gdboytyler

BINDINGS HAVE BEEN SOLD I've got a pair of TD2 bindings for sale for $200 + shipping. You can email me via my profile. 4-hole center disks, "zero" degree cants and the elastomer rings are soft (yellow). There are gouge marks on one of the toe levers from skiers/boarders hitting me on the chairlift (see pic). I'm selling the bindings because I've switched to F2/Proflex plate bindings. The TD2's were too stiff for me and I prefer the mechanical stops on the Proflex heel bails.

I've got a Donek FCII 163 for sale for $400 + shipping. You can email me via my profile. The board is standard construction. It was made in Oct. 2005. It is the new style FCII with the softer flex. The board is in great condition. You have to look pretty hard to even see the binding marks. There is a minor chip on the sidewall (see pic) I've ridden it for about 8 days. I'm selling the board because my name was spelled wrong on the info label :D Actually, I just put in an order for a custom Donek with Olympic construction (but my first name really was spelled wrong). I should get my new board in about 2 weeks. Here are some photos. If you're interested, I can email you higher resolution photos.

For the past year or so, I had been planning on getting a custom Donek. Then, the Olympic success of the Schoch brothers and their Kessler snowboards, made me want to get a titanal construction snowboard also. However there was no info (in English) on how to buy a Kessler and the boards are very expensive. From BOL posts, I found out that Tomahawk also does titanal construction. I then got the Tomahawk email address from RicHard, who had just bought a Tomahawk in Italy. The Tomahawk contact is Sigi and his email address is (Sigi replied to my emails within a day): tomahawksnowboards@hotmail.com The price for a custom Tomahawk (w/titanal construction) is 670 Euro + 170 Euro to ship to the US. So cost of board + shipping = $1,011. It will take around 3 weeks to get the board made. In the end, I decided to go with the original plan and ordered the custom Donek. I'll post a review when I receive the Donek.

Last weekend, I rode my 153cm freestyle board for the first time this season. I took it out after lunch to session the half pipe. It's over a half-mile from the top of the main lift to the half-pipe, so I had a lot of room to try out my soft boot carving. I was carving nice round turns. If you took a picture of the tracks, you wouldn't be able to tell whether it was made by an alpine board or a freestyle board (at least when I was on the blue run). But I was reminded of why I hardly ever ride in soft boots anymore ---soft boots kill my feet. My soft boots feel OK when I'm riding the pipe, because I'm not pressuring the edge to much. But for carving, soft boots are just too painful. Also, when it's steep and hard snow, I'm mostly skidding turns with soft boots and freestyle board. If I can start getting air in the half-pipe with my alpine set-up, then I'll be ready to sell my freestyle board and soft boots.

Sorry, I don't know my mountain ranges. But if you're in Riverside, CA, I'll be riding at Bear Mtn on Sunday. If you can fit into a size 25 boot (or if you have your own), you can try out my Donek FCII 163. I'll probably be riding my Oxygen Proton (at least in the morning when conditions are good). So if you can go to Bear Mtn, email me or post here and I'll bring my spare set of boots. 1 maybe 2 other carvers (Jim Pryor and Oldvolvosrule) will be joining me on Sunday. Oldvolvosrule rides a Prior 4WD 179. It would be stiffer than the 4WD you should get, but it will give you an idea of the flex.

Do you mean you were riding better last year and didn't have any face plants? If yes, then maybe it's as simple as your board needing a good wax job. Bad base prep could cause the board to slide unevenly, making it much easier to catch an edge.

I'm 5'7" and 132 lb. I mostly ride a Donek FCII 163 and an Oxygen Proton 164 GS. If you can carve well on your freestyle board, then I would recommend both the Donek and the Oxygen. The Oxygen has a bigger sidecut, so it's a better board if you ride someplace that has long, wide runs. For a smaller resort, the Donek is a better choice. If you're just learning how to carve, then I would still recommend the Donek FCII, plus the Donek Axxess 162 and Prior 4WD 164. I wouldn't recommend the Oxygen for learning how to carve. If you plan on riding your alpine board in bumps and powder, then I would recommend the Axxess and 4WD. If you're on a budget, then I would recommend a the Burton Coil 165, Burton Alp 162 or Burton Ultra Prime 162. For bindings, I'd recommend F2/Proflex or Burton Race Plates. At our weight, we don't need to go to TD's or Cateks. For boots, I'd recommend Raichle SB413's or the Deeluxe Lemans. If your feet are wide, then you might have to go with the Head Stratos Pro.

Check out the Wax WHIZard for waxing: http://www.alpineskituning.com/raysway.waxwhiz.htm It was discussed in this thread http://www.bomberonline.com/VBulletin/showthread.php?t=8015&highlight=wax+wizard The Wax Whizard is much easier than hot waxing and no mess to clean up when you're done. I went from hot waxing my board maybe twice a season to waxing with the Wax Whizard after every day of riding.

I'm also thinking about getting a custom board from Tomahawk. 3 week order time is pretty fast for a custom board I'm thinking about a titanal construction board with 164cm length, 21 cm width and 13m sidecut. Did Tomahawk ask you for any info on how you like to ride or specifications for the edge contact, camber, flex and nose/tail profiles? Do you have the email address for Tomahawk? Thanks a lot for the info.

What is the width and sidecut radius of your new board? Did you get it custom made or did you buy it used? If it was custom made, how long did it take to get the board made? Did you get the titanal construction? Your Tomahawk looks a lot like a Swoard.

