Dan

Hey Mike! (SirDoofus, that is, not Mike T.) Good to hear from you - I was just wondering if you were still in town and riding at Meadows. Yep, I moved back from Seattle in the summer, and I'm living with a few of the same roommates as two years ago. You remember Octavio? He got himself a Rossi Throttle and some hard boots a few years ago, but has barely touched the alpine gear due to foot pain. He finally went to a bootfitter, but since then the season has been pretty much non-existent so... Sorry I can't join you tomorrow, but I think I'll be on the mountain on Thursday. Hope to see you up there sometime this season...maybe at MHES? Happy carving tomorrow!

Jim, I was up there on Friday too. I was riding up on Vista around 10:30 and I spotted someone carving nice turns; light gray/putty-colored jacket. Was that you? I couldn't get your attention... sure was a nice day though. Hope that I'll be able to play hooky from work again this week.

You guys rock. Gotta love the carving brotherhood. Randy, thanks much for the offer - I'd love to take you up on it. I'll give you a call later tonight, when I get home. As a matter of fact, I was just looking at flights and car rentals to do exactly what you suggested. What are the roads like? Can I get away with renting a two-wheel drive, no chains, or should I splurge on an SUV? (Note that I am a cautious and experienced driver on snow - in fact, I drive like someone's 90-year-old maiden aunt.) OT, but did you know the cheapest hotel I could find in Reno is $18/day?!? Damn, that's cheap. I'll have to find someone that's playing slots and thank them for paying for my room.

Hi all, I just picked up a freelance gig covering this panel discussion in Berkeley http://berkeleyabc.org/2005/panels.htm#Game in a few weeks. It's on Saturday, so I'm thinking that I'll crank out the article Saturday night/Sunday morning and head to Tahoe. Many questions: 1) Assuming that I ride Tahoe on Monday, what would be a reasonable time to fly out? Can I make, say, a 7 p.m. flight? 2) Which airport is most convenient for Tahoe? 3) Which area at Tahoe do you recommend for carving and an airport-friendly location? 4) What are the chances of demoing/renting a carving board at Tahoe if I bring my own boots/bindings? (I'd prefer not to bring my own board, cause I'll already be lugging my laptop. and I'm a little paranoid of trusting my baby to the tender mercies of the airline baggage handlers - I only have a soft bag). Thanks for your help - stoked for the chance to ride an area with some actual snow!

Derf - I'm running a 50 cm stance, measured king pin to king pin on my Cateks. (i.e., center of front plate to center of back plate)

Hey Derf, I have an O Sin Sinner 167, but I'm not sure if it's the same model as the one you saw. Mine has a blue-gray topsheet with small flame graphics at tip, waist and tail, and some playing cards at the waist with "Original Sin" printed below them. The base says "Sinner" in large letters that extend the length of the board. Weird that everyone describes this as a pretty soft board; I've always thought that it's much stiffer than my Proton GS, and not as damp as people are describing. (Note that I only weigh 150 pounds.) It does have decent width, and though I've never taken it out on a really deep powder day, I've ridden it off-piste a few days after a storm and it floated and handled the crud OK. One other thing to note is that the inserts are pretty close together. (Someone told me that was the Euro style when this board was made.) I'm 5' 11" and to get it comfy for me I'm using the frontmost inserts up front and the backmost (is that a word?) inserts in the back, with the base plate turned backwards to get another half inch or so. If you're much taller than me, you will struggle to find a riding position that works for you. In a nutshell: I got this board on eBay for $75, and I feel like that was an OK price for it, but now that I have another alpine board, I've pretty much relegated this one to rock board/loaner status.

As it turned out, I was up at Meadows on Saturday, and it was pretty decent. I was riding a freeride board with Cateks. Had good timing and got first tracks on Daisy, early tracks on Vista, and close-to-first tracks on Cascade. The powder runs were pretty good - didn't find any rocks (knock wood) - but like Jason said, there wasn't any carving to be had. If it stays cold and they don't lose much base this week, I'll probably try to head up on Thursday...anyone?

Everyone's feedback helped me decide to take dates over snowboarding. Thanks guys! :-)

The optimists at MHM are planning to open on Saturday apparently (and presumably Sunday as well). Hmmm. Local folks, what do you say? Do you think it's worth heading up? They claim to have been using snowmaking.

6 inches overnight: http://www.nwac.us/~nwac/products/OSOMHM This is making me as happy as 36-inch storms in better years.

...I wish they would send some up to Oregon.

Huh, no kidding. I didn't know that about snowboard helmets. I know that bike helmets have a finite lifespan, but look at them...there's not much there, just styrofoam with a plastic shell for looks and to shed water. And bike crashes are likely to involve much harder impacts than than snowboarding wrecks, so the "wreck and replace" makes sense to me. But I really thought that snowboarding helmets were more durable. The styrofoam liner's not much different, but the outside plastic shell _looks_ multiple-impact resistant. Replace after one impact? Hell, I'd have to have five or six for each day of riding. (OK, that's a slight exaggeration, but you get my point: I wreck my snowboard way more often than I fall off my bike.) And what about the skate rats that spend all day in the pipe/park? They whack their heads pretty frequently, don't they? Are those helmets also one-shot-only?

