st_lupo

Nice Duke, hope that board works out better for you this year! I've got a Coiler Nirvana on order that I'll be picking up when I go to Michigan in October, then taking it back to Norway. Looks like we'll both have two well traveled boards before they even touch the snow.

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread (no I'm not), but I've finally ridden my Detroit board in Norway. I must have learned something dodging potholes and cracks on the Detroit streets since I'm now carving on all kinds of stuff at home that I couldn't before. I'm kind of getting comfortable (in a noob way) with speed-checking via sliding on the yellow stimulus wheels, so I have to say I've neglected my LDP practicing for more down-hillish riding. A total blast! Tonight I've been doing some riding on neighborhood streets that were terrifying to me a couple of months ago and I actually felt that I had a bit of an alpine-snowboard groove going on. My usual alpine check-list was going through my head and the relaxed hand placement, counter rotation avoidance, and committing to the turn (the biggest thing for me) were all factors in keeping a good flow. After having invested a little bit on time on the longboards, I'm pretty surprised to find that there are remarkable similarities between snowboarding and longboarding (including sliding), but a lot of that is strongly influenced by the selection of wheels/bushings. I'm definitely glad I've taken this up and I'm pretty positive that it will have a good effect on my snowboarding this winter! Oh yeah, the best part of my stay in Detroit was being an old dude getting kicked out of a shopping mall. I was approached by a mall-cop that was perhaps half my age. He looked really uncomfortable telling me that I couldn't skate around the shopping mall and had to leave. He was relieved that I was polite about the whole thing. When I asked him where else I could skate he just kind of chuckled and said, "You mean without potholes and cracks in the street? Man, this is Detroit!" Oh yeah, I splurged on a new set of Paris trucks so the quiver of 1.5 boards is a solid 2. Which is good since I have to constantly loan a board out to my oldest daughter now. She's a skier and she got inline skates, but I really think she's a snowboarder at heart!

Been there done that, but you gotta try to bury that relocation resentment ASAP or eats at you and you miss out on lots of cool stuff. When I moved to Norway from Denver I was moaning all the time because the mountains were so small and the snow was crap, and beer was so expensive that you had to have a credit check before entering a bar. I pretty much convinced myself that I hated snowboarding and mountain biking and would just conveniently neglect to think about how I was now kayaking and wakeboarding, etc. After my wife and I had kids I put a lot of things on hold, but now that they are getting a bit older I've really started itching to get out. I've been riding the old mountain bike again and am loving it. The trails aren't nearly as good as CO, but it beats sitting on my butt. I still think the snow here is pretty poor (compared to CO), but last year I tried alpine snowboarding gear and had a complete blast, and it beats sitting on my butt. I guess my point is: *Don't let your move to Denver color the joy to be had from mountain sports just because you are now 20 miles from the foothills of the Rockies. Denver is pretty awesome. *Don't force the good juju. If it comes back cool, if not try again later, in the mean-time find other good juju. *Don't mope!!! Seriously, that isn't meant to be critical of you having to swallow your pride or anything, that is just based off of lessons I had to learn the hard way. Find something cool to do in Denver. Drag-race jalopies at Bandimere, start yet another Colorado microbrewery, learn to fly sailplanes (not as expensive as you would think, and south of Denver is great for that). You know lemons-->lemonade. *Move to Golden instead? But I've heard that is a pretty hardcore enclave of gangster cowboys there! ;) Best of luck!

Sweet video! Was that Darth Vader?

+1 to everyone on this. I've been practicing getting lower and just trying to "super-carve" instead of slide. This way I am able to get the board to skids out and slide to a stop, but it is still just a small slide, but it is repeatable. Can't wait to get back to Norway to practice a bit more. The streets in Detroit are completely bombed out with potholes and cracks that are designed to swallow up skateboard wheels. The entire outside of my left leg/hip is sanded down quite well after three weeks out here. The longboard has started a few interesting conversations at the hotel in Detroit. Met one person from Germany that hard-boots on snowboards and became interested in longboarding for summer cross-training, and a few other people that are now interested in trying longboarding, but more importantly got a bit stoked on hard-boot snowboards!

