kipstar

brother's boat plus mine...very similar....his is white, mine is red.

This is my ride; just out for fun on the wiring shots we sail with less people than that normally. Shaw 6.5 turboed sport boat. Great fun!

So a 23 year old is also a minor incapable of sound personal judgement? has the doctrine been held up in the case of an adult? If so, man, the enforcement of law in your country totally assumes people are morons. Besides which in this case, i don't think there is any mention of attractive nuisance anyway. Instead it comes down to negligence of faulty product combined with whether the disclaimers and contracting out of responsibility when you buy the lift ticket will stand up in court. Incidentally, MOST of the time I've ridden in USA the place is far more dangerous than riding in NZ simply because of the attitude of the riders bombing around completely ignoring the people around them. The terrain itself is fairly safe (except for Squaw which seems to be fairly easy to end up off trail in some reasonably hairy stuff where people could get hurt, plus any resorts once you get into trees) and signed. Maybe by suing a ski resort for that concussion a few years back, I would get resorts to be more careful for future??? I would like to believe that people can take personal responsibility for themselves; I think Bobdea's summation is fairly accurate; you take your chances when you engage in a risky sport. Some element of negligence occured on the ski resort, but this encouragement to the tune of $14m for more safe jumps is like swatting a fly with a bomb. The collateral damage to the USA ski industry is going to hit all of us with higher ticket prices. A fairer settlement would be perhaps medical; he opted out of future emotional distress (incredibly sad as it is) when he went off the jump, knowing that even a perfect jump with some personal error can wind up in a major injury. Plenty of other countries far safer figure this stuff out without needing to go to the courts....

sailing? cool! You know I have the hardbooter equivalent of a keelboat...check it..... www.shawyachtdesign.com Shaw 650 (my brother) and Shaw 650 turbo (me). Good fun ;-) out on the wire on a sportboat that spanks most keelers under about 35-40 feet :-) What is your ride??

maybe it is going after the penis enlargement market ;_) Chalk me in for one :-)

Justin I read your posts and you have the most eccletic interests I have seen for a while... guns knives dogs fishin' huntin' snowboardin' cool mate.

angel, you are a legend :-) ok, this is really reaching back but I do vaguely recall some guys on late night Saturday TV that would say 'bout now 'my name ez Hanz, and my name ez Franz, and we are here to pump you up!' Regarding youtube, as you may be aware, it is ok for Muslim videos to be pulled, it is ok for Chinese video to be pulled, but apparently google/youtube feel that it is unreasonable to affect the non existant right of freedom of speech in Thailand by pulling a highly offensive video of the King, so therefore, Youtube is yourtube right now, not mytube ergo I cannot watch it, 'it been banned like essay. Fo' shizzle Angizzle.' Man, I could totally pass for an American in da low down gheeee-tto of 90210. ok, I out, i ain't gots no more Americans slang stuff left. Who wanna hear my impression of Borat or the katoey in little Britain...that, I can do.

Yeah weird that. My guess is that Houston has the largest number % of people defined as significantly obese, but also has enough skinny people (mostly non white presumably, maybe a lot of Asians?) that skew the overall average down. Could be age or some other factor driving the number down; perhaps a certain age group tends to have a lower BMI than other groups, and Houston has this group. It is a comparison of the relative size of a small subset vs. average of the population. e.g. Thailand has a large number of millionaires or people driving Mercedes, but the average income per household is low. That said, I would have guessed this to be odd; everthing i have heard about Houston is that the people are on average 'plump' and that is coming from cities like San Fran where I struggle to see too many people who aren't what I would call plump already. I would rather see a % of women that have body fat of say less than 20% or similar rather than an average IF I understand your interest in such a number :-)

I did a major in com. law during my commerce degree.... IP, Contract, Commercial, that sort of thing. GOod fun. Sort of.

