tracks the path I took. Surely not as good as a standalone (i don't think) but for 10 bucks you can't beat it

yes I am being way too passive on my board, that board was definitely taking me for a ride. By weighting and unweighting, do you mean like unweighting the board at the start and end of a turn and weighting the board hard in order flex it?

one thing that I did notice a few times that I'm curious about. When I'm going quite fast and try to do just carve on the edge....not getting low at all. It seemed like many times I would lose my balance and almost fall to my side....my body angle would get a lot lower and my board would suddenly just lock in a turn. I couldn't duplicate it on my own, it happened on accident a few times. Scared the crap out of me as I was usually going pretty fast when it happened. Is this flexing the board?

Yeah that's about the size I'm going to be hunting for, I have to do some research on which boards are softer. I definitely like the board, it's just that I feel like the entire learning process is accomplished at 50mph. Mistakes are too painful on this board lol. I did see a couple people on this board had 195+cm boards. I have no idea how you get down any trail that is not 300 feet wide.

I've been hitting the gym hard for the last two years, I do a lot of squating mainly for snowboarding. Somehow....I don't know how, I gave my quads a workout under my own body weight. I would highly recommend getting a couple sessions of squats under your belt before you go. I would have been toast if I hadn't been going to the gym.

I thought about doing this... I think the problem is that I haven't learn to "flex" my board as you guys call it. I was letting the edge control my turn radius. A when I'm letting the edge control, 16 meters radius makes a 105 foot circle...And that is what it felt like on the slope. Needless to say I spent most of the day stratching my head on how in the hell you guys make S turns. Mid-day I concluded that it was because of my GS board and I quit trying. I guess not...I definatly have to work on making tighter turns.

Nice I didn't know there was a clear cut difference in the way you are supposed to turn.. I was definitely riding the sidecut and not flexing the board. That would explain why I had a lot of trouble controlling speed. My td1's are right in front of me, and I dont see where to put the rubber band..care to explain more?

I'll definitely try that, I just figured the closer the angles were to my old setup the easier it would be for me to adapt. At 59/59 I had a little overhang. I highly doubted the overhang would effect anything first day out

did I say I was kidding? any signs of me laughing? no there isn't...dude this was your post in another thread, what happened to that...why don't you look up that thread on how to use the ignore list, and put me on it

yeah step-ins are definatly going to be my next purchase...that thread was funny. I still feel the same way about a regular board. Definatly not on this board. Alpine boards are definatly a danger to other people on the mountain. It is much more difficult to make an emergency evasion or stop.

cool man, yeah I saw you were looking for your first board the same time I was, I think you actually made an offer on the board I bought. Be glad you went with the smaller one.

hmmm ill have to try that... do you guys really have to put some serious force on your toe bail? I needed two hands to close it most of the time...should I losen the binding?

