Corey

Taken with an iPhone 3G camera in the shade from a swinging chairlift, I'm impressed it turned out as well as it did! My carving/slarving marks from a Coiler Monster on a -26C (-15F) morning with rock hard corduroy. Note that some of the chunks blasted out still have the groomer ridges in them. That cracked me up!

Try not to look so guilty Fin. You look like you're trying to swallow a crack rock in that screenshot. :p Good luck with the fight. Post updates if you can! Writing out a transcript to go along with the video can help too. Do it now while it's fresh in your memory.

I rode Xmas eve, boxing day, and the 27th at a local hill. The average skill level of skiers and snowboarders here is quite poor. Carving is very rare except for the top 2% of skiers and 0.5% of snowboarders. Those numbers may be kind... 1. The most common question was "Is that hard?" After it got repetitive, I started having fun with my replies: "No, I just started this morning/yesterday/last week!" I always laughed and gave them a serious answer immediately after. 2. One guy asked me why I was on an old-fashioned board. (I was on a Coiler Monster 182 with TD3s) I replied that it was made in November of this year. He then asked why I would get a new board that was made like the old boards were. I cut my losses, smiled, and suggested he watch racing at the olympics. 3. "How can you get that low and stand up again?" 4. "If I try to follow your tracks I take about twice as long to get to the bottom as you do. WTF?" - Beginner/intermediate skier on carving skis. We had a good chat on the lift ride up. 5. "Does that hurt?" 6. The steepest run (would be a shallow black in mtns) is under a chair that you need to ride to transition over to the blue runs with the terrain park, so it's often filled with park rats that don't ever ride this sort of terrain. I heard all kinds of things that equate to "Wow!" but in language that would be changed to **** here. ;) Way more cheers than jeers. That's cool!

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=93481 The trouble will be finding a 5mm impact bit. I think those are a little bigger than the standard bits on the side that goes into the tool.

Crappy! Broken gear really kills enthusiasm. Maybe the Catek clips will fit? http://www.catek.com/catekdirect/product.php?productid=142&cat=3&page=2 The 2nd and 3rd pictures on this page show the clip.

Not quite the lift line: I was changing boards at my car just before lunch when an SUV pulled behind me and stopped quickly. I assumed they were hoping I was leaving so they could get my parking spot. Then the driver gets out and runs around the front of the SUV and towards me, saying: "Is that an alpine board?!?" We had a nice discussion, turns out they had a shorter Burton for his daughter but they were struggling with setting it up and the learning process. Gave them a Bomber card and exchanged emails with pointers to Jack's articles. Hopefully we can connect to get them off on the right foot!

You are a sick man Dave, you even turned the hidden aluminum plate. I love it! :D Care to post any details on the engine turning? I was looking for info on this a while ago for a little project but couldn't find anything on exactly how it's done. I verified that a hand-held drill with a 1.5" diameter 3M scuff pad doesn't give good results... :(

XC skis often have a channel (a few years ago at least), the scrapers had a rounded corner to scrape it out. I also used the pointy front of an old-school iron shape to remove as much bulk from the channel as possible to make scraping easier.

I have a hard enough time staying upright while walking on polished concrete in the lodge with Fintec heels, I couldn't imagine lubricating them! I just deal with scraping the heels on my stomp pad or the heel receiver edges.

$1200? That's too much. How about $400? My friend Mr. Burton uses a 2 MP point and shoot camera and he says he took a good photo of a married couple once. He'll shoot our entire wedding for $400, so you must be able to as well. ;) I'm playing devil's advocate here. You could drop pricing if you lower quality of work/materials, but don't think that you'll get similar results. I'd put money on a used $200 board being 'better' than a new $250 Donek. No slight against Donek, just that there are limits to what can be done with cheap materials and quick (read: sloppy) build times. Sean has set his lowest acceptable limits with the Pilot, the same as you've set your lowest limits at a d200. Could you shoot a good wedding with a 15-year old digital camera with a scratched lens that won't focus properly? If you did, would you want those results tied to your name for all time?

2nd'ed, that looks marginal from the picture. The leash is a backup, the primary is the 'snap' at the end of the closing motion. If it just goes 'mush' and kind of stops, you need to back the stop screw out that holds it off the boot. Try loosening it and see what happens. To be crystal clear, I'm talking about screw #14 in this picture: It's a different binding, but the same principle applies. You should be able to close the clip with one hand. Just barely, but it should be possible. If you can feel the boot distorting with your feet it's way too tight. I've noticed in many pictures of racers' boards they have the little loop of cord on the toe clip to tuck under a buckle. But I guarantee they start with the proper binding setup first.

Make sure the toe clip goes over center with a firm 'snap' at the end. My guess would be that it's just barely over center, any boot flex in that situation and it may pop open. This is fixed by adjusting the little screw in the toe clip so it can swing closer to the boot.

