Miltie

Theo, Good luck dude! Hope it goes well. Wish we could get more of us BOLers involved with these SoCal races. Would be there myself if my work situation was different. Please post some pics if you have time. Interested to see the course layout and any racing shots. Maybe you could let us know how many racers were on hard boots. Hoping to do some of these races next year. Take care and represent us hard booters well. Thanks! Tom

Will be heading up night of 17th and on snow 18th through 20th at Mammoth or June. First time on snow this season. 21st is possible if the legs hold out and jet lag is gone. Mr. Gilmour, Let me know if you will be up during that time. Maybe we can catch a few runs. You might consider to check out June also. Take care, Tom

Hey Jack, My 6 year old daughter has 2 of the new choppers (100 and 110) with turned up edges or convex base. She started out on a flat 88cm board and had no issues transitioning to the different set-up. She actually learned to spin by herself after watching some jibbers at the end of last season (scary!). I think the benefit is that she catches the down hill edge less - whch is a good thing. She has fun so that's the most important litmus test. Take care, Tom

Hi Dave, These boots still available? BTW - The woodwork on your website is beautiful. Thanks! Tom

Loc, Will probably be up there from 12/18 to 12/23 give or take a day. Not sure if we are going to Mammoth or June yet. Need to pick up my pass at Mammoth first day so maybe starting out at Mammoth. Will post up more info when details firmed up. Thanks! Tom

Have to agree with the boot Yoda. Start with footbeds. You will probably be amazed how much they can improve your stock boots. Been using some form of custom footbeds for the last 22-23 years and wouldn't consider riding without them. Currently using Superfeet full cork insoles which run about $160 in my current location. Had good luck with the full corks on maybe the last 4 pairs of hard boots. Using some Deeluxe thermoform version available in Japan in my softboots. Slapped some stock Superfeet foot beds in my wife's Deeluxe Spa hard boots and she was like "Wow". As Mr. E says, even the $50 pairs make a nice difference. Shop around and maybe you can find something less than $300. Also, there have been some previous threads regarding footbeds that you can mold yourself at home. Never tried myself but maybe worth a look.

Have also had great experiences with Donek and Sean. I too was amazed at how he can tweak the specs to make what I wanted. Was even more amazed when I received the first custom board. The specs were dead nuts to what he quoted. Overall very pleased with their products. Really looking forward to riding the Donek Mono Plate as I know Sean put a lot of R & D time into making sure it will be a highly functional, durable and safe product.

Carve Magazine for the 2010/2011 season was issued last week. The rider on the cover with the yellow helmet is on Japan spec (gold color) TD3s. Contents this year are as follows: Winter Olympics review has nice interview with Jasey-Jay and others, Article – North to the Future about riding in Aomori area pf Japan, Article about travel for snowboarding in New Zealand, Gear Catalog with specs, “Carve” stickers, Pro Snowboard Asia and Japan Snowboard Association summary from last season including rider profiles, Shop Guide, How To guide featuring Sigi – short turns and long turns, Physical Training info, Article - Intro to SBX including half page on Shaun Palmer, Photo sections with historical Carving photos. Overall pretty nice magazine. Lots of ads for Japanese gear vendors including Wintertree who is the Bomber distributor – Nice coverage for Fin! Cool stuff! Will be sending Fin a copy for the Bomber Shop. Some scans below. Note: M-Flex in advertisement is not a Bomber product.