Is that a freeride board or an alpine board? How did you like riding it - does that dual camber thing really work better than "single camber" boards?

Can anyone recommend an FRS radio? I've been mooching off my roomie's set for long enough. Oh - I'd probably prefer to buy a pair, but if you know of something good that comes as a single unit, I'd look at that too.

Hey Mike, are you interested in my Nidecker Next Step? The stated length is 159 cm, and tip/waist/tail by my measure are 27/21.5/27. I got it new and put maybe 4 hours of riding on it - it's just too flexible for me to have much fun with. There are a couple of scratches in the base, but nothing deep, and the topsheet and edges are pretty clean. I'd want around $40 for it, I guess (I got a pretty good deal on it), or I'd consider bartering (and throwing in a few more $) if you have any toys you're thinking about parting with. Let me know if you're interested and I'll post or send you a photo. You're welcome to swing by my place in PDX, or I'll be on the mountain Wednesday (hopefully) and probably one day this weekend as well, if you want to meet up there and take a look.

Hey Gecko, where do you live in Japan? When I lived in Hokkaido (Sapporo) six years ago and was riding frequently, stolen board announcements were a pretty common occurrence. It was so sad; they'd fire up the PA system and say something like "Will the customer that has mistakenly taken a green and black Sims 162 please return it to the lost and found." I thought that was awfully absentminded (who takes the wrong board?) until one of my Japanese friends told me that those are stolen boards announcement. (How Japanese is that? It just wouldn't be nice to say "hey everyone, be on the lookout for a swiped Sims.") Come to think of it, I was pretty serious about locking up my bike and securing both wheels too, because the bike shop dude told me that there was a lot of bike theft/wheel theft in Sapporo. It was probably all due to the high population of Aussie/Kiwi/U.S. ski bums in town. :-) ------------------------- edited to add Oh, that was a dumb question, wasn't it? Heck, living in Yokohama, I'm surprised you've had such good luck with leaving your bike and boards unlocked.

She coached at the snowperformance camp 1.5 years ago, and cracked a bunch of jokes about retiring when her boots were no longer repairable. I don't remember if she has any spares at all or if she's literally on her last set, but they're definitely out-of-production Burtons. Could Burton reproduce their old hard boots now if they wanted to? Do they have the lasts, molds, etc., or is all that stuff in a dump in Vermont somewhere?

I eat lunch and snacks on the chair and water a tree when Nature calls (Heh, I actually hit bottom last week - that's how little snow we've got on Hood.), so this wouldn't be much of an issue...but I like to bring up at least two boards most days. So I invested the extra $20 in getting the ski check endorsement on my season pass. $20 to check as many boards as you want at the base all season sounded like a pretty good deal to me. Am I the only one that uses the ski/board check?

Not if you ride on the edges :-) Seriously, as board geeks, that stuff bothers us, but I don't think it makes much of a performance difference - have you noticed any issues with your boards that have binding suck? I never have...

Can you believe it? I went up to Meadows this weekend and not one, not two, but a whole <b>three</b> people were enthusiastic about alpine/knew what it was! Now, conditions did kind of suck, but half of Shooting Star Ridge was groomed and semi-soft, which was enough to keep me happy for a couple of hours (it was my first day, after all). After that, I checked out the rest of the mountain, but it was iced up pretty solid - I wanted one of them Icicle Fairies, or Snow Weasels, or Freezer Snakes, or whatever you Madd-men are calling your 158s. So, the alpine enthusiasts - best comment was from a liftie taking his break. He said "Man, sometimes I see a bunch of you guys up there ripping and it looks totally cool." (Which made me wonder: how many is "a bunch"?) He asked me what it would cost to get into alpine and I had to tell him it'd be hard to do for less than $300, which he seemed pretty disappointed to hear. Another guy told me "it takes balls to ride an alpine board up here today!" I'm not sure why he thought that, but hey, at least he knew it was an alpine board. Finally, another liftie asked me what it was like riding alpine and of course I told him that it r0x0rs. Hmm, I talked to three people about alpine - that makes something like 25% of the people on the hill that day. Pretty good, huh?

Sweet! Nicely done.

Thanks guys. I have to admit that until about 20 minutes ago, I was operating on the "ignorance is bliss" theory, and hadn't actually looked at Bryan's slideshow. Now I have, and all I can say is "@#$%$#@$!!" The first season I have a Meadows pass and I'll have to buy a T-line pass if I actually want to see any snow. That's like...totally weak. Still, I am a sucker and Bryan, as you pointed out, I do have that jones for snow coming on, so I may just have to wheel up there this weekend and check things out.

Hey Portland-area folks, what do you think the outlook is for Meadows tomorrow and Saturday? Is it worth going up? (I have a season pass, mind you, so I'm a little anxious to get up there.) Has anyone been up in the last day or two? Is it still a sheet of ice, or did they lay some man-made snow on top? Thanks, Dan

Hey Bryan, Yeah, I thought a skwal might be kind of cool, but I can't line up bindings. Summer carving treated me pretty well - it's the cycling that turned on me...I added another set of scars to my elbow on my way to work a few months ago.

I picked up the terms "Maytag" and "maytagging" from someone on this site...can't remember who though. Such a great image - when you crash just right and do a couple end-over-end flips, it's just like the spin cycle.