Vahur

Shred, did you made any tests and can we see results? E.g. Cooper's test (how much beer one can drink in 12 minutes)? :D Personally I'm amazed at Lance's performance and I really hope, that he is clean (as much as one person can be with nowadays nutrition). Otherwise it would be very disappointing as I'm not interested in biochem companies race....

Jack, perhaps you could post your overview into Articles section?

You mean that sn0wboarding ain't all aboot fun and ya gotta train for that?? /serious mode on I've found Ronja's page for this very helpful. I personally go with biking and (in autumn especially) with jogging on sandy slopes. Helps strength and CV (cardio-vascular) training very well..http://homepages.together.net/~ronjav/sbtp/

I don't think that there is much difference between concrete and snow (or ice) in terms of hardness on slopes where I sometimes ride. Biggest difference comes IMO from the fact that after fall you slide on your cloth to stop while on snow, but on concrete you slide on your skin to stop.

From the text on this russian site I understand, that this company is just distributor of F2 and Deeluxe products. So, no, F2 is not going to do anything for Deeluxe. Vahur, not uses babelfish, learned 8 years Russian.

For me ski vs. snowboard is easy to choose: I don't have any balance or dexterity skills and skiing was very hard to learn: skis got crossed with each other, poles got constantly in a way, after fall equipment was all over slope and it was hard to get back to skis on slope etc. With snowboard it's much easier: you have one plank attached to feets and all you have to worry, is how to stand on it. So, I consider, that snowboarding is for handicapped persons and people with real skill go with skis. Disclaimer: just kidding, of course

Slashdot had an article of surf board, which had embedded wifi webcam laptop: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/18/1240235.shtml?tid=137&tid=159&tid=186&tid=193 Wondering, when Intel develops similar gadget for snowoard: it would be good, if you can check your ride down while going up on lift ;)

And how is Voilà pronounced? :D I have always hard time when someone tries to explain how something should be pronounced and makes it based on English language, thus making it even harder to understand (at least for me). Perhaps it would have been better for communication, if Spanish were language #1 as its pronounciation is simplicity itself, you just should learn couple of rules and that's it, everything else is pronounced same way as written. But in English you should learn each word separately (and for separate region separately on some cases: if men from down under come and say: "we came here today", then it does not necessarily mean, that they came here to die :)

I don't think so, I guess that this is made by artists, who are forced to participate in those fruitless, looooong and booooring business meetings. And if they get caught, they have good excuse: "Sorry, I was just sharpening my pencil to take notes! What was that question again?"

This springsystem (as well as boot) is intended for racing and I believe that it performs well for that matter. If you want to do freecarving, then it is not suitable for many riders (due to too hard spring and limited range of movement), but such (ab)use is not in spex anyway :) Problem seems to be more in fact that there is no good freecarving-oriented boot with spring system available. Of course you can modify existing ones (Deeluxe and ???)....

Here is couple of ideas how to spend summer while carving: http://www.infofreako.com/jad/pencil/0list-e.html Well, actually not snow, but pencil, but hey, its carving anyway! :D

bird

I recommend to avoid tequila, if you don't want to get into hospital: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040401/323/eq2v2.html :D

I guess you meant Pureboarding?

I found picture of Proflex boots, I'd like to know, what year's model is this and are they available any more? I just got new boots, so I'm not interested in them personally, but I might know someone, who'll like them...

Well, angles are relative small for carving board: 47/53. More it's my lack of skills and practice in powder: I've done real powder (i.e. more than couple of inches) only 2 times before and with soft setup. Additionally having new, much wider and longer board and going with it right to powder isn't big help either. But fotunately I don't get much powder anyway, so sucking in it ain't problem for me :D I'd like to work on my riding style, but unfortunately I don't get as much riding as I'd like to (lack of mountains nearby :( )

Here they are: http://www.aetec.ee/fv/vkhomep.nsf/pages/Aspen/ There were taken in Aspen this year during Carving Session (organized by Pureboarding). Nothing to be proud of though: riding style is not yet what I like it to be (hands waiwing, counter-rotation, some falls, riding not so smooth as I'd like to be, etc ), camera jitters quite a lot (it was first try of filming on movement and result resembles operator work from films of Lars von Trier :D ), files are quite big (thanks to camera jittering) etc. Anyway, you get what you paid for :) Comments welcome!

Head concussion on first or second day of snowboarding: learned with ski boots and some carving board (Burton Alp, I believe). Maintaining balance with such setup was real pain in a$$ and at one moment I found myself lying on slope and wondering: where am I? What place is this? What is my name? Probably heelside edge catch, but I don't remember anything about it. Rode carefully down, went to cafe and sat there for 15 minutes, until names for things came back to my head :) Second was not crash, but unfortunate fall in Alps, where I broke my 4th finger from joint. Right after falling I felt little pain, looked to my hand and saw, that finger is backwards, so I turned it into correct position and rode down. Then I took glove off and saw, how swollen it was, put some snow into glove and rode next 3 days with such finger. Healing took more than year and even now (4 years later) this finger's joint is weak. And now some over-the-nose illustration material from Oppdal carving camp this year. Bad visibility, bad rider and steep slope lead to such result. Fortunately speed was slow and I didn't get hurt...

Those, who thought otherwise, are not among us anymore to tell stories. It's called natural selection, I believe :D

Everyone else seems to be polite here, so I'll be the messanger :) Anyway, back to topic: looking at your carve it seems to me little bit static: you should add more dynamicity to riding. Now you change edge and keep your position until next edge change. Good suggestions for riding more dynamically are in Cern snowboard club pages. You seem to use crossover turns (by extension in cern page), try to practice acceleration (forward-backward movement) and flexion (crossthrough). Of course this prerotation may be not what you're after, so skip it.. Second thing is, that you go too fast: try to put board more on edge (but on slower speed). I rode in same style whole last season (my first one on hardboots), going down much faster than more experienced carvers, but on last day of season I put my board really on edge and WHOA, this sudden acceleration by riding on high edge and deceleration right after this by carving really short-radius turn opened whole new dimension in carving. It takes time, until you get feeling for correct (optimal) speed on given board and slope but it is well worth of it. Your mountain seems to be steep enough to practice such short agressive turns (was it in carver's almanac, where it was said, that the better the rider, the slower and on steeper slopes he rides). Well, here are my thoughts. Take it (with grain of salt) or leave it :) If I said something very wrong, then I'm sure that riders with better knowledge will correct me. But most important: have fun!

I guess that you suffer from shin bang, see Carver's almanac bootfitting section (scroll down little for shin bang), there are good suggestions.

If you mean picture, posted by Nate W, then this red board is Swoard, The Extreme Carver....

snow tow car contains link to this video. Or search net for snowtowcar.wmv file. File is over 14 MB but well worth of it! :D

Other good slopes for EC carving are in Aspen mountain, under Ruthies and Shadow lifts (on right side, if you look up to slopes): nice wide and deeply dropping slopes, which are relatively empty. Best would be to take first runs there by taking Shadow mountain lift instead of gondola on morning, this allows to get faster to runs and allows 1-2 rides before folks from gondola appear there. Unfortunately as I were there, base was too soft (thanks to 20+ '' of new snow) and these runs got bumped up fast (in 2 hours), after that carving was very challenging (although lower slopes under Shadow lift were with firmer base).

If some people go so far, that put faked reviews to bring average for Swoard down, then IMO it indicates, that Swoard is success :) Otherwise if it would have been yet another board (perhaps good but nothing exceptional), then why bother?