Corey

No doubt you have to be strong! Physics says a 45 degree lean means the rider has to pull 1G* lateral to stay upright. A 60 degree lean means the rider has to pull 2G*. A 70.5 degree lean means 3G*. I've seen Bordy lean over more than 45 degrees, on ice, riding switch, and blowing past me. ;) * All these numbers are pure lateral acceleration, not a combination of cornering force plus earth's gravity. Those numbers would be 1.41G, 2.24G, and 3.16G respectively.

Cool. I'm a little surprised that the number is only 1.15 G. Not dissing Bordy's ability in any way, just surprised at how much I've seen riders tilted over without body parts on the snow. I expected 2.5-3 G. It's always cool to put numbers to things.

Got final approval from my two girls and booked plane tickets with AirMiles! Woohoo! Any hotel suggestions that are on the West side of the city and inexpensive?

I'm a fan of the new stuff, but I think to say that someone NEEDS the latest and greatest to have fun or even to have a valid opinion is not healthy. I'd rather see someone pick up a $100 eBay board and start riding than waiting 2+ years to be able to afford a custom board. My cheap boards did me very well for the first 6 years of alpine, now I've put aside enough money for a nice metal board. I'm glad I made the jump to alpine earlier instead of waiting to spend the big bucks on a nicer board. In car racing terms: Sure, we'd all love to race a Formula 1 car. But you're much better off racing whatever you can afford early on than waiting until you can afford that F1 car. Most people would never race if they were told to wait until they could get the F1 car! We're at risk of discouraging beginners from even trying unless they get a Kessler. That seems crazy to me.

As a bonus, if you put the magnets on the board you don't need a roof rack for your car. <Ka-chunk>

Air Canada's current seat sale ends on Thursday. Do the sales come and go often? I don't watch them closely. Allee: Sorry, that's a deal-breaker for me, even with drugs. Thanks again though! I'll definitely try to grab rides from people to the hill. Or does the gang stay near the resort?

Interesting. I just searched for it: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=290371763&mt=8 is linked from a forum, but I think it's dead now. Looks promising, but the iPhone hardware is supposedly limited to 2G. That's probably enough for us mortals though. ;)

6 years for me on hardboots, but only 6-10 days per year on the hill.

Thanks for the offer! You have a dog or cat, right? If not, I'm in! If so, my asthma/allergies will keep me away. :(

I'm going to try to make it out, put me down as 60% there. Hopefully for a couple days though. What do you guys think about riding Friday/Saturday or Sunday/Monday to try to miss some of the crowds? I'll be taking two days off work for travel anyway so it doesn't matter to me.

I found the Volkl to be pretty playful, it'll slide when needed and can make a variety of turns. You've got to really lay into the nose with some speed to make a tight turn though, probably not something you'll be doing for the first few days. You can absolutely slide it around to get any size of skidded turn though. The biggest problem when learning I had was excessive speed. Shaun from SnowPerformance gave me a great tip at SES: Speed control is all about the top of the turn. Set that edge early and hard, then make a full turn across the fall line and repeat. That really woke up the fun side of alpine riding to me.

Welcome! I think you have two paths you can take: Conservative: ("I think I'm going to like this but don't want to go too fast") Put the plates on your soft board and play for a day, or until you get sick of it. Devoted: ("I'm going to own the slopes, it's just a matter of time") Mount up the Volkl and take the lumps. It's a pretty big board that likes a bit of speed to carve hard, but you can still sideslip it with a bit of practice. A Volkl 178 is my current go-to board for most days. I like to be a little ahead of center on the inserts so that I don't have to weight the nose so aggressively to start a turn. Find Jack's articles about 'the Norm', they'll help you get used to trusting the edge so you can move beyond sideslipping: http://www.bomberonline.com/articles/welcome_center.cfm

I'm thinking of trying some armour this year. I've been hit three times from behind (in about 30 alpine riding days) and I usually have one or two close calls per day. Narrow runs and low average skill-level in the prairies don't help... I'm trying to decide between the 661 Assault Pressure Suit and just a Back Guard. Does the pressure suit have a layer of foam under all the fabric? That seems like it would be really hot if it does. I get pretty warm when riding, but venting the outer shell usually does the trick. I'm concerned that I won't be able to dump heat from under what amounts to a foam-lined shirt. Any thoughts on that? I'm drawn to the 661 stuff as I get a healthy discount through a friend. Sorry, I can't get discounts for anyone else. :(

I prefer Media Player for most things, but VLC will play any file I've ever thrown at it. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Awesome, thanks! Hope everyone enjoys them!

For some reason I can't even get to piratebay.

I have episode 3, will try to get a torrent started tonight.

Episode 2: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5107086

Ha! I'm definitely not the person to help. With low-res stuff you can simply buy a card to capture video to your computer. No idea on HD. Bryan, I sent you an email about hosting future episodes.

I will try to encode that one when I get a chance, hopefully with a proper sync and removed ads this time. My little girl is taking priority right now.

Maybe it's just the Canadian in me, but I'd rather be hit with a blast from an LRAD than getting shot because some idiot at the front of the 'peaceful' gathering of people threw a molotov cocktail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Range_Acoustic_Device If someone abuses it, then that's a problem. But simply having it is no different than a citizen having a gun - it's there if circumstances warrant it. Simply having an LRAD or a gun does not make one a criminal or an abuser of power.

What does he want to do? It's kind of cool to be doing that well on soft boots vs. hardbooters. I like hardboots and all, but to the average snowboarder they are strongly looked down upon. On this site you'll get a bias towards hard boots. On most other sites you'll get a bias towards soft boots. I think of a hard boot setup like a road racing motorcycle and a soft boot setup like a dirt bike. You can definitely compete in a road race with a dirt bike and you may even beat some of the roadies, but to win at the top level you'll want a road bike. Disclaimer: I'm not a coach and have competed in only one GS race; 15 years ago on soft boots.

Sorry gang, had some computer issues, should be back up and running again. The sync is bad but my limited skills haven't been helping me fix it. Hopefully someone that downloads it can sync the two up. If you're really talented you could pull the ads out of it too.

Super video converter is letting me down, it just won't sync audio and video. The original .dvr-ms file is 1.3 GB, and I think it has security so it'll only play on my computer. Any other video conversion options people know of?

I'll try another way of converting it from the XP Media Center file and get back to you Brian.