mangle

Excellent. Thanks! I'm already a USASA member, as I joined to start playing on the Lake Placid water ramps this past summer. I love the T6 for most riding and had assumed it would work pretty well for this application... Sounds like the answer there is a firm no. Is it far enough off that it's not even remotely competitive, or is it good enough to get a feel for how this sort of thing works before spending the money on a real board? And for that matter, I have a Venture Storm 166. It's a bit wide, but would it work better?

The short answer is I'm finishing up a PhD at MIT. It's starting to look like I'll be here permanently after though. Taking a winter off and bumming was one of the best decisions I ever made. I had enough consulting stuff to carry me through the season without eating in to riding time. I think I'll be able to take off again next winter, but we'll have to see what happens.

First, hi. This is my first post here. I got in to snowboarding a few years ago, and it has quickly become an obsession. I had two 5-day seasons, a 10-day season, a 30-day season, and then I took last winter completely off, moved to Jackson in December, then to Tahoe in April, and ended up with 103 days. I have an equipment dilemma. I have a basically new 2007/2008 Burton T6 162, a former demo 2010/2011 T7 162 with amazingly pristine edges and base, and a daily driver 2008/2009 T6 162 that's torn to **** (probably 120-140 days on it). I have Ride CADs on all of them. I have other stuff for low-key/park and powder days. I want to set aside one of the first two for trying out boardercross stuff here in the Northeast. The 07/08 T6 has been ridden maybe 5 days now, and the edges have a few small nicks that I should be able to take out with a fine diamond stone pretty easily. It's been absolutely glorious on the ice I've seen at Killington the past few days... Leaving pencil lines through yellow ice is quite satisfying when I do it right, though I still can't make SL-sized turns on anything that hard. I haven't ridden the T7 yet, as I just got the slot compatible disks this weekend. I'm leaning toward setting aside the 07/08 T6 for racing, using the T7 as a daily driver, and demoting the 08/09 T6 to a rock board or tuning it up and selling it. Is there any reason I should do something different? Will I notice much of a difference between the old T6 and the T7? If I decide boardercross is something I'll stick with, I'll pony up for a real boardercross board. Factory tune seems to be 1deg base bevel, 1deg side for a 90deg edge. I would think that there's a lot more turning performance to be gained by a more aggressive side angle. I have good 1deg base and side edge guides and could get shims for something more aggressive. Is this a good idea? Thoughts? I guess also relevant is the fact that I'm about 6'2", 175 lbs, size 10.5 Malamute, binding angles +30/-15 (knees are a little weird and really like these angles).