st_lupo

Check those security settings!

The second I saw the adds that were loading from the canadafreepress site, I just new that I had to make some popcorn. This was going to be a wild ride! Also about flat-earthers attacking the facts and not the person... That might be a personal observation, but it appears to be an over-generalization when the president of the flat earth society called scientists liars and "demented dope fiends". (https://www.salon.com/2014/04/03/creationists_endure_rough_few_weeks_why_the_flat_earth_crowd_is_in_trouble/)

Did somebody say snowboard and ocean? https://player.vimeo.com/video/236068369/?autoplay=1&muted=false (check at 1:10)

Maaan… the sport has come a looong way since then!

Given that at my latitude I now usually fall asleep at midnight and wake between 4 and 5am, I love hearing that the days are getting shorter!

I think that at heart there are two items on the table here. First is, with certainty, how do we identify and quantify a system performance measurement (or figure of merit or key performance indicator, depending on what your day job is) for the snowboard. In very generalized terms: [system performance measurements] = f(length, min_width, sidecut, rider_weight, snow_type, ...). Given a "simplified" analytical model where the snowboard is quantified as a set of functional properties (side-cut, width, stiffness, camber, damping, etc), you can pick a working point and perform a sensitivity analysis on the different inputs to identify which parameters will have the greatest effect on improving the system performance. I think a lot of the theory needed to model this is available, where the whole thing is underpinned by a model of how the snow reacts to the board (here discrete particle modelling looks promising). At this point we want to generate a generally "optimal" description of side-cut, camber, stiffness distribution, damping, etc. The second problem is how do we fabricate a board that displays those attributes? Here comes FEM/FEA, manufacturing expertise etc. And maybe the optimum theoretical board is not practical to manufacturer, then you need to refine and adapt your simplified analytical model to reject those designs and try again. Human intuition works well sometimes, but when the problem definition has remained vague for so long and the best solution is elusive or "an art", it is worth looking into systematizing the problem and approaching it with analytical tools, maybe?

I think I might be another outlier here. With my daughter's race skis I do the whole nine yards, with my snowboards I've started being pretty relaxed about the base (edges are a different story). As long as the edges engage when I want and the board runs fairly straight when flat, I'm good with it. Structure depends on where/how you are riding. I'm almost always on black runs so I've always got more speed potential than I could ever use, and I never structure my bases. By the time the real slush starts, I've switched to mtb mode. Of all of my boards only the F2 and Kessler came from the factory with structure. My Burtons and Coilers came from the 'factory' with a base grind, but never been structured. Any structure will look like a real obvious pattern of intersecting grooves that look kind of like the surface of a vinyl album with shimmering chevron-like overlays (typically). Even old structure should be obvious to the eye. My wife's 9 year old VWerks skis have never been restructured but the original pattern is still slightly visible. Nicks and gouges should be in the realm of what you can fix on your own? Ptex, torch, file, sandpaper: It's kinda fun and it smells great!

This I always thought was cool.

Probably the fastest (downhill) of my riding buddies rode a Meta. He switched over to an ebike last year and put a few pounds around his gut. Maybe coincedence?

Sweet!!! Maybe your forum nickname should be the Scottish Sam Hill? BTW, how do you like the Wild Enduro tires? What year Heckler? My first full squish was a Heckler (when it was a people powered bike) and I really liked it for xc riding. Back when the Manitou XVert was a real single crown long travel fork.

Hey! Has anybody ridden both the 168 and 162? @Jack M? I’ve got a 162, and that board is without a doubt the best ride I’ve ever had. But it is an SL board and when I’m at a bigger resort I would sometimes like a board that will run faster when still being driven hard. The SCR on the 168 looks comparable with the 162, but does it ride like a bigger board? What differentiates the ride qualities of the two boards?

Some of us are fortunate that bike season and snowboard season don’t necessarily overlap! Bought the frame with low miles from a racer (not much of an enduro season last year) and bought all the components at serious discounts from black friday through new years. (But The family still doesn’t get to know how many Kesslers the final build will cost.) Now I’ve packed away the snowboards and I’m building the bike while waiting for the rest of the snow to melt. I’m hoping that pedaling this thing up the mountain all summer is going to get me in shape for boarding next winter.

There is no excuse not to join the recumbent weirdos.

Wow! So that's white ptex and black ptex, laser-cut and assembled like a giant puzzle? And here I was all impressed with the inlay on my Kessler.

Really glad to hear you being so happy about your riding! This sounds like a huge difference over last year!

My summer training plan. I hope that was drink, drink, eat, eat, drink?

Small niche?!? In Norway they have a Strava category for this!!! (maybe)

That is almost criminal!

I don’t get where you are going with those first two paragraphs but Ill do my best to find some common ground and read this with my best intentions. If The above quote had been the crux of your argument, we would be in COMPLETE agreement. But this gets lost in all of the seemingly contradictory noise surrounding it. Given there is no federal mandate in most countries for helmets on ski areas, I assumed you were arguing against allowing ski areas to mandate helmet use? Matters of public safety and national health strategies otoh are completely a different story.

How about let’s not draw arguments out to ridiculous extremes? How about lets allow nuance and common sense as well as actual reflection win over blind faith in dogma? By denying a private ski area the ability to impose helmet restrictions aren’t you already on that (bad) slippery slope? No one is stopping anybody from hiking out into the back country, smoking a bowl and riding down without wearing whatever they feel is overly restrictive.

I don't see the incompatibility with ski-area helmet mandates and freedom? If you want to race FIS events, you gotta wear a helmet. You wanna shoot your 1911 at the local indoor shooting range: I bet they make you wear ear and eye protection. If you wanna go parachuting, they're going to make you wear a parachute. If a ski resort wants to mandate that their patrons wear helmets, they are well within their rights, otherwise they are exposing themselves to some nubbin that gets a head injury and sues the ski area for negligence.

This kinda strikes me as playing with fire. Call me chicken, but I always figure that anybody behind me is a liability and an idiot, and unless I'm certain that they aren't keeping up with me, I'll just let people pass. I'd rather be in one piece than right.

Watch out for insider's skidmarks!

Didn't see this until the 14th. Had an awesome day riding yesterday though. One of those therapeutic days after a week full of BS. THANKS, JAKE! (and all of the other heros that dedicated themselves to making this possible).