Well, I got to Detroit safe and sound and had some yellow stimulus wheels waiting for me. I also found out that my longboard at home didn't fit in my bag, so I stripped the trucks and purchased a clapped out longboard here. So now I'm the proud owner of a quiver with 1.5 boards. My Detroit board is pretty polar opposite from the Vanguard having a dropped deck, dropthrough truck mounts and slidey wheels, about the same length though. I took it to the parking lot of a nearby mall and fiddled around a bit with it. My first impression was that it has a much tighter turn radius, and it feels like a piece of cake to hold my balance on it. Really pleasant and if I tried carving at faster (pushable) speeds, it would drift a little bit, kind of like a freestyle snowboard. Trying some of my neophyte LDP flails was laughable and just made the back slide around a bit. Having binged on all of the Coleman slide videos on youtube I was pretty confidant that I was ready to give that a try. Take on the slide gloves, push the board to a slowish pace, crouch down and rotate my knees to the nose while putting my front hand on the ground and trying drop my but in a kind of sitting position. Aaaannndd.I just continue going forward in a straight line, while my front hand (the one on the ground) slowly keeps sliding farther and farther away from the board until my front hip starts grinding on the pavement. No turn, no slide, just a hole in my shorts. Several further attempts just result in the same. Hmm, back to the drawing board. One thing that I will say about Detroit is that the potholes are MONUMENTAL. Yes they deserve all caps, they are that impressive. And they are everywhere and they will stop my poor skateboard dead in it tracks. Hilarity for all around me I am sure.

Good video, will definitely make some gloves, get some wheels and try this out when I get to Detroit. I think at my stage, my biggest enemy is that the more I learn on the board, the more stuff I find that I want to try. I'm hoping to avoid a multi-board skateboard quiver, so a couple sets of wheels (one super grippy and one slidey) and a good wrench are what I'm counting on.

I thought I could resist the temptation but I think I am screwed... Slowly but surely I'm starting to get the hang of some aspects of this longboarding. I'm not getting good really, just getting settled in. Tonight it was a little more practice with my x-country style ldp. If I could find some way of incorporating ski poles to the technique, I'm sure I could be hated even more than the roller ski dudes on the bike paths. I was also focusing on getting my CG lower to the board while carving and trying to really hang my weight over the side of the board to get nice deep turns. Hey presto! If I threw good sense to the wind I could get the back wheels to drift a bit. These are the orange In Heat wheels so the result was very reminiscent of the old C-64 floppy-drives (yes I'm that old). So now I'm thinking that maybe this drifting, skidding freestyle stuff could actually be within my meager ability to learn, and that yes, maybe I would give it a try and take the risk of leaving my children fatherless and my wife widowed. Actually after having tried cross-stepping, I think sliding is the safer of the two? So I'm seriously thinking of making some sliding gloves and getting a new set of wheels. The questions have now become: 1) What are a good set of wheels to learn sliding on, 2) How to best safely learn to slide? I want something I can still carve on, that's kind of what got me into longboarding in the first place, but that will start sliding without suddenly dumping me on my derrier. I'm kindof thinking of the purple o-tang Durian or Stimulus. I'm leaning towards the Stimulus since it's a smaller diameter (and hopefully a little slower than the durian)? But honestly I'm about as clueless as a carboard box without a candle stick, rope, lead pipe, knife and a revolver. God help me if I ever want to dink around with the bushings...

YYEEESSSS!!! Tonight I think I was getting consecutive pumps in on a slight downhill. The acceleration was pretty minimal, but my impression was that I was getting a little sumptin outta it. More convincingly it felt like my body's motions were working against resistance on both the right and left pumps. It came down to trying pump #2 on that codepink video. Now that I'm a bit more comfortable on the board, the counter rotation doesn't seem to be as big of an issue and trying that pump #2 almost felt like poling on x-country skis, except the acceleration was lateral. Part of the solution for me was figuring out that my heel-side turns were week because I wasn't committing to throwing my weight over that side, the other part was just finding the right rhythm. Best of all, regardless of how it might look, it actually feels pretty sweet when things sync up.

I think I've found a way to stop that even I can do...

I've done something similar when pushing the board uphill and kicking into the back wheel, I call that one the schmuck smack.