Helvetico, Finding an alpine board for rental in Nagano will be difficult. Not much here in terms of rental. They do have some demo days but usually in March/April time fame. The best way (as Flywalker suggested) would be to have someone here in Japan ship a board to your hotel (actually not so expensive internal to Japan). After you are finished, you could ship back (again not so expensive - maybe 2000 Yen or $25 US). I might have something that could be shipped. Will be in the US during that time but could ship something before I leave. You could ship back from your hotel to my house in Nagoya before you leave Nagano. What size board would you be looking for and what is your boot size? Would probably recommend something on the shorter side (160 to 165 cm range) as it will be crowded during that time of year. Let me know and I can see what boards I have that might work. Shoot me an email through BOL. Take care, Tom

Nekdut, There is a Nippon Express facility near LAX. They handled my air-shipments for my moves to Japan. Legit operation. I may have met Masa-san up at Ciao Ontake resort last spring. Many hard core riders up that way into unique boards. Have previously seen a few Virus decks up there. Let me know if I can help from this end (if needed). Take care, Tom

Wintergold, Have not seen the videos yet. Usually, they are pretty good. The SG Japan, IST pitcures and Peptide EX folks are having a promo party in Nagoya tonight. Unfortunately, I have work visitors from my US office here so will not be able to join the party. Will post a report once I get my DVD copies. Take care, Tom

The homepage for IST pictures of Japan has a brief trailer for their new Alpine video. http://www.istpictures.com/ The have 2 videos this year. Installer 10 and Installer 101. Each video has different riders and is about 30 minutes long.

I was in LA the last 2 weeks but back in Japan now. Wanted to have a lunch with Neil to talk shop while in LA but my schedule just got too crazy. This meet up sounds like a great idea. Hope you have a good success since it seems like many new and longtime carvers in SoCal. Will shoot you and Neil a PM with some info that may help. Take care, Tom

Anybody have any experience with the newer Wintersticks? I am considering a Winterstick Tom Burt Pro 172. http://www.winterstick.com/product_info.php?cPath=18&products_id=9 Looks like a cool board. Reminds me of the Winterstick Round Tail 170 that were in production around 1986/1987. Had one of those that I T-nutted to mount Sims Highback bindings. That was a cool set-up back in the day. Nice to see Tom Burt is helping keep Winterstick alive. Any feedback on the Tom Burt Pro 172 or their other models would be much appreciated. Thanks!! Tom

Super cool Fin! Hope Mathilda settles in nicely within the Bomber Empire. Now you will have one more employee to keep you in line! Take care, Tom

Sean, The aluminum pieces look awesome! Can't wait to get mine. Thanks for all your hard work on the plates. Considering to send you another order soon. Really stoked to ride your plate and Fin's plate this season. Fin, Please hurry and open up the order que for your plate before my gear budget is blown for the season! Just kidding. Will wait patiently. Thanks!! Tom

My understanding is the board with the Sidewinders is Sigi's.

Guido, Very nice! Please give us a review once you get these babies on the snow. Take care, Tom

A recent edition of Snowstyle Magazine has an advertisement for Carve Magazine for the 2010/2011. This is good news as there was no magazine last season. Carve 20100003.PDF

Most Japanese riders tend to use their arms to establish a rhythm for the lower body to follow (kinda like skiers use poles for rhythm). I think this taught in the "approved curriculum" for the JSBA teaching method. My style is more upright with my upper body quiet as I was taught to carve by some Euros some 20 plus years ago. I get many comments from the locals that I need to move my arms more. Have actually seen some racers using their front arm as a pendulum in the gates. From my experience, Japanese riders tend to be very focused on technique so I have to give them credit for trying to "perfect" their skills. The short carve is drill that is practiced in the early stages of learning to carve. Their drills eventually have the rider hold carve much like a cross over turn - so it progresses from the short carve. I have seen a lot of racers use the short carve as a warm up for SL courses. This is not just a Gifu thing. Attended a 1 day camp there where we started with short carve drills as a warm up and moved into cross under turns. My Nihongo is weak at best so there was probably an explanation of why this is done that I missed. Technical Carving...... Not really an expert on the rules. My understanding is that the rider is required to make a certain amount of cross over and cross under turns during the run. I have not seen a contest in person - only videos. Never seen it in the US either. That contest at Ciao you posted links for looks to be from last season. I roasted my shoulder one run over to the left. You must have been here during the winter sports boom years. Heard it was popular for most people to hit the slopes a few times per season. Everything was super expensive and the resorts were built up then. Now many resorts are about bankrupt and just scraping by. Most of the boomers have lost interest and the younger people have less money and found the internet. On my first stint here I got about 30 days on the slopes per year plus at least 2 trips to Mammoth in CA. Put many kilometers on my Hiace 4X4 in those 3 years (89,000 k's) going snowboarding or surfing. Got to see a lot of cool places and beautiful country. These days it is a stretch to get 20 days on the slopes. My kids are now snowboarding so it is easier sell to my Managing Director (wife). My wife is now riding alpine gear too. Hoping for a good season this upcoming winter - snow and work schedule permitting. If you ever make it over in the winter, check out either the previously mentioned resorts in Gifu or Echo Valley/Royal Hill in Nagano (close to Suwa city) if you want to meet many alpine riders.

