RDY_2_Carve

I've never lived in the NE or Mid-North but I can tell you I'm in love with New Mexico. I don't see myself leaving anytime soon...been here for over five years now. I've lived in AL, GA, VA, OK, TX, CA, and AK when I was growing up. I was overseas for a few years and ended up in Albuquerque having no idea what New Mexico was like. What a pleasant surprise it's been. It's a true four season place with really mild summers and if you're into outdoors stuff it has so much to offer. The only drawback is the lack of lakes...although if you're into Kiting I think Cochiti has a LOT to offer for that since it's a no-wake lake. I would be all over that but I can't pick up another expensive hobby. Right now I'm doing longboarding in the summer, snowboarding in the winter, and I'm riding my dirt and street bikes year round. Late December now and high tommorow is 40 with low 22 in Albuquerque and that's with a big storm coming in. Looks like a white Christmas for us. I'd personally live in Albuquerque over Santa Fe. More work and cheaper cost of living. Santa Fe is awesome don't get me wrong but I just couldn't afford to live there comfortably. Taos is better than Ski Santa Fe but I will say Santa Fe rocks for hardbooting. Solid pitch and wide runs. Much better for carving than Angel Fire. I've only carved Taos once but it was pretty darn good. If you could get a job in Santa Fe then you could look for a place north of there in Espanola and then Taos isn't too far of a drive if you want to do a season pass there instead. The best kept secret in NM for carving? That would be Ski Pajarito in Los Alamos. The runs aren't super wide but every run there has excellent pitch. STEEP! :) If you come this way look me up and I'll help anyway I can. New Mexico needs more hardbooters! Represent!

Magnetraction does work. Don't knock it until you've tried it.

I bought this same board with a PTC tune from Ursle and I've ridden it two days now. All I can say is it's worth every penny of the selling price and then some. Amazing board. Carves VERY well with plates. I'm actually pulling some nice double arm drag carves on the black runs at Santa Fe. I think BoBDea said it rides a lot shorter than it is and that is 100% true. I doesn't feel any longer than my Coiler 172 AM-T. FUN FUN FUN!

Sorry to hear that. :( Best of luck with your sale! Just curious...why not hold on to it till next season?

I love my WRX. I can't imagine what it would be like with true snow tires!

USPS is the way to go for shipping to Canada. If you declare it as a gift for less than a certain amount there will be no duties as well. I think you'll lose out on insurance if you go this route though.

Shop Vac

I think we should do a Taos session instead of Monarch. I'll try to make it regardless of the location. I would come up to Telluride it's only about 6 hours drive for me but I got too much going on at work next week. I would love to see this!

Wolfie isn't setup that great for carving. There are some runs on the frontside that you could carve just fine on and they do some grooming but Wolfie is all about the waterfall area and searching for powder stashes. They've got the most natural snowfall in Colorado every year for as long as I've been boarding. I think the only place where you could get a better powder fix would be at Silverton. As far as issues with the layout of the mountain and being "boarder friendly" I'd say negative on either of those. It's laid out pretty well and you won't have any issues boarding out there. I think the biggest reason Wolf Creek doesn't get much press is because it's not very accessible to the normal tourist crowd. It's right in the middle of southern Colorado and there aren't any major cities even close to it. I mean most people that fly into Colorado probably will just go west of Denver and choose from the dozens of major resorts there. If you're looking to check it out Wolfie is a little under five hours driving from the Albuquerque Airport. I'm not sure how far it is from Denver.

Guys I have a terrible problem with binding suck or insert suck. Whatever you want to call it. You know when your base has dimples right where the inserts are. I thought at first it was because I was hot waxing with my bindings still attached so I started taking off my bindings but still it appeared on every board I've owned. I normally hot wax every 2-3 days or so. I use a Burton Iron and normally on setting "2" (it has 1, 2, and 3 settings). I've asked the question to a couple board builders at SES last year and from what they said it has to do with the heat from hot waxing with an iron and something about the inserts and epoxy? I was leaning towards trying the Wax Whizard after talking to Mike DeSantis on the phone about this issue. This guy obviously knows a thing or two about board prep and waxing. I did some searches here and there was some talk about the Wax Whizard but I did see one post from PhilFell in particular that said the Whizard needs to be reused every run (at least for racing)? I also saw a couple others like Mike Tovino swear by it. So does the Wax Whizard live up to the hype for recreational use? Has anybody tried any of Rays other tools? Otherwise can anybody give any tips to avoid base suck? Use a lower setting on the iron? TIA

Nice! This is funny because there's four of us at my work that are doing this same thing. We haven't gotten our passes yet but we all did some photoshopping to our pictures! ;) I'll post the pictuers now and the passes later. ;) Me My brother in law Bob Friend Eric My Buddy Fred :)

Hey CO folks my buddy Sean arrived in Breck today (Friday). He's there until next Friday and he's going to be doing multiple resorts over the following few days. I know there are discounts to be had. He has a rental car so he's good to go for driving. He's already talking about Keystone, Breck, Vail, and ABasiin. Assuming his body holds up he's "talking" about going six days straight (Sat-Thursday). So what do you guys suggest for him? He's flexible on where he goes but I think he wants to do a variety of places instead of just one resort. I heard of deals like the Colorado Pass and some others you can buy from some of the Grocery stores? If he paid in the windows he'd be looking at what $400+ for 6 days? He said Vail's prices went up today to $85/day! Any help you guys can provide is greatly appreciated. I'll do some searches too on the main forum. Thanks in advance for any help and feedback! John

I put 800-1000 because I paid 850 for my metal Coiler. ;) That's about my limit though and as much as I'd like to spend more on a board I just have too many other expensive hobbies. Plus I'm lucky to get in 30 days a season...hard to justifiy a $5000 quiver...