Tonight I've found out I've got a problem that is so heinous I think it needs its own thread. I'm feeling better turning on a long board now and am even trying to practice riding switch, but it is painfully obvious that I've got one monstrous gaping hole in my beginner longboarding skill-set: stopping. More particularly stopping at anything over running speed. I've seen videos and read posts and from what I get there are a few stopping techniques with different areas of application: The lawnmower: steering into somebody's (preferably grass) yard. This seems to work great if it's an option. Curbs complicate things. The Usain Bolt: stopping the board by kicking backwards on it while hopping off and running like all hell to try to keep from doing a chin-slide on the pavement The footdrag (aka the $50 a month): trading millimeters of your shoe's sole for prolonged life expectancy The I've only seen this on youtube: skidding the entire board to stop while penduluming around and looking absolutely sick. The lawnmower I can do pretty reliably, problem is that I usually find myself packing on more speed in an area where the curbs begin. The Usain Bolt I can do as long as I'm still skating at a fast running speed (damn you physics). I can even do the footdrag, but only at speeds that are less than running. I tried a footdrag to slow down from a pretty fast clip tonight and I think I almost tore open my groin as my "stopping" foot shot backwards while my riding foot continued on with the skateboard for a few feet. Any tips on how to set my balance/stance to increase my luck at successfully footdragging at higher speeds? Any other (noob compatible) ways of stopping from higher speeds, (something that minimizes blood loss)? I guess it boils down to: what is a bomb-proof way to stop/slow the board at all speeds and in any condition, and can you give any tips on how to learn that technique? If the footdrag is the best choice does anybody have tips on how to do that successfully at high speed? Thanks!

I love Golden and always look forward to going back and visiting some of my best friends there! But yeah, if I valued my life or my wallet I'd much rather be boarding on East Colefax. Golden is way too crazy, gotta keep an eye on the thugs eating outside at Woody's. :)

Pretty sure that I'll get the order of that wrong and try it after geting amped watching some videos and drinking a metric shit-ton of booze. Promise I will make sure I have a gopro available to record the results...

When I hit the post button it hit me just how incredibly brain-damaged that sounded! 15 years in a way too safe neighborhood in a way too safe town in a way too safe country has that effect I guess. There is a shopping mall behind my hotel with a gently sloping parking lot and I'm hoping on hitting that in the evening after the parking lot empties... and maybe loading a couple of lead bars in my wrist protectors :)

Which tilt would be superior for a footbed, the old Holmenkollen or the new? (Sorry, got excited and off-topic seeing something about little Norway.)

Thanks! I might have to look into those kegel wheels. I'm probably being over-optimistic but I'm planning on packing up the board to keep me occupied at night during a trip to Detroit next week. I'm a little worried though since one of the things that I remember most from my last trip there were all of the pot holes!

Why are things like this so obvious only in hind-site?!? Seriously thanks for all of the help! I'm guessing from Corey's last video that counter-rotating is something I need to beat down pretty quick if I want to progress to trying LDP. I did have a couple of toe-side turns the other night where I tried rotating like method 1 above and I felt something. My big problem is that at the end of that one "pump" I am so out of balance that I loose the momentum when trying to recover.

Thanks for the help! As far a board setup, it's not a drop-trough. The truck are Paris 180mm, with red bushings (are they of a standardized color coding?) and 80a Orangatang InHeat wheels. The LDP technique descriptions are hopefully helping me get a better picture of what I need to be doing for that but... You are both entirely right: I need to learn to walk before running. I see that I've been entirely over optimistic about my ability and in how challenging longboarding is going to be. I've just finished day 2 on the board and I think that I'm going to have to forget about the LDP thing for now and just get comfortable with the basic techniques so I've got some more questions that are probably more applicable to what I'm able to do right now. 1: How much of snowboard carving carries over to longboard carving? Tonight I've just been focusing on trying to control my speed by turning more. I've had various degrees of success. Specifically: I've been trying to do the angulation-->inclination to turn the longboard with pretty erratic results. Sometimes if the speed gets up it seems that I can't initiate a turn what-so-ever. Any attempt at leaning into a turn gets washed out as the radial acceleration just pushes me out again. I can get the board to turn with my ankles but then it feels like the board is just going to turn out from underneath me. Counter rotation: is this as evil on a longboard as it is on a snowboard? I absolutely, positively cannot get my upper body to follow the longboard through the turn. It's a lot like the hyper-chihuahua turning I was going through on my first days on a hardboot snowboard. When I've got a "good" groove going, my upperbody pretty much faces the fall-line and I've got the longboard swiveling around below me, and my arms swinging around trying to keep me balanced 2: It seems there must be a lot of technique to be learned in just controlling the torsional flex of the board? If I turn mainly with my front foot the response feels a bit more controllable, but slightly less maneuverable, whereas if I really get my back foot into the action the board really seems to "slash" through the turn, I'm I reading this right? Is it generally advisable to steer more with the front foot when going faster (is it more stable)? 3: How much does one tend to crouch when riding? Do you try to get a lower cg or do folks ride more relaxed? 4: For just carving (no sliding) what kind of weight distribution am I looking for? I sometime catch my weight going rearward on my turns but it seems pretty easy to keep in check if I anticipate it. Do I want a 50/50 distribution through turns (not ldp yet). 5: I've got the wrist/elbow/knee pads and a helmet on, but I can tell that I'm being a lot more timid on the longboard than I am when trying new stuff on the snowboard. Am I being overcautious, or even with padding are skating injuries more severe than snowboarding? This is fun stuff though, even if the neighbors laugh and shake their heads. Thanks for any more help!