Excelsior, Thanks for the links. These videos are too close to home for me. Both were filmed mainly at Dynaland, Takasu Snowpark, Ciao Ontake resorts which are my regular mountains in Gifu prefecture. Both are trailers for the full length videos which are available on DVD (about 30 minutes in length). I have the +clear DVD from 2009 and it is pretty good. Just FYI – they filmed on weekdays so that is why the groomers look wide open and with few people. Weekends are a different story. I like to call it the “human slalom”. There is a rider named Yoshihiro Matsui on alpine gear in both videos. He now rides for SG and is a friendly dude. Great rider too and is highly ranked in the JSBA (Japan Snowboarding Association) discipline called Technical Carving. He reached Demonstrator Status last season which is a big deal. Coincidently the + clear Absolute video has a clip of a set of black/red snowboard gates shown on a ridge. I blew my left shoulder out running those same gates in early April at Ciao Ontake with the SG Japan guys. There will probably be some additional Japanese videos coming later this fall. The SG crew is in New Zealand now and they usually do a lot of filming there. There may also be another DVD from Carve Magazine this fall (October or November) but the details are not available yet. Where were you located in Japan? I have been based out of Nagoya for about 7 years total on 2 work stints over the last 10 years. The Alpine scene here is unreal. Many good (some great) riders and everyone is super friendly. Have met tons of really cool people who are stoked on Alpine and carving. Dynaland has a relatively large Alpine rider count compared to USA standards. The SG Team is based out of this resort. They have Alpine training every weekend for freecarving and race training. Koji Sugimoto of SG Japan (another friendly guy) runs the snowboard school so there is a strong Alpine vibe. Went to Hokkaido for the first time last season and was blown away at how good the snow was. The resort we visited is called Rutsutsu which had unbelievably long groomers. It was a little on the spendy side but it was the closest thing to Utah snow I have ever seen in Japan. FYI – Ogasaka makes some nice boards. Fin carried them a few seasons ago but I think he may be out of stock now. Take care, Tom

Yo Canuck! Nice new Donek. Really like the topsheet selection. Thinking to order a new glass 171 FC II for the wider waist to do a comparison with my Metal FC 171. Used be into the narrower 18 cm decks but have riding 19.5 to 20 cm the last few seasons. Let us know how it rides! Tom

Neil, Hope you and your team enjoyed Mt. Hood. Haven't been there in 20 years. Was planning to get some time there this summer but my injured shoulder is telling me otherwise. Thanks for your report and info regarding the new Doneks. Having purchased several boards from Sean in the last few years I would agree. He is great to work with and his new boards/constructions are quite good. A good chunk of my board budget has been allocated to Donek again this year for 2 decks and a plate system. Any specific feedback on the plate? Thanks and take care, Tom

Shredster, You could always drive to LA and carpool up Mammoth/June with someone from the So Cal Contingent. There is usually someone headed that way each weekend. Also, Horizon (Alaska) offers flights into Mammoth Lakes via LAX - not sure price though. Had many good days at either place over the years. Also lot's of options for places to stay. Worth a consideration. Good luck with the job transfer! Tom

Nice work Finster!! You rule dude. Sign me up! Tom :)