There were quite a few babies born to Bomber members late this year. Anyone care to post updated pictures? My original thread about my little girl: http://www.bomberonline.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=26258 Now she's 4 months old with a bit of personality showing through. She's an impatient one that wants her way, she's quick to smile but easily overwhelmed if there's a lot going on. She can't say 'hardboots' yet but I'm working on it. :D

I usually get base burn up to about 1/2" in from the edges as that's the only part touching the snow when I ride. The middle usually looks just like it did after I scraped it! So I use a hard wax along the edges and whatever I have for the center. I got a big blue brick from a local shop that had "-25C" written on the tub/case in marker. They practically gave it away as it's pretty hard, almost brittle when cold. The key is to use some tex cloth between the iron and the base for the last passes to minimize scraping. Works great, lasts much longer on our cold man-made snow.

Came across this on the local magazine rack. Look what sport is featured prominently on the cover: Inside there is little mention of alpine other than listing it as one of the snowboard events. The map that tells you where events are does not list alpine snowboarding, only that there is snowboarding at the Cypress halfpipe. Kimi Z. is on the back cover though in an ad. (Sorry, no picture)

Cool, thanks Ink!

Ink posted the above in a video thread. I'm curious: With the new school shapes and their widely varying sidecut from nose to tail, is this still a good goal? If your board has a sidecut that gets larger towards the tail this would result in an ever increasing turn radius. It definitely feels right doing this on my old-school boards, but I'm curious about what happens on the latest technology. I didn't notice anything weird while demoing a bunch of boards at SES but I'm an intermediate rider at best.

Awesome stuff Marty! I'll watch for the cars when the races are televised. I had a ton of fun in a modified 99 Camaro at our local road course. I dropped almost 10 seconds off my best laptime in a Miata! Raw V8 power is very intoxicating. The new Camaros look to be better in almost every regard except weight.

I'm a total rookie with a camera but I've always been interested in it. This year I took the plunge and got a Nikon D3000 to play with. Here are some shots of a really crappy opening day near the geographic center of North America. (a.k.a. the flat prairies of Walhalla, ND) Rough day as the one run that was groomed was as hard as cement and very uneven. The powder elsewhere was about 6" deep over grass/rocks. I won't go back again for another couple of weeks to let them built up more snow. But it was still kind of fun to get back on the board. Fluffy pillows on the lodge railing. The lodge at around 11 AM: Look, there's still some powder! Too bad it's too flat to get any reasonable speed up... ;) Neither the main nor this smaller lift were running. County-wide power issues was the excuse we heard. Some guys built a little kicker and were hiking. On the right side you can also see why there isn't much tree skiing in Manitoba or North Dakota. The undergrowth is pretty dense here. A lonely chair, waiting for people: The tower for this small lift: It struck me as kind of artsy with the ice and snow on it. Goggles speckled by the snowmaking machines blasting you on the ride up: Comments/suggestions are welcome. I shrunk the pictures down with a freeware re-sizing program so they're a bit grainy. I need to start playing with Photoshop (or similar) now that I've got a decent camera. ;)

I agree with Photodad on this issue. Some posts make it sound like you can't ride if you're not on the latest and greatest equipment. There's no denying that the new stuff is better but for a beginner or casual rider the benefits of the newer gear are greatly outweighed by the huge cost premium over older stuff. I've been riding alpine for 6-ish years now, this is the first year I've bought a new board at full retail pricing. It was entirely funded by selling off used gear to others so that they can have some fun too. I benefit by getting some money to put towards new stuff, the buyers benefit by getting boards that are still fun to ride and are likely a little different than whatever they currently own. I plan to buy another new board next season if all goes well.

Two shots of a new Coiler Monster looking down the entire length of the edge: The nose is closest to you. You can see how it curves upwards much earlier than a conventional nose.

Yup, a 170. I'm anxious to try it! I really liked the metal 158 I tried at SES two years ago, hopefully this is as good.

Include the 168 VSR in that review if you can guys! I literally read nekdut's review word for word. Didn't give me the warm fuzzy feeling so I opted for my Monster for this Coiler order. But the next one will be something shorter... :D

It's quite interesting to see a 15-year old design not that far off the heels of the new stuff. Not many boards from that era are anything other than rock boards. That's pretty cool and a testament to how advanced the design was. Another factor is that no one (until very recently) has really tried to serve the market the Madd 158 nailed - very turny on ice. I'd love to do back-to-back runs on a Madd 158 and a Coiler Angry.

Another of Bruce's beauties has been unleashed upon the world. It's a Monster metal 182 with a 20 cm waist, 14/15 sidecut. I haven't decided if I want to leave the protective vinyl layer over the topsheet to protect it from the careless locals or not, so it's in place for these pictures. That's what's causing the weird reflection/ring around some of the inserts. Two different shots showing the decambered nose profile: My fleet for this season. (TD3 bindings not shown) One of the two slalom boards (silver Volkl or red F2) will go away once I decide which of the two I like better. The Coiler, Madd, and silver Volkl are all new to me this year.