Eegaad, this is a lot harder than I imagined! So far I've been ejected from the board twice for accidently kicking my back trucks while pushing uphill and numerous times for starting backside turns that I can't recover from. Think I might have to order a spare set of wrist guards at this rate.

Hi all, After having a really fun first-season of carving on a snowboard, I'm looking at ways of cross-training for next season. Reading this forum it seems that there is some cross-over benefit to be had from longboarding so I've ordered a Loaded Vanguard complete which is in the mail. I'm not entirely sure what I've gotten myself into yet, but I've been reading the forums to get an idea on how to start out. What is the best way to start riding a longboard, that will provide benefits for alpine snowboarding? Here I'm thinking mainly ranges of motion and balance, but if there is some strength training benefit that's great too. From what I've read, it seems that carving and long distance pumping are what I should focus on? Does anybody stand on a longboard using a stance similar to a carving snowboard setup; high angles on both front and back feet? Is it possible to ride long distance pumping and still look a bit graceful? This isn't meant to sound insulting but after having seen a youtube video with a guy called Vlad Popov showing different pumping techniques, I'm hoping maybe that he's exaggerating the motions to really highlight the techniques? The acceleration and speed that he attains is really amazing, but I've probably got a bit of a threshold to get over before I feel comfortable doing all of that in public? How is it best to fall, given I'll have helmet, elbow pads, knee pads and wrist protectors? Everyone says don't land on your wrists (learned that pretty well from snowboarding), but is there any preferred way to fall that takes advantage of all of the pads? I've been reading the forums here and the tech articles at silverfishlongboarding.com and pavedwave.com. Any other good resources? Anything I definitely shouldn't try on the Vanguard? Thanks!

Maybe the best first milestone, especially for us beginners, is how long it takes to get that first massive adrenaline pumped ear-to-ear grin moment. That Moment where all of your softboot friends had to learn to filter out your blathering on about how much they should just give hardboots a try.