Yo Ar. I am not an American.... and I is writing a term paper. What is da first amendment? (I listened to Ice T, I think I have some ideas) :-) Hell, isn't WW a kiter??? That is reason enough to ban him :-) I am sure the what I understand to be not so good season this year hasn't helped tempers.... as Rodney King once said...can't we all just get along (or something to that effect).

Sorry Justin, agree with what you wrote, but you keep talking about a clicker... what is a clicker and how do you (you personally) use it to train a doggily?

It ended up costing me I think it was $45 kiwi which is about $30 USD for the bits and a dozen beers. And about 2 hours of sitting around, talking rubbish, and doing the work. The foam is a better way to go for sure (as is cork) but my way was what was possible at the time. With only being in USA a few days at a time, I don't want to lose a day off the slopes doing boots or the inevitable tweaks; and nights away from casinos, bars and places with women of loose moral standing, well I just don't have the time!

I actually did my own set with a store staff guy assisting as i knew what I wanted; my feet suck so I have found that orthodics prevent a few key things: - my foot collapsing inside, and causing the top of my foot to hurt when I starting to move around in the boot - pain on the big toe - my foot sliding around inside the boot - pain on the outside little toe - pain in the back and knees By having decent footbeds, my foot is locked, and pressure through the boot transmits throughout my foot, not just the heel and forefoot bits. Some footbeds are based on standing on a heated platform, with your arch then setting the shape of the bed, and that is flicked into the boot. I think the ones I have now theoretically are made like that. Waste of time; the arch starts collapsing quite fast as the rigidity of the foam isn't enough to support body weight, and anyway, my foot collapses already so the mold needs to be of my foot without my weight on it, not when it is already collapsed as happens when I am standing up. So.... how I did it to save the store time was give them some beers, and pay for the materials, but do the work myself, as they only knew the comformable way which at least for me makes no sense... use their oven to heat them up; use their molding thing, but stay seated and keep weight off my feet, but keep the shins just leaning marginally forward, to get the neutral foot position. Once the beds were hard, trace out the shape of the inner onto the liner, and cut them down with scissors. Then find some hard foam, and glue it into all the hollows, then grind the whole mess down to flat on the bottom; flat on the side of the arch. Cover the whole thing in duct tape around the base. And the boot beds have been good to go with some minor heating and resetting for like 12 years. Of course, the cork ones have all that sorted already because they have the whole volume thing going on underneath. And a decent boot fitter does all this stuff for you; the guy Corky I think his name was in Mammoth was excellent; another guy Kevin? I think it is is also great. Hard to find those guys sometimes, so hence doing it yourself is option 2.

I could be keen, as i live close by in Thailand; quite close :-p) Any snow still left or is it spring conditions by now?

SO will the buckle set be for sale as well so we can upgrade our lousy indy buckles to these nice new ones? I suppose if I go to NZ I can figure out something using spare parts from other boots,but would be nice if there is just the spare parts available straight from you guys...

extremely good question. the rampant number of broken hearts, trail of used condoms and extensively sailed sport boat and windsurfer fail to fill the void :-)

I think it often happens in the transition, because we are the only riders going so far out of the fall line; people pass what they think is behind us as they expect us to stop, and then as they approach, we are suddenly (well not to us, but to them) turning and somehow changing direction without losing speed. I've had multiple near misses, a few clonks and one concussion; all pretty much because of the surprise factor that, 'they didn't expect me to turn, they thought I was traversing!' So now...tend to wait until the run is clear, then do the piece top to bottom. And find empty runs is good too ;-) Mind you, it has been 14 months since my last run....how much longer to wait until my next one ?? ;-(

Good point, although the limits of the IACC boats are even worse than that, hese things are falling apart in well less than 24 knots! I don't think they are even allowed to sail IACC in anything above about 15 knots consistent; the boats would completely fall apart! They may climb up to windward like nothing else, but they are already pretty obsolete compared to the new breed of canters, which would absolutely thump them then sail in the Sydney Hobart or similar. Not like my boat, the mighty pornstar :-)

