SteveInOregon

I was on the Douglass lift and I saw You doing some smooth turns passing under me at 9AM'sh Thursday the 1st open day after the 11ft dump.

Q: Can I use hardboots on my freeride board? A: Yes. In fact, the cheapest way to try hardboot snowboarding is to just buy some bindings and use your existing ski boots or buy some cheap snowboarding hardboots, and use your freeride board. But while hardboots allow you to realize greater carving ability, they also reveal the limitations of your equipment. Most freeride boards are simply not up to the task of handling the forces carving generates, and you may quickly find your freeride board folding or chattering as you begin to carve harder. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My Experience: To be helpful to us newer hard booter's aka "trench schlepper's" as apposed to experienced & skilled trench "diggers", the above statement is spot on. I have a 176 Free ride all mountain board, granted its a super long board by soft boot standards but not all that long by alpine carve standards. The POS+ & NEG- of changing over & hybrid board "wanna carving" I'm going to explain this in "Boarder Joe" language, and not attempt to sound like I know more than I do. Having had hard plates and hard boots on this board for only 7 trip / sessions starting with this Xmass day, I too have noticed that I am over stressing my equipment made for a different purpose, but I see & feel a stark difference and am encouraged but what I have experienced so far. This nice old 176 board is plenty floaty for pow , fast for slush and stable for steep dusty smooth groom at pretty darn fast speed 45 to 55'ish speeds. "But" I find myself under-gunned when attempting to carve & link carve turns. I am un-able to hold a steep angle edge at a relatively fast speed, it starts to chatter , buck and break out and I can feel it will bend & literally snap if I go any harder & faster into a steep & deep carve. The speed bleeds off too fast, I think partly because of my unrefined technique ( toilet butt ) , higher boot angles, the side cut & bend flex of the board working to stay rather than stay planted and glide the egde The board seams to be working too hard to do what I want which also seams to swallow up my speed because of the slowness of the board to respond to hard boot & fast input , high angle and less than perfect groom the board sorta lag's & drags The moral of the story is : 1st) Yes get hard boots & hard plates , Yes get them, toss them on your longest free ride board, read about *boot canting-&-lift angles and boot mounting angles because that is moocho important, * "flat" hard booting probably will limit You from the start ( it did me ) Then You will experience the vast difference right away , but once you start to get comfy with hard boots and lowering your boot angles adjusting cant & lift you will fast want to do what I am doing and 2) move on to a used pure carve board ( I'm waiting on UPS to deliver it ) and then 3) If I am still alive by next season I will pop the big bucks for the new expensive stuff. Should you bust out 5 to 12 large for a board, 3 to 5 for boots and other junk and walk on stage "lookin good" but still riding pizza down the slope, well I cant answer that for you , myself I like to work my way up from 280 Z to Corvette then on to F1 Remembering the old Tennis axiom "better to have 10 dollar strokes and 10 cent racket, than 10 dollar racket and 10 cent strokes, lol.

So your bitching about havnng to pay 40 bucks for a hot blond super model, when Tiger Woods pays thousands for one ??? Ohhh sorry, I just put my glasses on and re-read Your post, I was distracted staring at the Boo----t's, lol:)

I thought all you Swiss guy's were unscrupulously honest , now how am I gonna keep my millions in Your banks if I hear a puffed up powder report like that , LOL one of us is full of it, ( ok I am ) :lol:

:).................................................

http://www.youtube.com/user/Patrix76#p/a/u/0/I5Ithg_9EXo

Just like a gun case. http://www.sportube.com/pages/snowboards.php

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- I guess it's just a matter of $ price then. I got an internal mail from you here I replied to it ( I'm not familiar with IM's & PM's in forums ) so please let me know in which ever return mode you wish to inform me of your asking price. Thanks

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank You for replying. What do you notice about the ride with this kind of base damage ? I don't really need a bucket load of speed, because I am a beginning carver, besides I can just find a "steeper" to ride down to bomb. What I want to know is how does it handle??? If someone just put you on this board with no prior knowledge of its base issues could you really tell the difference in handling ? Starting out on the cheep, I am looking to eliminate any equipment factors in my learning curve and put the lack of good carving on my poor technique alone with no excuse for my old equipment ( does that make sense ) Thanks again.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ya, I hear you have a literal truck load sized collection of vintage, cool, collectible & older tray's.

http://cgi.ebay.com/prior-ATV-snowboard-with-plate-bindings_W0QQitemZ110485856564QQcmdZViewItemQQptZSnowboarding?hash=item19b9786134

Southern Oregon , actually right at the base of Mnt Ashland

I'm looking to buy an older long pure carving board, something that is well used, perhaps has a lot of cosmetic top sheet scars, old sticker discolorations and perhaps been rocked a few times, but still has good clean serviceable edge all the way around & still performs (( NO De-lam , tork twisted Junk )) around $100 to & $150 plus what ever shipping charges apply It has to be a minimum of 175, the longer the better. The "For Sale" section here is almost impossible to buy from due to high volume of watcher-buyers checking in from all over the world snatching up the cheap rides moment by moment. Thanks

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- DITTOS

I "LOVE" it, very inspirational and well made.

