Hagen

I have to say that any place with good snow and not too many people on the slopes is a good carving location. For me that would be pretty much any resort at Tahoe midweek. Even on weekends you can usually find some runs that are not too crowded...

...like it. You might want to make sure though that the front binding is not on the head... Hagen.

Shred, You can get the Gimp to create your graphic. It's a free photo editing software. It should have all the features that you need. I guess you can send the guys at snowboardmaterials a jpeg of your graphic - if it's mainly one color and only some graphics on the tip/tail of the board then it shouldn't be too big to e-mail...

Shred, Here is the info on how they want you to send your graphics: We recommend you design your graphics in Illustrator, Photoshop, or Coreldraw full size at least 200 dpi and send us the disk (or email the file if it is under 5 megabytes). We do not guarantee hitting pantone colors exactly but get pretty close usually. Any number of colors is fine (art, photos etc are OK) - you simply design in RGB or CMYK We recommend designing the graphic rectangular in shape at 13" wide by about 2" longer than you need to allow for shrinkage and bleed Cost is $39 including material for topsheets and $45 for bases including a white flood coat behind the graphic, Price assumes we do not have to work on your file. If we do we will contact you with a quote

This thread makes me home sick... :( ...why can't we have decent shops for Alpine gear here at Tahoe? Wouldn't it be nice if you could go to Dave's in Tahoe City and demo the latest in Alpine boards, bindings and boots?

...at least in Soelden you should be able to rent gear. Actually when I tried snowboarding there for the first time in my life (I think it was in '95 or '96) the shop that we went to only had hard boots and carving boards to rent...

That early in the season you might want to try to find a resort that also has summer skiing - i.e. more snow all year round... Last time I went skiing in Austria we went to Soelden - great resort! ...and they also have a glacier as part of the resort where you can ski almost all summer. We went there in February and they had to open the glacier because they didn't have enough snow on the main mountain. That resort also seems to be quite popular for carving - we saw a lot of really good carvers on snowboards and skis! ...that last trip made me try out plates... :D

I just ordered the TD2 step ins. And I was wondering if the e-rings help a little bit with the lateral flex issue... ...e.g. how much more flex do you get with a regular pair of TD2s and the hard e-rings compared to the stepins with the soft e-rings?

Thanks for the link - great wallpapers. Finally found something to replace that boring xp background. :D

...note to myself - must save money for new board...

...could be one of those forearm guards that they use for slalom races or something similar. He just put it on his hands. Or may be someone is making a special plastic protector for carving?!

I started on Burton step in bindings and started to hate them after 2 years or so. ...had too much trouble at times to get out of them. And since you need to yank 'em hard every so often the cable on the back heel doesn't last that long. Another problem that I had with my burton boots and step in heels was that the plastic sole on the tip and heel comes of pretty fast... ...so I went to regular bindings - burton race plates and snow pro. But now my friends with their fancy TD step in bindings always had to wait for me - or I had to straight line it to catch up. Therefore I finally broke down and ordered TD2s last week. ...it also helped to get x-mas money early this year. :D I only hope that those intec heels last longer than the burton heels...

...I guess one of these days I have to try some alpine skis again. But for now I can't wait to receive my TD2s and try those out. :D

Here is a link with some pics of carving skiers. Ant they also list their equipment: carving-ski ...interesting that they also have a couple of guys on skwals on that site.