Dan

Thanks, but those are just the bindings...I need a board too. That is a pretty good price though...I'll keep an eye on 'em and maybe pick them up if they don't go too much higher.

Do you happen to know the sidecut radius on the Rossi Race 166?

this post. No one has a skwal collecting dust that they'd like to sell me?

My lazy roomie asked me to post for him, so here it is: one pair of 26 high cuff liners please. We're in Portland, so can pay in person if you're ever here/we're out there, or he'll write you a check if you'd prefer. -Dan

Just out of curiosity...what's the project? Are you going to mount trucks on it? ;-)

Me! I've got an MLY longboard deck that Brian at (oldsnowboards.com) cut me a sweet deal on. (apparently MLY was experimenting with skateboards and Brian got a bunch of their prototypes/early production models.) Don't remember what kind of trucks it's got, but it has Kryptonite wheels. I have the great good fortune of 20 blocks of downhill on lightly-used streets on the way to my office, so until the rain started, I was skating to work most days. I have a Flowlab too but I'm not crazy about it. To me, it feels a lot more like skidding than carving - the longboard is a better off-season trainer. I wear a helmet (now that I finally found one), but no pads. Hopefully I won't regret this one day...

I don't know how tall you are, but for carving (even with a few jumps thrown in), you may find a 159 a little bit short. Are you riding freeride boards around that length now? If so, it shouldn't be too hard to move up to a 169 carving deck, and the extra length/stability really makes a difference at high speeds. I demo'd a 169 4WD at Whistler 2 seasons ago and it was a really fun ride. FYI, I'm about five foot eleven, and around 155 pounds.

I have trouble finding helmets that fit too - it took me all summer to find a big enough skate helmet. But I've been really happy with my Giro snowboard helmet. It's an "L" or maybe a "L/XL" (I don't remember exactly how their sizing works.) If I were you, I'd keep looking 'til you find a store that stocks large sizes of Giro helmets. Looks like REI Outlet has some S4s on sale right now - check it out: <a href="http://www.rei.com/outlet/product/47821638.htm?">http://www.rei.com/outlet/product/47821638.htm?</a>

Hey all, now that I'm finally out of school and a (somewhat) productive member of society again, I'm lusting for more winter toys. I seem to remember that someone mentioned a pro deal on the Volkl skwals last winter - is that still a possibility? Or, does anyone have one in their basement that they're looking to get rid of? Ideally I'd like to pay up to about $150+shipping. thanks, Dan

Hey D-sub, just a heads up: one of my roommates is probably interested. He's got pretty small feet, so I think he might be able to work with the sizes they've got. He'll be posting shortly, or he may e-mail you directly. Thanks!

D-sub, I feel the same way. I grew up skiing at Bachelor, then didn't get up there for 10 years or so. When I came back on a carving board, I found everything a little too tight/steep for my liking, except a few runs that were too flat or had irritating double fall lines (like coffee run, I think). Funny, 'cause I remember thinking that Ed's Garden was the funnest run ever when I was a 12-year old on skis. Better snow later in the season should help, and I'm sure that all these guys' suggestions on carve-friendly runs will be helpful too. Let us know how you're doing in a couple of weeks and what you've enjoyed riding out there.

I have one of those Nidecker Next Steps that were on eBay last year. (I think it's a 161 or thereabouts; kind of a soft, entry-level freecarving board.) I paid $50+ shipping and rode it about 2x - way too soft for me. I guess I'd want $35 for it. The top is near mint (has binding marks), the base has one biggish scratch that doesn't go through to the core. If you're in the LA area, I have a friend that's driving down there next week and might be willing to do a delivery run/meet up with you. Interested?

I've driven the Element when living in Seattle, where it's available as one of Flexcar's (car rental by the hour) standard options. It is amazingly roomy inside - I was driving with a friend who plays in a jazz band, and he was saying that their whole setup (drums, instruments, speakers) would fit in the car. However, I was hideously embarrassed to drive it around - for me, it shrieks "old man's car." YMMV - if you don't mind the looks, it would be a really handy snowboarding vehicle.

Hi there, I've been hosting two movies since the summer. One I got from Pokkis, so this may be the same film as the one he linked to in his post above (can't check now 'cause I'm at work. It's OK to surf Bomber, but watching video might be a little frowned upon.) http://www.gamingjapan.net/attack/tcsb.avi And here's "Hard Attack," an old-school alpine film from maybe the late 80s or so. http://www.gamingjapan.net/attack/hardattack.mpeg Enjoy! (Note: I have tons more bandwidth than I normally use, but if I start getting near my quota, I may take things down until next month.)

