Neil Gendzwill

If you ride mid-week at a large hill like Big White where there isn't much of a local population, you'll find the runs stay nicely carvable all day.

Here, looks pretty nice. I'm on vacation with my wife, kids and parents so if the riding sucks I'm sure we'll find something to do.

Hey, at least you haven't dumped a bunch of cash into a non-refundable condo at Panorama, where the base is 50 cm or something dreary like that. A little over 2 weeks to go - it could still snow. I'll just think encouraging snow thoughts in the general direction of Invermere.

If you don't have the 4 hole disks you might look at an old Burton Fusion as well, they sometimes crop up on ebay. Alternatively, you can buy hardboots and bindings and mount them on your custom, then once you've adjusted get a more alpine-y board. If you're already carving your custom well your next step is probably the hardboots anyways...

45 front, 40 rear on a 21.5 cm board. Width IIRC is around 19.5" but I'd have to measure to be sure. Slight cant inward on the rear foot (whatever the wedge on the old RS stepins is, maybe 3 degrees?). With this rig I'm willing to bet my knees don't seperate like the technical gurus here would like. I'm 6' tall, 32" inseam.

Platu - I think you should read all the stuff at the welcome centre here.

Hook up with PSR at Stratton. Contact info here.

Limit the number of people who run it before you groom the course and reset. You could maybe run 5-6 people through every morning of SES, for example.

He was cutting one serious trench with that beast - it almost looks like he could hang up that little nose in his own trench.

www.rad-air.com has all the specs - mind the Flash!

I'm looking at putting together some tools to let me do edges. If I go from Reliable Racing's catalog, I get: RRS File Card $7 DMT 4in. Diamond Stone $20 Bludan Standard 8" File $6 Swix Side Edge 89 degree File Guide $30 Base BEAST .75 degree File Guide $20 Gummi Stone $6 This should let me do a good job, although none of the tools are "pro" quality. But I'm sorely tempted to just get a combination tool like the Swix Ergo Plus, which is about $30 and available locally (thus saving me another $US19 in shipping). Therefore it's an extra $80 to put together the swanky kit - is it worth it? The only edge work I've ever done is to use a crappy 90 degree guide I've got to file the side edge, so I've got a learning curve on top of the expense.

Unfortunately no mountains for me until I hit Panorama in a couple of weeks.

Yeah, 'cause women are so turned on by the conditions of public bathrooms.

[spock]It's dead, Jim.[/spock] It's also quite different from the current ones if I understand things correctly. D-Sub, one of those pics is a full one. They're all kind of big though.

No, this board replaces my old Prior 4WD 165, which was from '99 I think. It was too soft for me but was still a very good all-rounder. The new one is quite a bit stiffer (7.7 on Bruce's scale, FWIW), a little longer and should do better in hard conditions and at speed. However my primary hills are Sunshine and Louise, so ice is not too much of a concern. I asked Bruce to build this one considering bumps and steeps are my normal habitat. I'll be in Panorama starting Valentine's day, there will be plenty of groomed there. IIRC there are several black cruisers which are good for mach schnell. I'll let you know how it works.

Between world cup medals and press engagements Bruce managed to get my new Coiler out the door. It's an AM172 with 21.5 waist - nothing custom, but still gorgeous and flawlessly finished. None of the pictures I've seen of the orange flames do them justice, so I thought I'd take a crack at it. You can see pictures here, here and here.

Last I checked, although if you read the "dumb things" thread there's at least one person who figures Montreal is in France... Jasey Jay is kicking ass and taking names these days, eh?

With all the concerns about the plastic heel units, I wonder if Bomber and Co. have looked into building their own heels. I expect they'd have a tough time beating that $50 price and as the plastic ones work fine for most... The only heel failure I've experienced was due to operator idiocy - check those screws once in a while!

USPS is not the agent you should be checking. Coiler is in Canada, which would be Canada Post - however none of their services allow international packages over 1.5 m in any dimension. A quick check with DHL shows a shipping charge of over $250 - that can't be right, if it is - yikes! Maybe you should just email Bruce and ask - he may have shipped outside of North America before. EDITED TO ADD: I note Blue Tomato ships boards from Germany to Canada for around 50 euros using DHL. Don't know if they have a special deal or what, but that's just another data point.

You'd think Amazon would have covered that off as a lot of people set up those auto-reply functions when they're out of the office: they play hell with mailing lists and such.

The first snowboard hard boot AFAIK was the Koflach Snowboarder, the hot pink Damian model with the gaitors, but it was really just a badge-engineered Valugga Light. I think the Megaflex was the first boot designed specifically for snowboarding. Maybe Jack should expand his history of equipment article to include boots.

1. Why carve? Others have answered eloquently. I'm going to answer a related question - why hard boots? I come from both a skiing and skateboarding background. Skating is what got me interested in snowboarding, but years of skiing are what give me my goals - to ride the whole mountain with style and speed. I'd like to be able to make any turn shape at any speed anywhere - that defines the truly expert skier and it's my goal as a rider. Hardboots make that possible. As the snowboarding population gets older and the boards get better, we're seeing more and more softbooters opt for stiff soft boots and stiff bindings, so that they can have the control to do what I already can do in hardboots. What is a pair of Malamutes strapped into Nidecker 900s but a watered down hardboot setup? 2. Do you feel limited? As others have said, it's not the ideal equipment for the park or riding switch. Other than that, I don't feel limited at all. I take my all-mountain board with 45-ish angles everywhere - steeps, bumps, trees. Carving hard on the groom is just a bonus to me - I'd rather be in the fluff or the bumps most days. 3. Can resorts make it better for carving? I think resorts already have enough groomers for my taste. I think the way they could improve them is to mark and patrol some of them as intended for high-speed carving. The terrain park exists to go big - let's make some of the steep groomers safe to go fast by marking them clearly, closing off side access and harassing people not for going fast, but for going too slowly or for clearly being outside their limits on a trail intended for experts.

Years ago I had a pair of Spalding Squadra Course GS skis, which had aluminum in them. They were certainly very damp and even as a 22 year old idiot I never found the top end on those skis. Big downside - the metal makes them subject to taking a set. Bent one of them in the bumps. What was I doing in the bumps on a pair of racing GS skis? See "22 year old idiot" above.

Naw, it just looks like a normal black full-face helmet. The thing about it is that it fits, which was a huge deal back then - it was the only one in town I could find to fit my big noggin. Now there are several manus that make helmets in big sizes and even various head shapes within those sizes, so I'm all set if I ever buy a bike (it's on my list, but my list is different from my wife's list so it may be a while). It's just been sitting in my garage for years, no sunlight or whatever to damage it but plenty of freeze/thaw cycles.

So you're saying the Bell motorcycle helmet I bought in 1984 when I got my "M" endorsement is no longer good? Wore it for a few dozen rides and never bought a bike. Just checkin'...