Litte bit about myself, I've been snowboarding for 20 years in Vermont. I was never much into freestyle, mainly just high speed carving. I definatly could not take my ability much further with the snowboard I was using. I decided to do some research on alpine boards. I came to this forum and I was drooling. A few weeks later I had my first setup. I'm 6'4 about 200lbs, my setup is an '06 f2 speedster (184cm, 19.5cm waist, 16m scr), td1 standards, and an older pair of 4 buckle burton reactors. I am very glad I listened to the forum about boot sizing, I was very comfortable. My mountain:Blue Mountain, in the Poconos, PA. Conditions:crowded, but it was about 65 degrees out, many people were in t-shirts. Snow was very soft, almost no ice until about 6pm. The first thing I notice is how difficult it is to strap in, I had a hell of a time getting my rear foot hooked in. I reluctantly take off onto a crowded green trail. My muscle memory from my old snowboard tried to complete a turn....useless, I fall right over. I get back up and start skidding side to side to try to get a feel for the board. I quickly find out that this board is TOTALLY useless at low speeds. So I'm about 500 feet down the run so far and I decide to pick up a little speed. I lean into a turn.....I lose my balance a little bit and lean too far. Normally I would be on my ass because of this, but out of nowhere, this board catches an edge and locks hard on a carve like it was a roller coast on a steel track.....and I'm headed for the edge of a trail. I had to jump transition to get out of it. Without prior snowboarding experience, I would have been in the trees surely injured. Regardless, the "oh ****" face was quickly followed by a huge grin. So here I am....500 feet down my first run, with my heart pounding, I get a rush of excitment as I had no idea what an alpine board could do. All my doubts about my new purchase were out the window and I was on a mission to take control of the new board. After I take a breath, I am back at it. I spend the remainder or the run taking it slow trying to get a feel for the board. About 5-6 runs later I'm confident I have the board figured out. There is a major problem though that the rest of you beginners should listen to. Don't start out with a big board like mine. I heard all of you say it, I just said ok, ok, ok. Deep down I was feeling a little cocky, like how tough can it be. The problem isn't really that it's more difficult to carve given perfect conditions. It's that you cannot make this tight radius carves on a board like this and it is very difficult to control ones own speed. Here I am on this green slope, It was actually perfect to learn on, but I had to go break neck speeds to have any control of this board. I felt a little dangerous to others and decided I had to move to a more advanced trail. The problem was I had already tempted a steep slope on the board. Handling a board like this on a steep slope is definitely not something for a novice. You just reach lunatic speeds, and it's almost impossible to slow yourself down without skidding. The board does not like to skid at all, you can't just scrub speed with a flick of the tail. This peticular mountain has night skiing. At around 6ish the crowds dissapeared and the snow became very hard. This board loved the conditions. You need to be a lot smoother for the ice, but I was amazed that if I just commited myself to a turn the board would just hold. By 9PM, I was ripping up a double black (I have no idea how this run is labeled a double black, it's a difficult blue/easy black in my book) One thing I was not even able to come close to doing is laying out. I was not able to come close to getting as low as you guys do. I presume I'm going to have to study proper form for this. I was mostly out just enjoying the massive grip my board had that I wasn't used to. I had a lot of problems with bumps as well. You are just forced to go so fast with this board, and I am not good enough yet to handle large ungroomed bumps. Couple things I really disliked. I have never had knee pain in my life. My knees hurt by the end of the day because of the awkward stance you need when you are strapping in. Getting your bindings locked in while sitting in the snow is no easy task. You are forced into this very awkward position which was painful on my back leg. Maybe it was my setup. I'm using 6 degree cant on the back and 3 on the front. My boot angles were about 59/59. Falling. This board is very dangerous....Falling was extremely painful. Unless it's just because I'm not used to taking spills, I am pretty bruised up now. The board just mangles your body if you take a hard spill. My softboot setup seemed like spills were just easier on your body for some reason, I don't know why. I finally see why people don't like crowds with these boards. These are not boards that you just flip and flop all over the trail dodging things left and right. When describing the riding experience, words like razor, laser, rail, scalpel, etc come to mind. When you turn.....you turn. An accurate analogy would be; snowboarding is to rally car driving as alpine boarding is to formula 1 driving. I have never been a man of many boards, I don't think I've ever owned more then 2 boards at a time during my 20 year career. I can easily see owning more now. These boards are much more precise and when they are meant for a specific task like giant slalom, they are doing just that. I am definatly going to have to purchase a board with a smaller turn radius, the f2 is just rediculous to learn on. If you are someone who craves attention, then this is definatly the board for you. I think I had a conversation with pretty much everyone I got closed to. I could hear a few "holy ****s" from the lifts as well. I was almost annoyed by the end of the day. If I had a dollar for everytime I heard "what kind of board is that?" I would have purchased the resort and kicked them off of it lol. All in all, I had a blast. Alpine boarding is everything I hoped it would be and exactly the style I was looking for. I can't wait until next season so I can try it in VT.