Luckily my first choice in boots was sold out. The lime green boots with the orange pants would have definitely made me the flying mandarin. This is my last post on this thread. I swear. Probably. Short version is that my awesome family arranged a quick ski trip to Hemsedal for my birthday and we had three days of excellent late season weather. There are some stories to be found in this trip; coughing up a lung-full of slush, loosing my GoPro butt-cam and having some kind soul send i back to me, and flying down one run at just a hair over half of my wife's best top speed (all while clenching to keep breakfast from winding up in my shorts), but being honest this is more of a vanity post. This is me showing off the total of what I've learned on my first 10-day season on a carving board. I've got issues to work through, and despite a natural preference for camber boards, I know which end of the spectrum my style lies in lordmetroland's last thread . I found a great medium wide blue run that the alpine teams usually use for slalom practice. On day one it was well groomed and things just clicked. I made about 8 back to back runs on that track to focus on simple things like increasing inclination and improving consistency. The end result for this season is *drumroll*... The heelside The toeside I'll admit I'm a bit happy with the results that I was able to achieve this year, and owe a big debt to the BOL community. Promise that in the future I'll limit photos and videos of my butt to very specific problems, if need be. Just so it's not all about me here are the final observations of this now ex-1st year noob. *Turning: the first couple of days it was really obvious that banging the shins into the boot initiated the turns (as opposed to more calf-muscle contraction/extension of a softboot setup). Over the rest of the season that feeling disappeared (become less in-your-face) and I realized that to go that extra mile, I had to also focus on my knees (driving them into the snow) and ankles (fine adjustments for stability?). Angulation: keep your upper body away from the snow. *The A-team versus the B-team: The Toeside Problem. I've said it before: the pictures in that article were really illustrative for me. I knew which group I was in, and I knew which team I wanted to be in. *The mental game. This is surprisingly huge. When learning the basics, spend time watching good riders on youtube and visualizing yourself doing that. It sounds all zen and hippy-like, but I think it helps organize your thoughts at a slower than real-time pace. After covering the basic mechanics of the norm, your head is the biggest helping or limiting factor of the sport (imho, at my level anyway). Unless you're on clapped out 15 year old gear, trust it. After you understand the basic mechanics, you've gotta commit to the carves and trust that your gear will catch you. There is no black-magic, just physics and geometry. People with reasonable softboot ability have the body control to do this, you just need to read and understand the articles and have confidence in yourself. I've started a couple of days on red runs with really hard (nearly icy) conditions, and I couldn't do anything because I was convinced I couldn't hack it after the first few blowouts (likely due to my own timidity). I was useless on blues too until I had a reset by carving (not cruising) on an easy green to get my confidence (in my gear and in myself) back. After that, the exact same red runs (at nearly the same hardness) were much more successful. Read the tech-articles that are beyond you current skill level and know what to expect. *Green runs are actually carve-worthy. Everyone in softboots knows that green are for babies and you can't get enough speed to to anything there, right? This last trip I had to rethink that. I was really really surprised at how slow you could go while still carving deep turns. It really rewards good balance and early planning of your transitions (otherwise you stall and drop), but most importantly it lets you push your boundaries and experiment in a pretty safe way. I'm sure I'll soon be pestering for more tips on both technique and gear, but for now I've got one bike to put into hibernation and two to take out...

That reminds me of an article I ran across a few weeks back. Hope it's not a repost: Can Snowboarding Be Saved? I get the feeling that some folks here (maybe especially those that have been into snowboarding for a loooong time) see the modern crop of free-stylers and their rockered/ginsu'd boards as our wayward children. The few posts that I've seen on softboot forums that even mention hardboot snowboards seem to indicate that those freestylers view hardboot snowboards as a completely foreign thing akin to the monoski (and they are generally likewise critical of the hardboot styles, especially EC).

I was visiting my parents in Albuquerque this last winter (these were still pre-hardboot days for me) and went up to Santa Fe for a day of excellent snow. Given that my board at home (Super Model) was 16 years old and my boots are older I wanted to rent the "performance package" and see what the bleeding edge of snowboard tech has become. I asked for something fast and their reply was "oh yeah, you want a Custom Flying-V". When I got the board the edges were about as sharp as a crayon so I asked for a bit of a tuneup, much to the displeasure of the techs working in ski rental. Then I tried the board on the snow... Well, I'd had a Custom a long time ago and liked it (hangs in my kitchen even). I'd even contemplated buying a new custom to replace my aging Super Model, but when I got this "performance" rental on the snow, the board is pretty much summed up as "meh". Whenever I wanted to turn the board felt like it just shrugged and went "meh, whatever". I've pretty much always carved turns (in a soft boot way), that's just considered good technique with the group of guys that I grew up riding with. My Craig Kelly did it, my Asym Air Did it, My Custom and Super Models did it. This Flying-V however was a different thing entirely, it would hold an edge, eventually, but the transitions in between turns somehow had me picturing a dog dragging it's ass sideways across the grass. At the end of the day I returned the board to the rental area and bitched a bit about them foisting this off as "performance" equipment. They gave me an intro to rocker and why it is superior to everything, including space-flight. That night I did some research on just what rocker was and just kind of shook my head. Two months later I was on my local hill in newly purchased UPZ RC10s and an F2 Silberpfeil with no intention of going back to softboots. In some ways this setup feels like the "good old days" of snowboarding again. The equipment is hard to find, everybody looks at you like a freak, and there is a sense of community between the riders. I've long ago done away with prejudice against skiers (at least the good ones) and now I actually feel more kinship to the folks carving on alpine and telemark skis than I do with 90% of snowboarders.