Hey folks, new member, been carving since the 90s, never raced. Never occurred to me to look for an internet community for carving since I thought we had just mostly died out. People in the lift lines always say stuff like "Oh I've seen one of you over at Sugarloaf" (Maine), like I'm some kind of notable weirdo. Blew my mind when I stumbled onto the site here today. Bear with me, this may ramble, I'm super excited to learn you all exist, and I have a lot of catching up to do with the gear. I've been mostly riding the same board since 2000, a Burton Ultra Prime 162 with the same Burton Race Plates I had back then with regular DIN ski boots. I've been riding it fairly conservatively so as not to destroy it and keeping it well tuned. Only ride it on good days, never on anything icy or at all sketchy, that sort of thing. I picked up a stiff soft boot freeride board as my primary for a few years and I'm now actually back on skis primarily to help my kids learn to ski. I get out the carving tools maybe once or twice a winter. Discovering that not only is carving alive and well, but that Bomber is still in business, holy wow. Back in the day I always wanted a set of Trench Diggers but could never afford them and thought they had closed like Catek (did it actually go under and get revived?). On my wall is an old Burton Alp I've ridden three times. It's a 171 and I was never heavy enough to really ride it, that's no longer an issue (lol, kids...) and I was thinking about mounting up a new set of bindings on it to finally bring it out to give it the life it deserved. A few questions: I've never had purpose built carving boots, I was always happy enough with alpine ski boots, should I rethink that now? I know boot tech has changed with the bindings but I still don't really know much about how, if there's a wiki somewhere, I'd love to see it. Modern bindings all seem built around shorter BSLs, my current AT boots are 327mm BSL (28.5 mondo). I haven't actually ridden my new boots on my old boards yet (I've also got an Oxygen Krypton asymmetric with Burton Plates for full 1996 sillies), but the Burton Plates adjusted to take them with room to spare. With that, do I have it wrong about modern bindings or can I keep riding my longer sole alpine ski boots in a new set? I was always the type of rider who liked to change between board to skis in the middle of the day once the corduroy was used up. Of all the new bindings out there, do I still want TDs because I always lusted after them or is there something that would be better suited for a mid 40s guy that still charges but doesn't go quite as hard as he used to but could now choose to afford them? The Burton Plates have always done pretty well by me with the adjustable circle cant disk in rear it looks like the F2's and SGs aren't shockingly different from that old design, minus the reliance on the disk. I'm still amazed you folks all exist. Sorry for the ramble, like I said, I'm just really excited to know you're all out there.