Dan

I'm in and likely to be looking for roommates. I can also do a Zupan's run for tickets for folks that are coming from outside the Portland area - let me know. Will be fun to tear up Bachelor with a carving crew!

Ha ha ha! I laugh gleefully at your puny triple bypass. Come to Oregon this summer (exact date TBD, but at least two weeks before Seattle to Portland) for a ride that will really test your mettle: 120 miles from Portland to Stevenson WA, stopping at four (yes, 4) brew pubs along the way: Mt. Hood Brewing, Elliot Glacier Public House, Full Sail, and Walking Man. The Triple Bypass probably has about 20,000 feet more climbing, but when it comes to IBUs, I'm pretty sure Bikes 'n' Brewpubs takes a commanding lead. :) PNWers, love to see any and everyone out there. Right now this is just going to be a smallish group of friends, but a larger group would be fun too.

:lol: Awesome, D-sub - nicely put. :) Snocarver laid it down pretty well too, I think. Additional thoughts which it's not worth my time to share with the jib kids on the Subaru site. I was at the Nagano Olympics in '98...I had a friend working in Nagano City Hall who put us up at his apartment, which was the only way I could afford the trip. I was hanging out with a Sims/Da Kine product tester named Ian (we were both from Portland, and both living in Sapporo at the time) at the men's snowboard GS. Ian was pretty well connected at the time and was greeting a lot of industry acquaintances that had made the trip to Japan to see the first Olympic snowboarding. He made a point of introducing me to a guy named Rob and some guy named Tom, talking up my 'leet Japanese skills until I was kind of embarrassed. When they left, he looked at me and said "That was Rob Morrow and Tom Sims." <b>D'oh!</b> A while after that I saw Klug's board disintegrate on the monitors (the upper part of the course didn't have seating - just TV cameras sending an image down to the seats, which were below the last pitch and the finish line)... Aah, memories. Anyway, my point is that if Tom Sims and Rob Morrow thought that snowboard GS was interesting/important enough to show up, the opinion of a marketing-seduced newbie who probably can't carve his soft setup is, well, pretty much meaningless. I mean, I could tell you what I think about nuclear physics, but you'd be wasting your time if you actually put any thought into what I said. A digression, but the other cool thing that happened that day: I also met the Hot alpine team manager, and when I told him I rode a Hot Rod, he gave me my first schwag ever: a Hot hat that I still have/wear. Nostalgia, ain't it great?

Hey Illwill, sorry to hear about your wrist injury. Broken wrists are indeed a common injury for beginning snowboarders - the natural reaction is to put out your hands to catch yourself when you fall, and that doesn't always work out so well. Still, I'm not sure that's a reason for you to give up the sport. Forewarned is forearmed, right? You can pick up some wrist braces (try googling "no gomers") that will keep you from breaking your wrist again, and once you've been riding a season or two, the chances of that type of injury go way way down. I'd encourage you to give it another shot. If you do decide that you want to sell your gear though, note that what you have is not the type of equipment most people here are looking for (lots of race/alpine board junkies here, myself included), so it may be hard to make a deal. You might try your local Craigslist instead. Cheers, Dan

Awesome - the next generation of carvers is on the way.

If he is indeed a "purist" shouldn't he be riding in Sorels on a plywood board with no P-tex, no metal edges, and rubber straps for bindings? Or maybe riding a Snurfer, with a rope handle and no bindings at all... Oh yeah, and hiking for his runs rather than riding the chair. Meh, I don't know what to tell you. The best thing to do would probably be to show him some carving, as other people have already suggested. If that doesn't turn him on to what's cool about carving, forget about it - he's clearly brain-dead.

e-mail sent. Thanks!

Hey Jim, I <b>did</b> ask on Dave's blog - in the comments section. It was moderated out and never appeared on the site. I'm guessing that they have a policy against dissatisfied customers using the blog to air their concerns, which I think sucks. Probably we'd have better results writing the Forest Service (Meadows is on Forest Service land, right?) with CC to Meadows. And I'm sorry I missed you on Saturday - I forgot my radio :( and never spotted you on the hill. Did you have a good day? I had a great day - I finally feel like I'm starting to remember how this snowboarding thing works.

