Neil Gendzwill

Just make sure that they send it by regular post. UPS ground will charge you a $40 brokerage fee on top of the tax/duty, and Fedex is $30 I think. USPS/Canada Post is $5.

The edge tool works OK. The main problem is the file is small so you have to clean it quite often. The little knob that holds it in is finicky - it works OK to hold the file, just getting it back together after you clean the file is a bit of a PITA.

[looks at pictures] I see, same vice except with little nobs at the end that overlay the edges, which would get in the way a bit. Mine doesn't have the nobs, instead the string from the 3rd vice loops through the bindings and then you snug it down to the supports. Kinda low-tech but it works not too bad.

They didn't ask me to keep quiet. No way is that thing worth $89. I got their tuning kit for $35 and well... it's a $35 tuning kit if that, and certainly no more. Sure ain't worth the $57 or so they have it listed for. Gave them positive feedback because there's nothing too misleading in their presentation but I wasn't blown away. PS you should have gotten a third C-clamp with a cord attached - or did you get the other one? I have the Cinch.

D-sub, I just got one of those. My only complaint is that the edge slots are very narrow, so you have to have it mounted on a long bench so that you can slide it in close to the tip and tail. That and the whole tie-it-down-with-a-string deal when you have it flat for waxing/base bevel seems a little flimsy. I might add that tools4boards negotiates on price too - I lost an auction on that vice at $41 and asked if they would ship one at that price and they said yes. Retail on their website is $89.

Why not just cut a deal with your employer where it's "look, if I have to carry this effin' phone for you, I'll use it for personal stuff too cause I'm not carrying two phones". It's what I did.

I lived in Calgary 14 years ago when it was still a relatively small city. It's blown up since. Now I live in a place where I can bike to work halfway across town in 15 minutes. They're going to have to get a lot of snow in Panorama to have Taynton be in decent shape, I think. My favourite runs at Sunshine are all off Goat's Eye - I love Freefall - so I'll be all over Taynton if it's any good. We'll be there from the 14th through the 18th inclusive, so if you come up for the day maybe we'll run into each other. If you have FRS, my radio is on 7-22.

If you want to work in Calgary but live someplace smaller and slightly closer to the hills, there's Cochrane about 20 min west. BTW, the closest big hill to Calgary is actually Nakiska. IMNSHO it sucks, but some like it. Lots of easy blue cruisers, but cut funny with double fall-lines. The top part is supposedly better but it's hardly ever open as the place is situated in some sort of weird anti-snow vortex, weatherwise. It was a big political issue to put it there for the 88 olympics. It's been a big hole of suck ever since.

The ski jump hill is now called Canada Olympic Park (COP) although many of the locals still call it Paskapoo. Lots of local Calgary kids learned to ski there. It's a decent place to make a couple of turns and dial in equipment, and they have night skiing. D-sub, I'm not sure what you do for a living but if you're independantly wealthy and can just pull up stakes and move wherever, the place you want to be is Canmore. It's a town just on the east side of the Banff National Park border. As it's not allowed to purchase property in Banff unless you are a full-time working resident, many people who want recreational property near Banff have purchased in Canmore. Lots of people have retired there too. Not sure how big it is now, 10 or 20,000 maybe? Big enough to have a good selection of restaurants and shops anyways. All the retirees and such have seriously pushed up real estate values there. From Canmore, it's maybe 20 minutes to the Sunshine turnoff (then another 10-15 to the parking lot). Louise is another 30 minutes past the Sunshine turnoff.

Calgary is getting pretty big and traffic-choked these days, that's the only downside. It's pushing a million. The drive to Sunshine or Louise on a weekend morning can get kind of ugly. But as Allee says, there are a 4 major resorts within 1-2 hours (Sunshine, Louise, Norquay, Nakiska) plus 3 more in the 3 hour range (Kicking Horse, Panorama, Fernie). There are several other small local ones too. It's a good town to live in if you like to slide fast on snow.

