Jack M

Geoff just emailed from his BB that it's blue bird and hero snow today. Why am I working again? See you all on Thursday. Any photo rub-ins??

Thanks Miltie, Dano, Buell. :) I dunno, I thought it was a beautiful freecarver. Provided I had the trail width. If your definition of freecarving is riding all over the mountain, then there are better choices. I mostly agree about ruts, which is why I don't feel a need to weigh this board down with a plate system. But the board's abilities to deal with ruts and imperfections also give it superb edge hold on clean groom, and I'll take that any day. ----- I saw a comment on another site wondering why I wrote about a page on the Kessler and only about 15 lines on each of the other boards. The deal here is that the other boards come close or very close to being the Kessler, so I only detailed the ways in which they were not.

It's easy to think that sports stars make too much money for playing children's games. They're not curing cancer, right? Or are they? If millions of people think it's fun to watch people skate around with sticks and shoot a rubber disc into a net, then those players deserve a fair and substantial share of whatever the market brings in, even if that means millions of dollars. What they then turn around and do with that money is what matters. Many, dare I say the vast majority of, millionaire sports stars are incredible philanthropists. Even if they lavish themselves with a life of opulence, they still have to pay people and give people jobs to support that lifestyle. I guess if they kept all their money in a safe in their home, then they'd be truly greedy. As for spending money on Olympic facilities and training for athletes, it seems that we as a species have agreed that sports are a good and healthy thing worth supporting.

Thanks Kevin, glad you found it useful. It will be in the Bomber archives soon. Fin wanted to include it in Friday's newsletter, so we went with the unformatted draft on my site.

*drool* Thanks Seb!

The Doneks were both softer lengthwise. This made the Rec ride shorter than the Coiler and Kessler, even though it had a longer measured sidecut. The WC rode about the same size turns as the Coiler and Kessler, and it had a much larger sidecut. This can only be attributed to the softer lengthwise flex. Also the feeling of being able to manipulate the board with your feet was more pronounced on the Doneks.

Yes, but Jewell and Klug were on a similar plate system built by Tinkler.

No doubt. Mark Fawcett had some choice words for Sport Canada in my old interview with him here.

180 would probably be too long to get started. Look for 163 <= a board <= 171. However the first step is to learn how to carve on your softies - can you carve the downhill edge?

on that note jon, why are you spending thousands of dollars to slide down a hill when you could use that money to help others?

If you have to ask, then no.

Yeah Bryan, spill the beans. The cat is out of the bag now, make with the videos!

Thanks Dave. If you were lusting for an FLC, I would say you can buy with confidence. I felt I was able to discern between the construction and the shape of the WCRM and what was doing what. Radial sidecut aside, I felt the board was really well put together and felt like a nice balance of lively and damp. I did, thanks. :D Riding all 5 boards back to back, I can tell you that the lengthwise flex differences played very a significant role in how each board rode and felt to me. Stepping off of one board and onto another was dramatic.

All I know is there was nothing under there at the Olympics, I specifically watched for that.

hey, I was there the first week of feb, I looked for you but didn't see any other hb'ers. although some kid called down at me from the chairlift and yelled "hey it's the casper carver!"

I'm still wondering what's with the big long "diving board" part of the plate that sticks out in front of the front binding. I saw yesterday during the race that there is nothing underneath it, no bumpers or anything. So is it supposed to contact the board when the board bends up a lot? Or is it a tuned mass damper? Shred, remember my email?

I agree with Jim, there is a good lively/damp balance that can be achieved with metal. For a GS sized board, smooth ride and edge hold are king, but you still don't want a dead board. For an SL sized freecarver, I like a livelier board, but obviously they're using metal for WC PSL. For the medium turn radius freecarving boards, the lively/damp balance is more critical.

Awesome! Congrats Jasey Jay! At last!! Congrats Canada!!

argh, we're being treated to xc skiing here.

Generally I agree Buggs. However I think if someone used to be a good rider but now isn't for whatever reason, they can still speak from experience. I have to admit it seems rare to me that there is ever any technical problem with the substance of bobdea's posts.

As far as I know, these race machines are basically dual radius, or variably increasing radius, which can be approximated by a dual radius. You may be thinking of the Coiler VSR which is tri-radius. NSR = dual. Thanks. Ranking them would be far too subjective and dependent on individual needs. There is something here for every advanced/expert carver. Primarily I wanted to see how the North American manufacturers stacked up against *a* World Cup board. I would have gladly included an SG, but doing an across-the-board review wasn't really the point. Then I'd have to get into Black Pearl, Oxess, Virus, and everything else. The Kessler was the WC representative here. Subtle differences aside, I'll assume SGs and Kesslers are effectively equivalent given their record in WC. Fin actually met Sigi at an FIS race in Colorado and told him about the review. He was glad to hear about it and wanted to send a board, but he simply didn't have any he could sacrifice.

goddamn brass inserts were a stupid idea.

Wow!! Jewell into 2nd! (qual)

JJ's 2nd qual run was incredible, he was way behind after the first run. this would be great coverage, but I cannot believe this is at stupid cypress. :smashfrea

NBC! at least here in the east anyway