Hmm, this thread is getting kind of OT, but :-) In Opera, if I use the View-->Encoding-->Japanese option, I'm able to view Japanese. Does that not work for you? -Dan

Here's what I make of it: "This e-mail is automatically generated. Once you've consented to the credit card user agreement, we'll decide whether to allow you to register as a credit card user. If you're approved, we'll e-mail you the URL for the registration page, a user ID and a password." Heck, Babelfish did pretty well. It just didn't know that "CC" (in Roman script) is the Japanese abbreviation for "credit card." Note that you shouldn't need a Japanese OS - I'm doing just fine with English Win2k and Opera as a browser. I don't even think I've installed the Windows IME. Are you buying DVDs from Carvingmachine? Kewl. As far as that flowchart...um, post again if you really need help with that. It's not that hard to read, but it will be kind of painful to describe what text matches what section of the flowchart. It would help a lot if you numbered the text fields.

Thanks for all the suggestions - I really appreciate it, and I think I'll head for Kamloops. Just to clarify, I'm looking for a trip that's about 700 miles one-way - the return will be bus and/or train. Mark, thanks for the offer of route maps - I won't know for sure whether I can go or not for a few more days, but if it turns out that I can go, I'd definitely like to see them. I cut my cycle-touring teeth in SE Asia, riding solo from Singapore to HK in 1999, so I'm not too worried about handling the daily grind of finding food and potable water and riding the miles. I'm a little worried about crossing mountain ranges (never had to climb anything taller than 1000 feet or so on a loaded bike), but hopefully I'll be in shape by the time I hit the mountains: I'll be biking from PDX to Vancouver if things work out the way I hope. And Mark - I totally agree that spending time on the road is one of the most relaxing and positive experiences around. It's so liberating to be away from phones/e-mail/mail... Whenever I come back from a long tour, I'm a much more relaxed, friendly, pleasant person for a week or two - too bad it wears off and I go back to my customary cussedness. :-) Anyway, thanks to everyone for the input and I'll post again to let y'all know how things turn out.

Hi all, here's a travel-related question. If all goes according to plan/hopes, I'll be able to take about 3 weeks to cycle tour this August. I'll be departing from Vancouver BC, and I'm in lousy shape now, so I'll realistically probably only be able to go 700 miles or so. What's 700 miles from Vancouver that's worth cycling to? Possible destinations: National parks, good microbreweries (are there any in Canada?), interesting cities, ski areas with good summer activities/facilities or ??? Thanks for your suggestions!

Has anyone had any Achilles, ankle, or foot injuries from skating? I'm not talking about inuries from a crash - more curious about repetitive-motion type injuries. I've had my board just a week or so, and I'm getting these weird pains in both feet. Is it just me? Am I doing something wrong?

Hi all, don't know if anyone is still looking for the Hard Attack movie or not, but thanks to a new and generous bandwidth limit from my hosting company, I can host it for a while. You should be able to download it here: http://www.gamingjapan.net/attack/hardattack.mpeg Kudos to Jason Watkins for taking the time to upload it to my FTP site. Note that I now get 50 gigs of transfer a month...I figure that's enough to download the movie about 200 times. If it looks like I'm going to go over my bandwidth quota, I'll have to pull down the movie until the start of August. Happy downloading! Oh, and just out of curiousity, if you'd post what kind of speed you're getting on your download, that would be great. I get about 60 k/second when I'm the only person downloading...what will it look like when you snow-deprived carvers all hit it at once?

Hey, if you knew what I looked like under the face paint, you'd thank me for using this pic as my avatar!

$15?! Heck, I gotta start going to yard sales!

Hey, does anyone have a used longboard they're looking to unload? Cash is a little tight right now and I can only pay about $50. I live in Portland OR if anyone wants to meet and do the exchange in person. Thanks!

I'd just like to digress for a moment to say that I think this thread is a good example of the difference between alpine and freestyle riders. Jeepers, is everyone here (except me) this technical?

I'm not too sure what your parameters are when you say "make a trip of it." Does that mean you have a few weeks to play with and could travel outside the HK/Macau/Guangzhou area? If so, I'd highly recommend Angkor Wat - it was still pretty far off the beaten track when I visited in '99 and I think the sooner you get out there the better. Vietnam is absolutely beautiful and has stellar cuisine, but the people in big cities tend to be extremely skilled at separating tourists from their money, and I was constantly surrounded by people with their hands out when I was there. If you can stick to smaller towns, it's worth a trip. Thailand is nice and very approachable if you've never traveled in Asia before, with friendly people and of course, Thai food. People talk about the islands Ko Tao and Ko Phi Phi a lot, though I haven't been myself. There's supposed to be good hiking in the Chiang Mai area (northern Thailand), and Bangkok turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. In my opinion. Malaysia and Singapore are kind of ho-hum, though there is great Indian food in Malaysia. Traveling in China might be a little bit challenging, but if you have time and inclination, I'd suggest Guilin, a town/region famous for its beautiful mountains and laid back atmosphere, and maybe X'ian, where the terra cotta soldiers are/were found (of course, that depends on how you feel about museums). If you're feeling adventurous, I highly recommend cycle touring in the region, but you'd need to have a fair amount of time on your hands for that, of course.