Openings have been delayed in every New Mexico resort. Santa Fe is normally open by Thanksgiving... We're suppost to have a solid snow year this year. Just getting a late start I guess. Wolf Creek has been 100% open for a few weeks now though! Perhaps a road trip is in order? :)

Percocet + Beer > Sportlegs > Aleve > Advil

I'll never go back to standard bindings. I've ridden on Intecs for 3-4 seasons now and I love them. My post was not intended to be negative on Intec or Fintech. I've never had any problems until last season and when it rained it poured. It was really strange that lightning struck me twice. Just want to clarify that my experience was probably just a fluke. OTOH I don't think it would be hard to fabricate this small piece of plastic into a more bombproof form, but I don't see Fin putting the effort into this unless more failures like mine start to happen. If anything I could see him stocking these specific plastic parts? Here's a picture of what happened to mine:

It's plastic. I broke one in half the week before SES this past season. I had my F2 Intec heels installed in my Head SPs for 2-3 years before that plastic piece broke in half. I went to SES knowing I could get a replacement. I wanted to just buy the internal plastic piece but bomber does not sell just that piece. So I just bought a new set of Fin Techs and the new TD3 receiver for my TD2's. Oddly enough I broke the same piece of plastic the next day while at SES. Fin was even boggled as to why. He asked if I was pulling really hard on the cables but I just pull them up like anybody else? Fin was kind enough to replace them at no charge and I felt really bad that he had to eat a set of Fin Techs. Now I'm just super cautious whenever I pull that cable. I think the tip of pushing down on your heel while pulling up on the cable handle is a excellent tip. It creates the least amount of friction on the pins when disengaging the heels. The kicker is there is a specific left and right heel and the same applies for that plastic piece on the internal. You cannot take the plastic piece from the left heel and put it in the right heel and vice versa. I believe the actual cable is attached to this plastic piece which creates the problem. If Fin would create a "bomber" version of this piece I would gladly buy it. Having my boots stuck to my board twice on the mountain now really sucked. Sitting on the lift with your back foot stuck in the binding is not an option either. It just doesn't work. Luckily my buddy Sean carried a leatherman with him and we were able to push the pins in one side at a time to release my rear foot. You could probably use a ski pole in a pinch too.

If you own TD2's and don't want to commit to TD3's your best bet is to just buy the TD3 second board kit. The cants are the same so be sure to pick cant discs that are different than what you're currently using. At SES last year I was probably the only one left using TD2's. When I demod Fin just moved my TD2 top plate over to the TD3 base plates which is a lot easier than setting up a pair of bindings for proper boot length.

Nothing wrong with the board and bindings for a starter setup. It will get the job done. IMHO the ski boots will hold you back more than the board and bindings. You should be able to score a pair of boots on the classifieds for around $100. Maybe less. Some people pratically give them away here. With a 10.5 boot you're looking at overhang (boots sticking out over the edge of the board) until 50 degrees or so on your bindings. You can ride with overhang when you first start out but as you progress you'll have to eliminate it completely or you'll risk dragging your boots into the snow causing you to skid out. Most new carvers have issues going from 5-10 degree binding angles on softies to the 50-60 degree binding angles that carvers use. What I did to overcome this is start out with 30ish degree angles and get comfortable with that then work my way up in baby steps. Start at say 35 deg front and 30 deg back. Once comfortable with that go to 40 deg front and 35 deg back. You won't notice the slight difference as much as going straight to say 60 deg front and 55 deg back. This method worked for me. YMMV If you like to carve on softies then you'll love to carve on alpine. You can only do so much on softies and alpine will definately take you to the next level in carving. Granted there's some guys here (Billy Bordy for example) that can out carve me in softies... ;)

Dear Dude, Where exactly are you located? What mountain do you board at near Jersey? Perhaps instead of us giving you ideas of the value of that board we can actually get you to try a better setup and show you the joys of alpine snowboarding? I could see how you could be turned off riding a 149cm board with those old Sims bindings while being stuck with a non-flexing ski boot. You are 17 years old (probably over 5'5") so a 149cm board is going to be very short for you. Our community is larger than you think and I'm sure some local people will be glad to help you out.

I used F2 Intec Titanflex last season on my Lib Tech 161W Dark Series and it worked awesome. I use the F2's on any non-carving board and so far no issues. I plan on using them on the 192 Tanker I just recently bought here on BOL. I like my TD2s on the Coiler though. I like the bling on bling factor. Can't wait to try the tanker. Just a few more weeks before the season starts here! :)

Looking good for New Mexico! See you guys at Santa Fe? :)

You guys should PM him instead of calling him out? I mean, my Coiler was $850 and I wouldn't sell it for less than $750. I've seen the same Coiler AM-T's go for less than $600 here on BOL. That don't mean I'm going to sell mine for that. Granted, it also means I would probably not be able to sell it. Kinda like this guy won't be selling his ATV for $600 either. Bottom line it's his gear to sell for whatever price he wants. When nobody responds @ $600 then he'll probably figure out it's overpriced. He doesn't need the communitity dictating what the price should be. PM woulda been a little more tactful. /End rant

Last bumpy!

New price $80 + shipping. Throwing it in the local ski swap on Oct 31 if nobody scoops it by next Friday 8/30. This board has loads of camber and is beefy. I'll break it out and send DSLR pics if needed.