EDIT UPDATE : Seller backed out

:lol:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm with you Snowman, I am a newb to "hardbootin" as they say in Min-ay-soo-tay, ( tho not even new to SB SB'ing ) even tho I got a big mouth and some subjective & felonious opinions lol, I got a LOT of + PM's of encouragment to keep posting my newb post's ( minus the sarcasm & person jab's of course ) Digressing: It's funny I get comments like " Wow what kind of cool set up is that" every single time I go out which has only been this season ( my 1st on hard bo bo's ) When I slide off the chair lift and "lock in" my back boot not stopping as a slide by the "butt clickers " sitting on their butt clicking in they say " cool did you see that guy lock n load in the fly" or something like that. It's funny to pull up to the bar or snack bar and my board ( 176 ) is the tallest gun in the rack, I cant wait to move up to a 180 gun Even the lift'ies ( lift line workers ) say things line "Dam whats that" and last night during a night time session with 1 foot of fresh down, the chair butler said " I NEVER seen anything like that in my life ( His 18 year old life ) ;)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- It looks kind of "disco" when he 1st starts, but then did you notice the up hill traffic is not stopped so He is putting his life on the line crossing the center line to shoot a technically well made video. Myself I would never do what he did on a road open to traffic,that takes balls or lack of brains. He looks to be going 55'sh or more on the straightaways and that looks like fun

I vaguely remember reading a study from the NFL just a few years back and they found brain lesions on the quarterbacks brain after scans 1 lesion / bruise for each concussion after following the carriers of quarterbacks. From what I remember the NFL has a mandatory retirement after 17 brain lesions / 17 concussions. Didn't an actress die after she bonked her head and didnt go in for observation, because she was fine, "but" an epidural or sub arachnoid hematoma ( swelling of the brain ) can develop 1 to 2 hours later and that is what killed her.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The camera man is just as good as the carve man, excellent stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS31BVj9g-A

To Cool, I love the "Man Cave" & what a great place & environment for a boy to grow up in :)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My Reply: I'm nodding my head in agreement. I had a similar experience, I brought my hand held Flip video cam and tried to hold it in my lead -down hill hand and video a "gun n run" and it took away just a small percentage of my concentration so I just stopped half way through the run I needed 100% concentration. I more than likely would be video taping my own crash,lol. I got on E-bay and bought an Oregon Scientific helmet cam so I don't have to think about anything but the run.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My Reply: Thank You Sir, YES Yes yes thank you I thought I was all alone here and the only guy who wants to go fast "and" carve, lol. Yes 45mph on a motorcycle and my eyes tear up and I have to start squinting and flip the visor down ( same with goggles on for SB'ing ) so the motorcycle analogy works , 55 and I get wind buffeting no wind buffeting yet so I know I am under 55 on the slope. YES, You are doing exactly what I am speaking about, fast but "sane" picking your spots, being able to see way ahead and no groomers around, staying within you skill-speed level, going up tempo then back off and cruise or carve, bidding your time etc.... Some times there is just no way to tuck & run f-a-s-t because the slope has to many factors ( mainly people ) people or even 1 single person can be to many for me to go fast , if that person is a skier running a short quik line it could change real fast & I / we could be in trouble so I back off , or a cruiser runing big curvy 45 or God forbid a newbee who finds himself out on the Black so I just go back to c~a~r~v~e & relax. Now 55/60/70mph like You do is WAY to fast for me. If I were to attempt a "steep" steep like you I would be an idiot I would be "out of control" at the speed you are experienced at but You have built up your skill over time and now one man's insane is another guy's cruise. I actually drive 100 miles to the next ski/board resort-mountain to practice speed because the resort mountain in my back yard only 10 miles from me is too narrow , too steep, too blind cornered, to many intersections, too short, to dangerous all around for my level of HB rider to "tuck in" but for a few seconds. Its tempting but my danger meter tilts to Red too fast and I listen to it and so I practice my linked carves on the home mountain and my "wanabee" GS'er aka old geezer tuck n run's on the bigger mountain 100 miles away. Thank You for taking the time to reply, take Care.