Cindy Kleh

"Crashing and losing goggles + glasses is a bitch, though. ;-)" Yes. Especially if you are nearly blind w/o them! I have tried glasses with many different goggles, and i hate having any kind of pressure on my face while i'm trying to recreate. I can put up with fog now and then, but I'm the type that cuts all labels out of shirts and pants because they irritate me. I'm super sensitive. Maybe I should try goggles and glasses while chanting OHM on all chairlift rides and learn to accept it by meditating on cavemen riders who didn't have 20/20. They crashed into trees and were an evoluntionary deadend. Now we have corrective lenses. Now for all you perfect viz types out there: be thankful for your good genes.

I think that Mother Nature installed that memory loss on bad falls that cause concussions. I've had a few bad ones and I couldn't recall how the falls actually went down. Maybe that's for the better. Helmets are a neccesity for me. Besides, they are more waterproof than hats and produce less of a "hat head" look.

You have a point King C. Location does have a large impact on the number of HBs. At Winter Park (my home mtn) I see very few, MAYBE one a day, sometimes none. At Copper, it's more common. Europe and Japan lots of them and places like Echo Mtn and Mountain High, none.

This is a really good issue, one that non-blind people just can't understand. I wore contact lenses for decades, then my eyes decided NO MORE! But after years of trying everything else including expensive RX goggles, I've gone back to contact lenses ONLY for snowboarding, and I take them out immediately after riding. Among my failed solutions: -RX goggles were fine until I had a faceplant, esp on a pow day. Then i had snow stuck between my two lenses with the only way to get it out was to dry them inside for a few hours. But they did work on cruiser runs or teaching beginners. -not everyone can have Lasik done. my corneas are too thin. -not everyone can go with one contact lens. I'm so blind (-875) that I wouldn't even be able to find the chairlift with one lens in. -RX sunglasses. I love them but they do not provide great vision on cold, snowy days. I had a scratched cornea a few weeks ago and it absolutely stopped me from going riding until it healed. I even skipped GS and Slalom races because I knew I couldn't do it in RX sunglasses when it was 2 degrees, dumping and windy. It killed me to not race!!!! But my dad is an opthalmologist, and he told me that I would furhter irritate (and possibly scar) the cornea even worse if I wore them before it healed. I'm surprised that the ski and snowboarding industry hasn't come up with a better solution yet. We blind people would pay almost anything to see straight! Even with contacts, i only see 20/50, and that can suck when you're flying through gates! Another problem i have with contacts, very poor reading eyesight. Who knows what those liablilty forms I signed really said or even if I signed on the right line?

How many jobbers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Three. One to screw it in and two to hold up his pants. But seriously, if hardbooters are 2% of the snowboarding population, then just find out how many snowboarders there are in the world and do the math.

It's all about money, honey. Resorts make more off of terrain parks than hardbooters' corduroy. It's all in the number of users, and like it or not, there's more rail monkeys that buy tickets than carving gods.

My coolest leash was a handmade hemp one with silver bells that jingled everytime I did air.

I haven't had a leash on my board for years. It seems that resorts out west don't stress on it. That said, I have seen boards get away from beginners, but in most instances, the leash wouldn't have helped.

Take care of that shoulder, Ace, and don't b e in a hurry to get back on the slopes. I ripped out mine last Feb and it's still giving me problems. Every other injury I've gotten healed with a little rehab and rest but the shoulder pain won't go away and every little fall involving those muscles makes it ache for days. Trust me, you don't want this injury to become chronic.

Thanks for all your helpful posts. Good stuff to think about. I have a 157 Nitro Supra Team with a 24.8 cm waist that I use for slalom and a 163 Nitro Samurai with a 25.4cm waist for GS. The bad knees came from hiking, not riding, but they get worse when I ride moguls, train gates hard or land big air hard. Also, it's inner knees on both. Sean McCarron, my alpine coach at Copper, suggested putting my back binding at -3 (from +3) and it worked. I felt better in the carve and it hurt less.

