Jack M

wow. http://damncoolpics.blogspot.com/2008/10/hand-made-lamborghini-built-in-basement.html

www.chondola.com uhh... I don't get it. Four out of five groups in line will be pretty disappointed on cold/windy days!

It's a web page. (technically it's a web application, but nevermind.) A traditional email client "application" would be Outlook and the like.

I think bare minimum you need two boards (three if powder is a consideration which here in the east it is not). One for steep and/or narrow ice or just ice in general, and one for everything else. The ice board should be a 158-163 short radius machine that will auger in and allow you to get your carves around in a smaller space and without building up too much speed. It takes considerable skill and strength to use such a board properly. Most people tend (as I used to) to not commit enough to each carve and let them run too long and wide. Then you get chatter and then you go home at 11am.

Read the FAQ. Especially the one titled "Snowboard Shipping 101".

Madd 158 (10m?) - for steep and/or narrow ice or whenever I want a quick and lively ride. Rode Sunday River last year on a re-freeze day and they had only groomed a strip down the middle of White Heat after the freeze. This board got it done. Coiler metal 170 (14m) - the one to rule them all. Does almost everything. Madd 180 (16m? 17m?) - for when it's buff and fast. Speed king. That's all I need. I could get away with just the Coiler, and if I was only riding like 10 days a year that's all I would have. But even it has its limitations. Sometimes it's not short enough and sometimes it's not long enough. Schurman or ~tb needs to chime in and explain the quiver mania. (10-15 boards?)

Mainers are the best carvers! Right Ted?

More later, but my first picture was taken in January last year at Sunapee, and the conditions were "frozen granular". Not bad, but not hero. The second pic was from ECES04, which anyone who went can tell you, was not hero. Bottom line, it's all balance. Whatever position gives YOU the most balance, use it. But toilet sitting will never be that.

Mmmm, I don't think that's it. My head and shoulders are still pretty high in those pictures. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's much better to be more upright like that than to be hunched over with your chest on your knees. You have better balance with your head up. On average, one's center of gravity is a few inches below the belly button. agreed, it will help you get into a better position for pressuring the nose.

Yeah, I'm doing that in my first pic. Thanks. Well, I think I know what you're trying to say, but that's not really accurate. I mean, unless you can levitate, you can't put any less weight on the edge just by standing one way or another. The problems with toilet sitting are that it's not a balanced position, and you usually can't tilt the edge of the board up high enough to match your speed while hanging your arse out like that. As you go faster, you have to tilt the board up higher to make a truly carved turn. It's very difficult or impossible to do that while sitting into your turn.

More binding angle might help, but don't go too far inboard of your edges. Just making sure you don't have boot drag is the most important thing. High binding angles isn't a prereq for good heelsides. Yeah, boards can bend a lot in a carve. That's a 186, so there is a lot of board to bend. But that does look extreme. Something may have happened quickly right at the moment the picture was taken, I don't remember. Queequeg is right on about looking into the turn. If you're just looking down the fall line, that is a huge invitation to counter rotate and sit on the toilet.

Video 1 is classic toilet sitting. Not counter rotating on heelside will help. Keep your trailing hand in front of you where you can see it at all times. And DO NOT let your leading hand cross over the board. Keep it off to the heel side of the board. The direction that your chest is facing and the direction the board is pointing form an angle. (for some people it's zero) That angle shouldn't change a whole lot from turn to turn (unless you've perfected the EC rotation method, but IMO that's wasted motion). But here's a biggie... most toilet-sit turns happen in this sequence: bend knees first, tilt board up on edge second. It needs to be the other way around. Not that you should ever be riding with straight legs, but don't "sink" into the turn with your knees just to get low. A carve starts by pressuring the edge, tilting the board up, and leaning in to the turn. Use your knees only as shock absorption. You'll notice in these pictures that my knees aren't bent a ton, but my butt is very close to the ground.