Love that one of Helmut from behind. That's a great angle, too bad you clipped his head.

Really, it's a half-degree? I haven't checked - he told me it would be flat. I was considering putting a half-degree between the bindings and one degree on the tip and tail.

Yeah, Bruce sends his boards ground flat. I contacted the local shops about doing base bevels and the reaction was "huh? what dat? we grind! grind good!" So a tool investment was in order...

I've got some cheapy Kuu thing that I used to use for the side edges but I wanted to do base bevels too. I had a look at Reliable Racing and added up all the prices to do it "right" and said, to heck with it and ordered one of these off ebay for $US35. You can get them direct from the seller for $US57 but as they auction them off for cheap all the time why pay full price? Anyways, hasn't arrived yet, we'll see how it works. If I rode hundreds of days/year and had a huge quiver I would have gone for more professional tools, but seeing as Bruce says he just uses a file with some tape wrapped around one end I figure I can make this work.

It's OK, she's in Canada so she probably means 5-pin. 160 is legitimately sucky.

The file guide has an angled support. That angle is the same no matter how far the tool is from the edge, unless the base isn't flat. If you were starting with a flat edge, the initial angle of the tool would be different depending on how far away you are, but as you remove the material the angle will increase until the file is resting completely on the support and then the edge angle will be the same as the support angle. See the below crude picture for illustration. Note that how far away you are does determine how much of the edge gets filed, but the angle stays the same.

I'm sure you saw lots of ice on the main runs, but I doubt you'd see any on Whitehorn 1. It's probably closed with the poor conditions.

OK, a little more research turns up this link. According to it La Charlevoix has an overall pitch of 17 degrees and the steepest pitch is 33 degrees. That probably makes an excellent racecourse, but as far as butt-puckering steepness, not so much. For a western comparison, Whitehorn 1 at Louise is the same steepness and is rated single black. OTOH you don't have to deal with any ice there, conditions can sure make a big difference.

My primary sports are martial arts - kendo and to a lesser extent judo. To crosstrain for those and snowboarding, I run and lift weights. One simple weightlifting exercise I got from a wrestling S&C coach is called a Turkish Getup. Hold a dumbell overhead with your arm straight. Now lie down on the ground, keeping your arm vertical the whole time. Get back up again. Repeat 3 times each arm, one set. Start light. This is a really good exercise for all-round fitness/core strength etc.

Le Massif only has 770 m of vertical. If "la 42" is 2 km long and uses the whole drop that makes it a little under 20 degrees. If it's really 42 degrees for the whole vertical of the hill then it's about 1.15 km long. If it's actually 42% rather than degrees, then the length would be quite close to 2 km and it would be 21 degrees. ETA that this got me curious, and a little googling shows that "la 42" got it's name not from how steep it is, but because it was originally going to be #42 of 50 planned trails. Also in previous years it was left natural and was a lot tougher. In recent years it has been groomed to be much easier.

How steep?

At that age it's been my experience (with my sample size of 2 kids) that the tip-locking device is a must, or at least a huge help.

Your stories read like you need to be paying a little more attention to what's around you.

A butt-out, straight-legged, chattering, side-slipping, boarduroy-generating, lunch-tray "turn" is always ugly.

Aesthetics - that's an interesting argument, which makes the case more for snowboarding or skiing as a "michi", a path to improvement of self through persuing perfection. I've often thought of it that way because these are what I think of as "life sports", something you can work at and improve at your whole life. To me that philosophy is not compatible with using a pair of snowblades to hack your way down the hill and declaring yourself expert. My other love is kendo, Japanese fencing, where unlike olympic fencing the goal is not to simply cut the other guy, but to do it beautifully and perfectly. It seems unrelated to snowboarding but I take a lot of the same attitude into both. Back semi-on-topic - my skis are also old straight ones, and my wife would have a conniption fit if I gave into the tempation to buy some new ones. But I buy the Ski Canada test guide every year and the various incarnations of the Atomic Beta Ride have been calling my name for quite some time.