nigelc

In the end why did I get into hardbooting: I kept cranking my soft bindings up harder all day in an effort to get more response and this hurt my feet I found that I never jumped and rarely rode fakie At the mountains I ride there is often a long traverse to get to the good stuff. Much harder work on softboots, especially toeside I certainly did not now or then figure that it was a purely on piste activity, indeed it gives me easier access to off piste. I ride hardboots not for "carving" but for better control of the edge.

The prior pow stick on cut up powder was very good. Because of the taper, nose,tail cutout and setback I am not afraid of putting weight forward. Thus it feels safe to weight the edge properly and cut through the bumps. The nose is long and also fairly soft which helps to absorb the bumps. Interestingly I have ridden this board on hard boots in company with Darren riding soft boots. In the bumpy sloughed up powder I could power through the bumps better. His riding is just light years ahead of mine so surprising. He could still carve on the groomers much better than me even in soft boots. Oh well.

I have tried the Prior pow stick on a few surfaces and it could be perfect. I prefer the feel of this thing carving on piste to the 4x4.The design was heavily influenced by Darren Chalmers an International standard hardboot racer

27cm foot. Deeluxe 700 in 26 fits perfectly with an intuition liner. No punching or boot modification. Without the liner I have about an 8mm gap to the shell at the heel.My previous boot was a deeluxe sb413 in 27. Too big.

There is definitely an opportunity there: Like many here I started on soft boots and a disposable board back when I had more hair and less upholstery. Now I am the wrong side of fifty and in denial about sixty I no longer want to jump etc. Also many of my friends are skiers and I can ride with them much better with step-in hard boots. One mile traverse on toe side to get to the good stuff? No problem on hard boots. There must be a large pool of "grown-up" snowboarders who want to enjoy what carving offers, which is more control,an ability to enjoy conditions which are challenging and a higher level of technical interest.

Another point is the advent of very good ski equipment. Some hardbooters were crossover skiers. Now they just ski

Snowboarding and other media only show twin tip jibbers. Media obviously advantage those who advertise e.g. Burton. People don't know what they don't know. I have conversed many times with many snowboarders who never jump,only ride on piste and always with the same foot forwards. When I opine that they should probably be on an alpine board they look at me with the same expression as my 14 year old daughter when I tried to explain calculus. She now works in p.r.

If you need any southern hemisphere testing in August I am first in the queue

This is something I have struggled with. It's tempting to revert to "cross over" turns when in doubt and it doesn't work well except on moderate slopes and good snow. When I watch good riders,even on soft boots there is much "cross under" (or push pull) used allthough it's often mixed in with changing edges off bumps or drops which makes it tricky to observe. The tricky part for me is to achieve high edge angle while extending through the initial part of the turn. Not easy as I have an association of edge angle with knee bend. I am working on it!

One key part of the action on icy/hard snow that I haven't seen discussed much is that of extension/compression. I believe that the second half of the turn I. E. From the fall line down to across the fall line it is important to have enough leg flexion left so as to allow for some "absorption" of the g force thus taking some lateral load off the board and projecting your COM downhill when gravity and centripetal force sum. This should leave you across the fall line, above the board with enough leg flex left for a cross through turn before hitting the new edge progressively while gravity and centripetal force act against each other. Thus the upper half of the turn is where most of the speed control is possible. Ok I am ready "yoda" Beckmann et al. Shoot me down in flames. Maybe I will learn something!

Prior powstick. Usable with hard or softboots. Probably better with soft but I had hard so I softened the BTS as much as possible and backed the angles off to suit the width. a day of bottomless at Whistler. Even weight on both feet and safe as houses turn initiation. Maybe the best day snowboarding I ever had

I was filming my wife skiing so that she could look at her technique. We were off piste having traversed a couple of km's from the lift to be away from people. She was skiing down a large open bowl probably 600m wide and about 1km vertically. The only other person in the whole slope was a snowboarder. I was kneeling in the snow at the bottom carefully following my wife on full zoom. The snowboarder is clearly out of control and should be on a beginner run, not off piste and away from the patrol. during the course of the run he misses Joanna several times by a whisker, despite her trying to avoid him. Eventually he becomes so out of control that he overtakes her and he then, unintentionally it seems, straight lines at ever increasing speed straight into me!. I could see him coming so he got the full impact of my right shoulder backed by 100kg's of lard when he hit. There is literally nothing else to hit in 1000m! It was like magnetic attraction. Of course its all on film, complete with me saying to him " you are an idiot" I suggested he should go back to the main runs. He couldn't understand why I would think that would be necessary. That same year I was going down the easy beginner slope in order to get to a steeper more interesting run away from the crowds. This particular run has a fence on the right and I was cruising next to the fence overtaking all the bunnies on the main run. I was just overtaking a little girl when she abruptly turned right and I collided with her. I managed to slow down enough so that I was only doing 5kph or so but I still hit her and took her out. I had not seen a 1m wide gap in the fence on the right which she was going to go through. Of course I was horrified and I picked her up and helped her on with the skis while apologising profusely. Her mother was less than impressed and made many comments about snowboarders. Luckily the little girl was unhurt and quite unaffected. The difference is that I knew I was in the wrong and apologised and stayed around to make sure she was allright. What I cant understand is the attitude that gets shown by most colliders. Even when I know I am in the right and some idiot has hit me the first question is "are you ok?" Being hit by a careless moron is bad enough, but then getting abused by them afterwards is enough to start the red mist.......