Regarding the new topic for this thread, honestly I wouldn't want to work in an office where there wasn't any good "scenery". Whorish fishnets are surely over the line, but I'm fine with tight shirts/skirts/pants and a little cleavage in the office. What I really find inappropriate is girls dressing like they're going clubbing to go to class, which I saw a ton of while in grad school. That didn't happen when I was an undergrad (class of 96). Cleavage to class? What?? Not that I'm complaining :D, but I hope the pendulum swings back the other way by the time my daughter is that age.

Polaris on a Coiler! Welcome home my boy.

I think I'm turning Japanese oh yes I'm turning Japanese I really think so.

Oh, so it's "Breck" now that you're a local? Well lah-dee-FREEKIN-DAH!!! ;)

holy crap that sucks. dogs rule.

thank you for playing, softbootsailer, we have some lovely parting gifts for you.

For a board that's supposed to be quick turning (like Madd 158, 170, Donek FC171, etc), I think I'd rather not have metal. I love my Madd 158 for its liveliness and "trampoline factor", but I've never tried a short metal board. That said, I still love my Madd 180 to death. But I don't think I'd want to compare it against say, a metal 16m Coiler. My metal Coiler 170 (14m) is easily my most versatile board ever. If I could only have one board, it would be that. skategoat: I would say Coiler has the metal durability issue licked, and Prior and Donek are catching up in that area.

http://www.bomberonline.com/articles/canting.cfm

Well, if we had the Dodgers version of Manny Ramirez, we would have. 2008 on Dodgers: 53 games 0.396 avg 0.489 obp 17 HR 53 RBI 2008 on Red Sox: 100 games 0.299 avg 0.398 obp 20 HR 68 RBI

Come on, I was just asking a question, and you have made a good point. Cateks are easier to adjust on hill. However once you find the sweet spot, it's harder to reproduce it should you want to set up other boards the same way, or if you keep fiddling but then decide to come back to a previous setup.

EXACTLY. I believe this is why many people don't like a more rigid boot/binding interface - their cant/lift is probably not optimized. When you have your cant/lift dialed in, along with a proper stance width, you will have lots of lower body mobility. I haven't felt that feeling of being "locked in" or "bolted" to my board in years. My legs do what they want, I'm not fighting the equipment, and there is no wishy-washy delay in the transmission of input from me to the board. I'll never forget the time there was a big high level race at Sugarloaf. There were a few hundred racers there, speedsuits and everything, and I was stunned that a vast majority of them were on race plates with the front foot flat and that humongous 7 degree Burton wedge under their back foot sloping only along the long axis of the board, forcing their back knee into the back of their front knee. And this was a few years after I had been shown the light of better bindings with modern lift and cant. Dumb. I believe it is very possible to get close or equal to the rigidity of step-ins with standard bails. I always sized mine tight, and when I went to SI, I barely noticed a difference. "What's all the hubbub?" I thought. It sounds like you're probably there. Burtons have massively more flex. Ride Bombers or Cateks for a season, then try Burtons. I did this once and I felt like there were rubber bands holding me to the board. It was scary. What's wrong with that is that the flex is not engineered. You're simply using the elasticity of the one-size-fits-all metal bails in tension. After a while they will work-harden and fail without warning, or, one day you might simply exceed the elasticity and snap them. An engineered system like Bombers uses much stronger bails that are not intended to provide that elasticity. For that they use an elastic material in compression, which cannot fail.

I guess I should have quoted the conversation more completely. It went more like this... me: "hey (name), howcome you're not riding the step-ins?" him: (purses lips, shakes head) "they s u c k." This was shortly after Burton introduced their system. I only posted it because I found it to be humorous and ironic commentary from someone inside (a Burton engineer) who had a vested interest in liking the system. I wasn't trying to blanket the whole softboot step-in universe with that quote. Sorry if that's how it came out. You might have mentioned that to me at SES 05, but it had slipped my mind. No worries at all. Hey, takes one to know one. ;)

They're dealing with shin-snapping ruts that freecarvers are not.