Hi all, I keep telling myself that I have enough boards for the time being, but just hypothetically if I were to see a great deal, or happened to come into some unexpected money, what should I get next? Here's what I have now: -Slalom deck: this is a Generics, around 155 cm I believe. I got it from Mark Anderson last season and haven't even had a chance to ride it yet. -Rock board/loaner board: Osin Sinner 167. Very stiff and on the heavy side, but it has fun pop, plenty of camber, and I got it for a song off of eBay, so I don't mind riding it in low snow years or early/late in the season. -Freeride board: Arbor Munoz 162. Last board I bought before starting to ride hardboots. Wish I'd gotten the 166 now. -GS board: Oxygen Proton 172: I love this board, though I'm intrigued by the folks that have posted saying that Volkls and Donek/Prior/Coilers are much better rides. -Powder board: Osin 4870 178 cm: haven't even ridden this bad boy yet because I got it at the very end of the '03/'04 season and there was never enough snow to take it out last year. -all-mountain carver: Oxygen F-67 167 cm: I've only got one day on this so far and it wasn't quite as much fun as I'd hoped. It's not as confidence-inspiring as the Proton - not sure if it's the width, the sidecut, less edge, or if it just needs a tuneup. (or maybe I just needed a tuneup - it was my first day on the snow this year.) So...where's the hole that should be filled? I'm somewhat interested in a GS deck over 180 cm, and I'd be interested in a longish all-mountain carver too: an Axis, 4x4, or the Coiler equivalent. What else, in your opinion, should I be looking at? ------------ Oh yeah, forgot to say that I'm 5'11", about 155 pounds.

Hey Randy, good to hear that you're back on the snow. I know very well that injuries are always a possibility (I have wonky knees and one bad Achilles myself), so it's heartening to see that you're making a fairly speedy recovery. Hope that this season goes well for you, that you get lots of snow down in the Tahoe area (but not if you swipe all our precipitation like last year), and that you're back at 100% soon.

Hey Jim, You should post your own thread here with a title like "Greetings from an Oregon carver-to-be." Good place to ask for advice and see if anyone else has loaner gear or stuff they can let go for cheap. As I told you, I have a loaner setup that you're welcome to borrow if we can meet up at Meadows, but the boots may be a little small for you. Just off the top of my head, there's oldsnowboards.com (aka Bryan S), Ginsu, slopetool and P06781 in the Portland area, and MikeT in Bend.

Hey Jim, Yep, that was me. Great to make some turns with you and to meet someone that's so enthusiastic about learning alpine! On boot sizes, my spare pair are 27.0 UPS boots, I believe (UPS is now called UPZ). That's the length in centimeters, from heel to toe. To get your accurate foot size, trace your foot on a piece of paper while standing up and measure the largest distance from heel to the front of the big toe. I come in at 27.2 cm and my boots fit me like a glove: I can only wear them with liner socks. If you're around the same measurement, you can definitely wear my spares next time you make it up to Meadows. Let me know what your plans are like for the next few weeks. -Dan

I have a 172; I think it's from the '01/'02 season. (Black with red and white graphics.) I love it - has great edge hold and is very damp. It's very forgiving of operator error too - overall I think it's a great board.

Wow, holy smokes, that really <b>is</b> a long board. Allright BOL'ers, who's tough enough to step up and ride the 446?

Will be up at Mt. Hood Meadows tomorrow (Saturday 12/17). Any other carvers going to be up there? Shout out an FRS channel if so and maybe we can hook up on the mountain. Carpooling is also a possibility - leaving from the Hawthorne area and would like to be there for a 9 a.m. open - let me know.

D'oh! Looks like my reading comprehension needs some work. And here I was about to ask for a "bro" deal on a swallowtail. :)

Wait, did you just say that you own (co-own anyway) Winterstick? How cool is that? Got any plans for the company that you can share with us?

And all the silverware is plastic now, even though the stuff they use is barely sharp enough to cut scrambled eggs...and they still hand out nice pointy chopsticks, which would be a much better stabbing tool than any piece of lame dull airline silverware.

Disclaimer: I've never used step-ins and know nothing about them. But if you're starting to question whether your bindings are still reliable, hell yes I'd say it's time to replace them. It's like bike helmets: gotta replace them after a couple of years, even if you've never wrecked on them. Sure, it sucks to spend the $50 or whatever, but it's way way cheaper than wrecking in a helmet that's not up to par, right?

Put your soft snowboard boots in your dad's hands and ask him to imagine trying to ski in them. Or, more to the point, trying to <u>carve</u> his skis in them. <br> Can't imagine that he'll give you much trouble after that.

? What is this "rail jam" of which you speak? :)

Hey, is that Eric E., formerly of Reed College? If so, how have you been?

I've done this occasionally for summer riding at Mt. Hood, where between the park rats and the damn junior high ski racers, your topsheet's life isn't worth a plugged nickel: take off your board when you get into the lift line, carry it until you're on-deck for the chair, and only then put it back down and re-engage your front boot. Taping/gluing some sandpaper to the tail should work too...

Any special reason for going to Korea rather than Japan? Hokkaido is pretty good for snowboarding...

Yeti/penguin game was better. For this game, there's no way to predict/aim at balloons, trampolines, etc., so it's really just digital slots - just a question of playing long enough to get lucky. Phooey. And dammit, the best I could do was about 500. :)