I've been racing on softies, and I know that I could get faster if I switched to a HB set up, but I have two bad knees that don't take torquing well. All that added control in the ankle and foot will put more pressure on the knees. Every time I break in a new pair of soft boots, my knees kill until the boots are soft enough. (Breaking them in means jumping and dancing on them.) I use low angles for the same reason. 18/-3. I try to make up for my set up by keeping the weight even, pulling up my edge and getting my weight solidly over the other one. (Oh, and sheer determination to kick butt racing helps.)

My solution to rude kids? Speak to them directly. They hate that. They may give you attitude, but they'll avoid you the rest of the day and they sure as heck won't cut in front of you again. I have kids drop into the halfpipe out of turn because we all get a certain amount of time to get practice runs in before a competition. I just smile at them and say "Excuse me but I believe I was in line ahead of you." I don't pull the I'm an adult and you're a kid thing. Kids prefer to be addressed as equals, just the way their peers wouldn't let them cut in front. I know what you mean about rich race kids. I had an 8 yr old call me a whore. I asked him if he knew what that meant and he ran away and never bothered me again.

Snow Speedster, Soon those rug rats will be on the snow with you and then kicking your butt. I'm so glad my dad was a skier and got my whole family into it. Oh, and in my day, we didn't have those fancy carving boards. We rode skinny wooden skis with cable bindings and lace up boots and we LIKED IT! But I digress .....

One of Shredder Jen's goals: "Competing well against Cindy in the USASA races" BRING IT ON JEN!! I may surprise everyone and bring a pair of knees to Nationals next year, so watch out. Oh, and the top three riders in our age group for GS and slalom compete in Copper Series, so you may want to race at Aspen and kick Lisa Reugeri's butt to qualify for nationals. Time to zip up the speed suit, baby! the snow goddess

-Get through the season without any rips, dislocations or breaks -get out of the pipe and master the big kickers (and buy a mouthguard for both) -get through another season of boardercross alive -teach snowboarding again for the National Sports Center for the Disabled -get my husband into racing so we can both be cranky doo-doo heads on race days (I'm not that nice when I'm nervous)

No need for withdrawal, Thor. I've got two T-Boards. I'll get you turning on some mellow hills on CR 519 (a relatively new developement of second homes ... hardly any cars). Some of those "runs" are over a mile long and with a posse of longboarders, we use the car as a gondola. It's kind of like carving pow. It scares me sometimes to be I'm cruising down pavement at 30 MPH, but these boards are really solid at higher speeds. SO FAR, SO FUN! I'll let you know after my first good crash, though. (This is my fourth summer with hardly a scratch but alot of close calls.)

Best season of my wretched life, but the highlights were: - teaching my husband to ride, then doing knee-deep powder in the trees under the Panoramic lift 3 weeks later. - getting into the park and pipe for the first time and winning silvers at Nationals in both. - winning golds in GS and slalom and my fourth straight national overall alpine title. It will be pretty hard to beat that next year!

Persuaded? What do I have to do? Provide a bellydancing harem? A keg of Dam beer? Turkish hashish? But wait, if you act now ......

We have tickets for the Basin on Saturday. Any of you guys gonna be there?

I'm bringing my hubby this time. He took his first turns in Feb. but he's really getting there. He wants to compete in USASA alpine and BX next year. Kind of a natural rider from the start.

Thor, I thought I was the only one retarded enough to use dial-up. I'm set up with passes for closing day. Yee HAW! Who's gonna be there?

Cool pix, Jen. You so need a tie dye to go with that lei! So where are the topless pix? YES, spring riding is worth it, esp this year! I've never been able to ride the basin in late May without boardwalks leading to the lift and having to uplift to the upper ones. It's been a truly epic season, the kind you tell your grandkids about. And all that water is needed for the watershed and to keep those golfcourses green in Vegas. The Basin ROCKS!

Lee, sorry I missed you. I had a blast. I am so honored to be counted as a hardbooter! Yes, I darted down the terrain park and got caught on Lenawee, riding with these two guys who were playing hooky from a convention. Sorry, Thor. I only lasted a few more runs. I'll get back to the Basin before it closed.

The Snow Goddess never pays for lift tickets! I am wealthy in contacts, not cash!

I could make it tomorrow if I line up a ticket today. Looks like a SPF 90 kind of day ... warm weather wax.