Jack M

Laugh it up, fuzzball. This one's my fav: http://www.ruhtra.com/~ruhtra/photo/03110d/m110d31c.jpg who is that, Rob?

They seem to alternate, actually. Often when they are fully laid out, their shoulders are perpendicular to the board, or even beyond perpendicular. You can especially see this in the final scene of Opus 3: Stoked, where Jacques comes to a stop laid out on heelside. Great comedy, btw! Also in many of the still pictures on the site they are squared up to the board. It is. If you have the hero snow, go for it, it's tons of fun. But it's simply a fact of physics that getting closer to the board like Curt will give you more balance on icier conditions. Opus 3: Stoked is easily one of the coolest, smoothest carving videos ever, and certainly the best I've seen in recent memory. I just watched it, and now I am jonesing hard. I love that music, and the carving and scenery is breathtaking. Patrice and Jacques get a standing-O from me where I sit! However I think what you're referring to is parts of the video where they tilt the camera. The terrain isn't crazy steep. -Jack

that sounds like you're doing the cross-under just fine. When you're making edge changes happen with your knees and ankles, that's basically cross-under. Now apply that to larger gs-style carves, and you'll have cross-through. -Jack

Do you ride with your knees stuck together? That can be a common problem. Here is an article that talks about that. Also, it is important to make sure that you are using the whole edge. As speed builds it is very easy to get defensive and stay in the back seat. Make sure that you really get forward and set the nose into the carve at the beginning of each turn. As the turn comes around, you can smoothly shift back to pressure the whole edge. Something that helps to get forward is to drive your back hand forward and down over the nose throughout the turn. You should be able to see both your hands in front of you. It is also important at higher speeds to make the edge change happen as quickly as possible. That maximizes the time the board is actually carving, which gives you the most control over your speed. Here is an article that talks about that. -Jack

That article should say "....if you are roughly average height and weight". What can I say, being 5'11" 170lbs, I am a born "size-ist". You'll probably think the board is too short pretty soon. Then again, you might really enjoy it. If you've never carved a turn in hardboots before, this board should carve well for you on the greens, which is where you need to go when learning to carve. -Jack

weird. a buddy of mine wants "PBRASAP"

Allee, short boards like 157s can be ridden beyond their carvable speed envelope. It takes a lot of G's to be able to lay out, and doing so on a short board can be more difficult for some people. -Jack

This is one of my all-time favorite snow-sport photographs. Sugarloaf patroller Chase McKendry, on teles:

It is quite possible and easy to be going "too fast" for your board's sidecut radius. The UP156 must have a very short radius, as I remember the FP157 was about 9.5m which is quite short. Short boards in general want to make quick turns. If you're trying to lay out at high speed and carry a big turn across the hill, it's just not going to happen. -Jack

Get a boardercross board like the F2 Eliminator, or last year's Volkl Cross. BX boards carve the best of any softboot board, and they can be used with hardboots or softboots. Your size 13 flippers won't fit on an all-mtn carver like the Axis in softboots, at realistic angles. As a beginner snowboarder, you should probably stay away from buying a race board (new or $30 used - sorry morror70), as they are very unforgiving. Unless you are already an expert skier, then the transition might not be bad. If you really can't find a BX board, just get a stiff (sounds like you're probably a big guy) freeride board with a medium-longish sidecut radius like 10-12 meters - nothing under 10m though. (medium-longish for freeride boards that is. GS race boards are around 15m) Also check out the Welcome Center here. -Jack

'95 was also the year Burton had a carver on the cover of its catalog. Actually there were two covers that year, one of a carver, one of your typical air shot. I don't know if it was just a dual cover year, or if they decided in late fall that they had picked the "wrong" picture for the cover. Actually now that I think about this a little more, I'll bet that many softbooters would consider twin-tip skis to be more hip than alpine snowboards.-Jack

RRRROOOWWWWRRRRRR!!!

I think this time you're going to have to show your face!!

Ahh Belgium - home of the best beer in the world - LEFFE!!! I don't think going from 172 to 176 will be a huge difference. Put the TD2's on the 176 and experiment with different settings until it all feels right. If you use toe lift on the front foot and heel lift on the back foot, you can comfortably use a wider stance. That will make the board feel shorter. If it still feels too long, try mounting the bindings on the center of the sidecut, or 2 centimeters forward of center. -Jack

Try it like this on the hill and see how it goes. Then at lunch time switch the cant plate to the front foot, sloping towards the tail. That is, if you can remember how to mount it! See which way works better for you.-Jack

It is obvious to me that TWS is directed at the 12-17 year old crowd (and college students of similar mentality) - people who have enough leisure time after school to read through 220+ pages of rubbish. I got a free subscription to Skiing mag by going to a Warren Miller movie and filling out a card. It's all of about 97 pages, and is a much much better read (although they still don't list ski radii in their reviews). Teens are way more concerned with what is "cool" and "extreme". Rails and pipe are cool and extreme, carving is a discipline, an art.But is TWS merely reacting to public demand, or are they pushing an agenda - <i>telling</i> teens what is cool and extreme? You could probably write a master's thesis on that Hmm, maybe. I think the new school of carving skis are closer brothers to alpine snowboards than anything else. I've seen several pictures in Skiing of people carving their skis - and if you put your hand over their feet and ignore the poles, they look <i>a lot</i> like us.As far as the old-guard hip wiggling swishy turn fall-line skiers (the people who <i>really</i> scrape all the snow off the hill!) are concerned, alpine snowboarders are no less despicable than their softbooter cousins, because they don't know how to deal with us on the trail, and we get in their way. So in that sense I agree we are more snowboarders than skiers. But not for long. -Jack

