Corey

I used to race MTB's in cross country and a few dual races, now I just ride for fun every now and then. Autocross has taken hold of me though. I eat, sleep, and breathe autocross. I ran our local autocross program for the last two years, and have organized a school to help other locals improve quickly. I'll be driving half-way across the country to compete in the Canadian Nationals later this season. Then I also race in a kart league at our local indoor track. We race every two weeks, it's incredibly competitive and yet very clean racing.

I'll be autocrossing my Miata (in car video here) and spending some time on my mountain bike. That pretty much fills up my non-winter seasons. That's awesome! :)

You can host pictures on www.tinypic.com really easily. Then everyone could see them. :)

It's on the newstands here, I found it in Chapters. Beautiful pictures! The text is almost all borrowed from here, but it's still an interesting read.

BSME = Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. I've got one too! ;) Providing the cars are identical, either situation would be the same. That's why all the crash tests you see are of a car running into an immoveable object. A 50 mph crash isn't going to be pretty! Most of the crash tests you see where the cars fold up like accordians are at 35-40 mph.

I'll take the FP157cm, email sent.

Cool! I'm downloading it now using eMule. It's painfully slow at 3.3 kB/s, but it will be done in about 23 hours. ;) The file name is "ECS04 Zinal longersion.mov"

Sounds like the Nitro Diablo from about 1992! It'll probably work a lot better with the 4x4 insert pattern, you can choose whatever stance you want.

The 5-position lean adjuster will determine how much the boot pivots forwards and backwards, and the boot tongue will determine how stiff the boot is when the lean adjuster is set to walk or powder modes. Those side cants allow you to tilt the boot to one side to match any physical issues you may have.

If I understand you right, you're saying the upper cuff can't rotate when the bolt is tight? If so, something's wrong. Both my 123's and 413's will pivot even with the cant bolts tight. Maybe there's something missing?

LOL, I even read that setup article before. I just ASSumed that the inserts were centered. Oops! :o I ended up moving my front foot about 2 cm forward, one full insert pack. Widening up my stance and moving it forward really changed things for me. Very cool!

Did you know that the insert pack is set pretty far back on an Oxygen Proton 178? I didn't! Needless to say, I moved my stance to a more centered location when I discovered that. What a difference! This board went from feeling dead and lethargic to fun and snappy. Measure your board! I felt like a hero yesterday, easily one of my best days snowboarding ever.

I use the big rectangle from RC Power: http://www.rcpower.com/clear_stomps.html The nubs do break in cold weather (-30 and below) under hardboots, but it still works well. I've seen a couple different ones. RC Power has the clear one on the page above, and I think I've seen coloured ones too.

Nice ASCII art! :) My fingers are on top of each other, like the first picture. Edit: I should add that I'm assuming my toes are pointing up, towards the top of the page.

Yeah, that's with the fingers directly behind the heel. I can easily fit 2 fingers directly behind the heel in the 28 with plenty of wiggle room. It didn't seem to make sense to me either. Maybe I have really misshapen feet? ;) Any other comments?

Sorry for the long post, I wanted to put as much info in this as I could think of so we didn't have to go back and forth for more tidbits of info. I'm trying to figure out what my optimum boot size is. I originally measured my foot and came up with about 28.8 cm. I bought some M28 Raichles off eBay, they seem too big when doing the shell test, I can get about 2.5 fingers between my heel and the shell. They feel comfortable with the standard liners, maybe they'll be a bit loose once the liners pack out. I got some M27 Raichles courtesy of OffpisteHardboots (thanks!), I can just get two fingers between the shell and my heel. It's quite uncomfortable to put my foot in the boot with the standard liner in place, and this liner is very packed out! My toes and forefoot are really squished, it would be painful for more than about ten minutes at a time. I could see bruised toenails from riding in these boots. First note: There are no alpine shops anywhere around me. I'm in the middle of no where, quite literally. I'm in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The one ski shop I'd trust isn't interested in helping me, and told me that "no one rides hard boots anymore". :rolleyes: Second note: I have a set of Intuition thermo liners that are patiently awaiting the correct size shell to go into. - Do I go with the M28's even though they don't fit perfectly in the shell test? Or will the thermo liners make everything right in the M27's? Would it be normal for someone with a 28.8 cm foot to go to an M27 shell for recreational carving? Man, I wish there was a boot fitter near me. :( Thanks for any e-advice you can offer!

Bwa-haha! I recognize that edge-catch marking! :D Nice work.

If someone steps on the back of my board, I scoot my board forward, pick it up, and put it back down on top of their tips. You can feel the 'springiness' of their tips flexing downwards, and them pulling their ski/board backwards shortly after. Most people don't repeat the game, but some do. I've had this evil thought of putting some kind of pointy things at the tail, something that would obviously damage a ski/snowboard base. ;)

There are some Variplates on eBay now: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=21250&item=7126901024&rd=1 Not mine, just passing on the info!

Baloo looks beautiful. RIP. :( That is the best picture ever! LOL!

A great book: The Inner Game of Tennis (Link to Amazon) I know, it's about tennis, but it has a lot of mental strategies that have helped me out in car racing and snowboarding. His main point is finding what makes a good day (in any sport) a good day and mentally reproducing that every day you want to perform. Of course, when the sun is flat and the snow sucks, it's not going to be a good day unless you really want to learn to ride in those conditions... ;)

Do you have spare bumpers? If so, I'd cut/tear the bumpers off so you can get a pair of pliers on the bolt head. That has a much greater chance of success for someone without much experience.

I've been snowboarding since 88. I tried hardboots last year after becoming disillusioned with jumping/tricks and foot pain. Hardboots solved most of the issues I was sick of. Carving was a part of snowboarding for me ever since I owned a Nitro Fusion in the early 90's. I wish I hadn't sold that board!

That site is a _huge_ resource to new carvers looking for detail. Thanks Scott, you helped me out a lot without even knowing it!

A picture is worth a thousand words! Here is a sketch of your theoretical snowboard that stops getting wider right at the end of the sidecut radius: Now, if we zoom in to the widest point: Notice the kink in the edge? That would be hard to make! So, there is a slight area where the edge starts curving inwards while the width is still increasing.