I haven't been hit now for a few seasons, but I had a bad patch where I got hit six times from behind in one year. In the same season a fellow snowboarder I was riding with was nailed from behind hard enough to rip the rear catek out of her board by pulling the inserts out. In addition One lady skier i was riding with got smashed while we were both stopped off the side of the trail in clear view. In all these incidents the skier or boarder coming from above has insisted that it was not their fault. The last guy to hit me got me pretty hard about 200m above the ski patrol hut. We slid about 70-80m and when I enquired if he he was allright he had a go at me. Step-ins are great for this I unclipped both boots, picked up my board with my left hand and dragged him on his back by his hood straight down hill toward the ski patrollers hut. He got a ticking off from a patroller but still refused to accept blame. Sadly his skis were still some way uphill at the scene. oh well...

I am not sure that they wear out in a few years no matter how much use they get. I just replaced my boots and for me apart from the matter of fit the driving force was the number of people I have seen skiing down the hill with one boot completely cracked and split open. Every season I see old boots suffer from sudden and catastrophic failure as the polymer has become brittle as an inevitable consequence of age and UV exposure. New Zealand has very high UV levels which may make the incidence of sudden failure more frequent. Whatever, its one thing skiing with a boot fallen apart and an entirely different prospect snowboarding, especially with the way our bindings work. I like having two legs.

If this was Star Wars, Erik, then you would definitely be Yoda I, on the other hand would be cast as Jabba the Hutt

I recently (february 2014) bought a pair of Deeluxe 700 to replace my ageing SB413's. The 413's have lasted about 9 years and were always both too soft and too big. My feet measure at just over MP 27 and the 413's were MP 27 in line with the guidance on Bombers site. I used Intuition liners to compensate slightly for the sizing issue but this was always a work-around. I weigh around 95kgs and the 413's were always too soft. As I got better and put more force through the boots this became more of an issue. With the Bomber BTS installed the boot sidewall would collapse rendering the BTS irrelevant for flex control. Also the distorted boot pinched my feet and gave me pain. The 700's are an obvious step up: much stiffer with far better straps and buckles and a higher level of construction and finish generally. I have installed the BTS and intec step in heels. The pair I purchased are MP26. Using the same Intuition liners and custom footbeds I was able to get a much better fit. the toe box on the 700's is a little wider than the 413's and the slightly smaller boot fits better around the heel and ankle. I have spent years barefoot on sailboats and I have a wide foot. For the first time ever I have a snowboard boot that fits properly! I have used them for two weeks in Europe in March and now two weeks in New Zealand's South Island. There are two parts to this story - firstly they are a big improvement because they fit better with no slop or heel lift so every movement I make is transmitted to the board and vice versa. Secondly the straps are a big improvement and the stiffness of the boot in conjunction with the BTS means that I can tune the boot forward lean and flex to my preference. On a bumpy day I can soften the flex and on a smooth corduroy hardpack day I can stiffen the flex a little. In general a massive improvement.

I cant think of you now without this: https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8Q3ywwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DXgv R3y5JCXg&ei=y4YDVP_kIsfU8gXgi4GYAw&usg=AFQjCNFqfgBoCj3yu2hqhIzIzks85bGZtg&sig2=DmRfdjKoqi9ApWE4YL77NQ&bvm=bv.74115972,d.dGc

I cant think of you now without this: https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8Q3ywwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DXgv R3y5JCXg&ei=y4YDVP_kIsfU8gXgi4GYAw&usg=AFQjCNFqfgBoCj3yu2hqhIzIzks85bGZtg&sig2=DmRfdjKoqi9ApWE4YL77NQ&bvm=bv.74115972,d.dGc

It was great to catch up with you Allan. I haven't seen you ride for a few years now and I am impressed with the progress you have made - proper toeside angulation and pencil thin trenches. I cant tell if that's due to set-up or technique and I guess whatever works is good - there is a definite and clear improvement Needless to say my set-up is totally different!

I don't know anything about 3D printing, but possibly it could be suited either to actually making plastic parts for the boots considering the low quantities required or, for longer runs if the boots are a success then the dies could be made by 3D printing for conventional manufacture. Is it possible that the cost of manufacturing new carving boots could be considerably lowered with the new technology?

This is definitely what limits my riding.

I have been riding with an android phone in my pocket for two seasons and have used various apps to measure speed. Over roughly 60 days of riding the results always seem to come out that I cruise around with a peak speed roughly 50-55 kmh most of the time , and if I make a special effort to go as fast as possible then I can hit a peak of 97-100kmh while scaring myself ****less. None of this is by straightlining and I get extra speed just by drawing the carves out to a large radius. Peak speed is on the 3rd or 4th turn of the run after which my quads fail and the recorded speeds drop down into the eighties and then lower. I have never tried straightlining - too dangerous! I have ridden a few seasons ago with Andrea Matteoli - (matiu68 here bomber) with his garmin gps and at that time he was peaking out at around 90-100kmh and I was just managing 55kmh max which on that hill seems scary fast. What's interesting is I have recorded 70kmh windsurfing - and I was being passed at the time!

fin???

I can't help thinking..... ......about the shrinkage..

no it is not me. http://i.imgur.com/zZCYp.jpg