Listen folks, I never said I was angry at anybody. I'm not even angry at TWS, it's a free country and if they can capitalize on an activity and give people jobs, then fabulous. I just think it's a pathetic magazine. I think it's a sad statement that TWS and their advertisers consider rail riding to be 440% more important than actually being able to ride your snowboard down the hill (in this issue anyway). I just do. I also think that if you are a rippin' all around rider and you can stomp the rails with authority, then that only adds to your coolness in my book. Does it make you a better snowboarder? Sure, it helps your balance and requires skill. But if <i>all</i> you're concerned with is rails and tricks, well, you're not much of a snowboarder in my book. That's exactly what TWS is encouraging. Sorry if this is against the rules. -Jack

Correct, if you want your snowboard to last. If you don't, then go nuts. If I take my golf clubs and whack rocks around my yard, am I golfing? And when did I ever say I don't enjoy freestyle? No. I have too much respect for my equipment. I also have no interest in suffering the inevitible groin-shot. Sure - whether I'm on my carving board and hardboots or my Burton Custom 164 and two-straps, pipe/park is great fun. That's not my argument though. I'm just considering two extremes: someone who never goes in the park/pipe, and someone who never leaves them. Which one is more deserving of the title "snowboarder"? I think it's the former. If you had never seen snowboarding before and you picked up a copy of TWS, you'd think that it was the latter. Actually you wouldn't know that the former even existed. Hell, you probably wouldn't even realize that a <i>mountain</i> was required. I think there's something wrong with that.

Well, you can say unequivocally that riding rails and concrete walls and cars and such have absolutely nothing to do with snowboarding because no snowboard is designed to withstand those activities for very long. I'd be very surprised if those things were covered by a snowboard's warranty. Furthermore, I think that someone who can carve turns and/or freeride the whole mountain, but who never goes near the park/pipe can more legitimately call themselves a "snowboarder" than someone who never leaves the park/pipe. Just my opinion. -Jack

As I was flipping pages, I came across the editorial in the beginning. I glanced at it, and it said "Peter Line was more influential to the sport of snowboarding than any other, during the decade called the 90's". HUH?!? Not taking anything away from Line, but there are several I would rank above him. Kelly, Terje, Palmer.... the list goes on.

OK, so I bought a subscription to Transworld Snowboarding from the kid down the street as part of a fundraiser. I already get two motorcycle mags, so this was all he had left in which I was remotely interested. Usually I'll leaf through it for 5 minutes and chuck it. This month I decided to disect the mag and see exactly how they fill 200+ pages. Before you say "don't you have anything better to do?" save it. My wife was watching Gilmour Girls, and I certainly wasn't going to do any housework while she was doing <i>that</i>. I counted every page and tallied how many pages were actual TWS CONTENT (what their writers/editors are paid to actually <i>do</i>) and how many were ADvertisements. These two groups were subdivided as such: pages picturing AIR (snowboard not on snow), SNOW (snowboarder riding snowboard on snow), RAIL/MAN-MADE objects (snowboard being mutilated on a man-made object), and OTHER (no snowboarding pictured on page at all). Pages that were split evenly were counted as half, otherwise whatever comprised the bulk of the page was counted as one page. Two-page spreads were counted seperately, so if a spread had a snowboarder jumping through the air on one page and the rest of the scenery on the other page that was counted as 1 AIR, 1 OTHER. Fold-outs were counted per panel. <i>As I write this, my wife is ragging on me for doing it. Whatever lady, you just watched the Gilmour Girls. Talk to the hand.</i> Here is the breakdown: <table border=1> <tr><td>Total Pages: <td>215<td>100% <tr><td>Total Content: <td>102<td>47% <tr><td>Total Ads:<td>113<td>53% <tr><td>Ads AIR<td>35<td>16% <tr><td>Ads SNOW<td>1<td>0.5% <tr><td>Ads RAIL/MM<td>18<td>8% <tr><td>Ads OTHER<td>59<td>27% <tr><td>Content AIR<td>46<td>21% <tr><td>Content SNOW<td>4<td>2% <tr><td>Content RAIL/MM<td>9<td>4% <tr><td>Content OTHER<td>43<td>20% <tr><td>Total Snowboarding<br>(not including rail/mm)<td>86<td>40% <tr><td>Total Other<td>129<td>60% </table> So, if you want to see pictures of people actually snowboarding (not skateboarding with their feet bound to a long skateboard without trucks or wheels, or hucking their carcasses through the air) you'll obviously have to look somewhere besides a magazine called Transworld SNOWBOARDING. Go figure. -Jack

I used to think footbeds were for picky whiners who were never happy with their boots. Now I consider them manditory equipment, and kick myself for not having bought them years sooner. Just make sure that they offer real support. They should be firm and not flexible under the heel and arch.

That is the usual progression, as cross-through is a blend of cross-over/under, heavy on the under.

good to know I could still do a beginner lesson if I wanted!

See I would have called that "edging". But I was never psia certified. To me steering connotes doing something to rotate the board out of the track it would naturally carve on its own. A dead weight could carve a snowboard if you could balance it right, and a dead weight is incapable of steering. -Jack