Here's a logical reply (not mine) to the Dan Wetzel article on what is and isn't a sport: http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2006/news?slug=dw-peoplesvoice022506&prov=yhoo&type=lgns A game is a competitive event done for personal pleasure. In games there are two subcategories: sports and contests. In order to be a sport, three requirements must be met: 1) athletic conditioning superior to non-athletes, 2) an offense and a defense, and 3) an objective method of scoring. In order to constitute as a sport, all three requirements must be met. For instance: baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, boxing, lacrosse – all these are sports because all meet the criteria as defined previously. Golf, however, is not a sport. Though golf has an objective method of scoring, golf lacks both an offense and a defense (terrain is no argument in that it applies to all contestants equally, without bias, and without aggressively seeking to interfere), and as a rule golfers on general are no more athletically conditioned than high school athletes – and in many cases are even worse. In true sporting events it is virtually impossible to be at the top of your game and in your 50's. Then there are contests. The word "con" quite literally means "Together; with; joint; jointly: commingle" whereas the word tests is precisely defined as: "A procedure for critical evaluation; a means of determining the presence, quality, or truth of something; a trial" (www.dictionary.com). Therefore, according to the etymology of the term, a contest is a collective test of a skill. The requirements of a collective test of skill are 1) multiple contestants, 2) judges of skill. Golf, track and field, swimming and gymnastics are all contests, as is NASCAR, bull-riding, fishing and even pie eating. The fact that any of these events require skill is no argument for them being a sport. Chess requires more skill than any of these games combined, but is nevertheless not a sport. Simultaneously, so does working for customer service in retail and solving a Rubix Cube. But ultimately, what about activities that fail to meet the criteria of either – activities like pool, poker, chess and so on? To be succinct they're simply games – nothing more, nothing less. Of course, there will be those who will get offended by my remarks and attempt to refute my argument based purely on emotional reasons alone. But the truth exists independent of our wants and needs. Logic is logic. It doesn't matter if one likes the fact that the number two is not the number four, or if golf is not a sport. A thing is what it is whether we like it or not. In logic, that's called the Law of Identity. M.A. Carrano North Haven, Conn.

I guess you never heard of Eskimos

My SWAG (super wild a$$ guess) is that Kessler gets money from the Swiss government to provide the awesome race boards for the Swiss snowboarding team. I read posts that said only the Swiss riders got the latest and greatest.

Thanks for the compliment. My other board is an Oxygen Proton 164 GS with a 13m sidecut. The sidecut for the Donek and Burton are both around 10m and they are definately more tiring to ride. At Breck, I probably should have ridden the Proton, definately enough room for the bigger turns. At Vail I rode the Burton Coil because me and my brother were hitting the bumps. I rode with Jim Pryor at Bear Mtn on Tuesday (unplanned meeting). Snow conditions were very good. I should have posted on the ride board. 3 carvers at Bear could have qualified as a So Cal Expression Session.

Here's some footage of my trip to CO in early Feb 2006. video In the first few segments, I'm riding a Donek FC2 163 at Breck and the last 2 segments I'm on a Burton Coil 165 at Vail. My brother used a digital camera that does 40 sec video clips for the footage. Any and all comments on technique, music, etc. are welcome. Thanks to Nekdut for loaning me the Burton Coil and thanks to GaryJ for loaning me the 3-hole disks to use my TD2's on the Coil.

I'm the one that suggested greasing the BTS. I've ridden the BTS equipped boots for 7 days so far and the nut is still in the same spot (1 full thread showing above the nut). I greased the outside of the spring and the lower 75% of the threads of the main shaft. I didn't grease the top part of the shaft where the toeside nut sits.

Check out slide #8. Lindsey is tweaking out a method air. I would call that showboating instead of grabbing for stability. http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2006/slideshow?id=25 There's always next time. Oh yeah, from slide #1, all 3 women on the podium are HOT Contrast that to the woman that won the downhill. That girl looked like a pretty tough dude. Just another reason why snowboarding is better than skiing.

According to this report, Seth Westcott and Lindsey's coach both thought Lindsey was showing off. Yahoo Story Bummer that the USA is now only 3 for 4 snowboarding golds. Can you imagine Kobe going for a 360 dunk to score the game winner in a finals game 7 with the nearest defender 10 ft away?

Hey Aaron, I'm going to Bear Mtn on Sunday. If you and Gary make a deal, I can deliver the board for you. Then I can see you test out your new board.

The hypothetical skier you're talking about doesn't sound like an intermediate. I'd call that guy advanced. The intermediate skiers I know suck in powder and they are in survival mode in bumps. My favorite all-mountain board so far is the O-Sin 4807 168cm. I can carve that O-Sin as well as I could carve on my old Donek Incline. Plus the O-Sin beats the Fish in powder. The O-Sin is also manageable in the bumps. But I haven't ridden the O-Sin on an icy day. Your review of Fernie makes me not want to go there. Heavy rain during a snowboard vacation? Screw that, I'll head to CO instead. I always thought of Fernie as powder heaven. Is this just a bad season for them or is rain normal for them?

Jason, I'm interested in the board, only. Please email me close-ups of the base and edges. You can email me through my profile.

Here's a summary of the story scanned from the Los Angeles Times.

Check out fellow Derf's website (fellow BOL member). He's got pics of old Burton catalogs. Download the photos and you can see the size and specs of the alps and UP's. http://derf.dyndns.org/~derf/gallery/snowboard_catalogues

Your front boot looks like it set for maximum forward lean. Try using less forward lean, it will be easier on your legs. Or set your boots into walk mode.

Brand new 162 UP's are being sold at Klugriding for $175. If your 168 UP is used, but in excellent condition, I would offer $150 + shipping.