Hey Kent What happened to the Scott? I thought you were going to get the niiice Scott Tri bike?

thread a handle of something inside the liner, and bash it with a hammer lightly, in the toe big toe area, will pack out all the foam in a few minutes and then you will have much more room. Lots of gentle hits with a cloth or something to ensure you don't tear anything; 12 days on the hill with crushed toes or 5 minutes for each liner at home, and gets the same result. Also...do have a feel inside the shell, lots of boots have little extrusions and lumps and ribs that are NOT for your pleasure. Grind them off. Too small always beats too bitg. FOr boots.

I know that James Ong from Tahoecarvers has something that is a swoard like american made board and he also has the swoard as well. Whatever he has enables him to ride pretty much like the guys in the EC videos, at least from what i saw.

I think I will give my girlfriend the token of love, with a repaired Doyle Asym 55sqm kite or alternatively, if I am quick a new supersized brand new Kenny Fyfe fully battened mainsail. But I guess I could also consider some nice smelly soap or other crap :-)

note to self. Must buy a new pair of shoes :-)

Well, I owned one, my family owns a benz as well; my girlfriend owned a BMW, my bosses own BMW, my friend is a senior manager for BMW and has said a few things off the record - all same message from personal experience - if you own a BMW or Benz, you will get problems with the electronics and aircon for sure, and also with water problems in the rainy season (where the water is above the level of the front bumber); if there are cars that stop working and blocking all the traffic, at least 90% of them are european cars, every time. Overheating is not from performance driving, it is from the car being unable to keep running in these temperatures with water issues as well; I have no doubt that BMWs can tolerate a good thrashing on the track, just cannot tolerate the normal weather here in bangkok! I woudl still own another one, just probably not here. Drive very very well :-) I think for here, good Japanese cars like a WRX or Evo should be fine anyway :-) And more suited to the conditions we get upcountry with super slippery roads and driving in foot deep or more water....For non performance my pick up is the way to go; good towing power :-)

a lot is mental. We got conditions like that a lot back in New Zealand in light snow years, and sometimes it would be tough to pych yourself to run gates or whatever over conditions like that, when sometimes it was still chopped up and then frozen over from the day before without grooming. A lot of it is eyeline and technique. So if you can break things down into pieces, that can help. Find a run that is similar to these conditions, and then just work on doing one turn and really getting it right; good rotation; cross through turn, finishing the turn in control. Then traverse; think about what was right and wrong, then do just one good turn the opposite way. By doing only one turn at a time, the speed is already under control at the start of each turn. I have a board, a scorpion, that rides similarly to what you are on; and am a similar size, it is not equipment based, and your technique is unknown; but you can probably learn to ride this condition if you can break things into one turn at a time; once you have mastered each turn, then start linking them together. My absolute favourite riding condition used to be chopped up terrain that other people wouldn't ride; then just launching into turn after turn after turn; usually something about an hour after grooming such as Cornice Bowl on Mammoth at the times they would groom it; by about 10am, it would be littered with people standing around trying to find their way down. Siberia Bowl on Squaw the same. Easy to carve up when smooth, more challenging was it starts to get chopped up. The nitros have a reasonable amount of float; one of the keys for me is really concentrating on staying loose; starting the turn and committing hard right from the start of the turn; at the start of the turn don't be gentle; really think about getting the board hard on edgewith a nice upright upper body; I like to think of it as a compact centre of gravity rather than an extreme carving style 'lever' (not that this isn't cool, actually it is exactly the same concept in some ways, as it is about starting the turn early); being dynamic and for me, rotation is a part of my turn style; it is not necessarily part of other people's technique (racers for instance seem to now not rotate at all). But for me, hard rotation and eye line forces me to think about tight turns. I still suffer from panic in narrow runs where i start worrying about going off the sides; when this happens; break it into pieces, get the pieces right then build back up again.