NateW

+1 to the wisdom above. Old boots are low risk, old bindings are high risk. Welcome back.

I managed some backside 180s on a proper jump last Wednesday, without over-rotating / immediately reverting. My landings are still too shaky to hit the next jump in the series, but it's progress, and it's satisfying. My right shin still has a pink spot from that first day in early January.

And delivered.

I'll take 'em. PM incoming...

Some things I have learned this year: 1. The Virus that I bought earlier this year has NO TAIL. None. The topsheet actually curves downward as the board gets thinner. One look and you're like "hey, this probably won't go backward." 2. Truly it does not go backward. I learned this the hard way because I am an idiot. "Well it's nicely groomed here so maybe just a little [WHAM] okay bad idea." 3. For years I've been fully laying out toeside carves, but for heelside I only get my hips down - my shoulders stay off the snow. Last weekend I made a big leap forward in getting my shoulders lower in heelside carves. Couple more weekends of practice and I might get my shoulder onto the snow consistently. The key (for me anyway) is to enter the carve crouched low, extend my legs mid-carve, and then pull my legs in again at the end of the carve. I remember Jacques and Patrice talking about "push pull" back in the day, but for some reason it took me about 20 years to actually try it. 4. Backside 180s. I've been doing them for years, but I tend to slide 180 shortly after I land. I always thought that was due to over-rotating on takeoff but realized last year that it's got more to do with the fact that I just haven't committing to riding switch when I land. Last weekend I started hitting a small roller pretty at high speed, sliding 180 degrees, and then focusing on setting my edge to halt the rotation and continue riding backward for a bit. Just mentally rehearsing what I need to do to make backside 180 airs work. After a bunch of iterations of that did the same thing but hopped a little to actually get airborne for the 180, and kept riding backward after I landed. A tiny victory but it feels like real progress. I've been doing frontside 180 slides and airs forever and continuing riding in reverse, but for some reason I almost always follow backside 180s (slide or air) with another 180 slide to get forward again. It's been a gap in my skill-set, and I'm finally closing it. Going to try to scale that up to bigger jumps over the next few weeks. 5. Upper buckles not tight enough -> shin pain. I rubbed my shin raw on the first day of the season. I didn't realize how bad it was until I got home and removed my socks. Yikes.

She's got a Facebook page. Not a lot of posts, just occasional updates. Better signal-to-noise ratio than most of my actual friends.

Anybody got some side shots? Asking because I'm curious about the camber and nose/tail profile on Thirst boards... Thanks in advance.

If there's going to be a pay-it-forward plan for this board, I'd be delighted to have an opportunity to try it for a weekend or three, and then pass it on...

Thanks for the tip. Those carveboard tires look suspiciously similar to the 8" kart tires that I mentioned earlier.

I am honestly looking for kart tires with the right dimensions. Unfortunately most are either too tall (10-11 inches, I'd like to stay with 8), or they are too wide (5-6 inches, I'd like to stay with 3). The first set I tried look like balloons, which was disappointing. I found another set that's 8x3, but the retailer just has a stock photo, shared by other tires in their catalog, which makes me nervous. 99% of electric skateboards are using scooter tires - which is why I had a spare set sitting around to use in that mockup. It's really kinda sad. Scooters lean into turns, so the tires are shaped like pizza cutters, and the contact patches are tiny. There are two brands of good tires, but one has been out of stock for months and both are a little too small for this inverted-truck contraption anyway. Probably just until it hurts. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Build thread: Alpine skateboard - DIY Builds - esk8.news: DIY Electric Skateboard Forums Currently just a proof-of-concept, but the battery should be here in a few weeks...

Probably the best tip I've ever gotten: reach forward with your trailing hand. It just pulls the rest of my body into the right position.

I suspect that it's going to vary by person, and the only way to really know is to try different widths. Bomber's classifieds are handy for this. Try to keep length and sidecut radius similar as you experiment with different widths. When I switched from soft boots to hard boots, I was worried about losing versatility. I don't race, I ride the whole mountain, jumps in terrain parks more than anything else... so I was nervous about switching to a "race" setup. But I hate soft boots. So I tried hard boots everything from 25cm to 17cm over a few years, always with my boots set to the lowest angles possible without booting out. Narrower always just felt better, until at 17cm I felt like I'd gone too far. So I backed off to 19cm, which works out to about 55/50 angles. I've had two custom 170x19 Doneks with 13m SCR (because I broke the first one after a few years). This year I'm getting another board with those dimensions again (because the second one surely won't last much longer). I also just bought a lightly used Virus with a 17cm waist, so I'm about to try that again... Maybe after riding 19cm waists for a decade, 17cm will be easier to adjust to? Or not. We'll see.

I do not need another board. I do not need another board. Any idea what the waist width and sidecut radius are? Dammit here we go again.

I have a 170 with a 10m sidecut, but I haven't ridden it for a few years. When I try to lean way into the turns, it arcs around so fast that I feel like I have to exit each turn before I've had a chance to enjoy it. And there's the "carving speed limit" that Jack mentioned, the threshold beyond which a board can only skid... I get over that board's threshold too often. 13m is the sweet spot for me.

Since starting this thread I've acquired two electric skateboards. I really want to find a way to put Trench Diggers on one of those boards. Check this guy out:

No pics yet, because it doesn't exist yet, but I sent funds for a Winterstick with a somewhat novel design: no camber, and super early nose and tail rise, and a low nose and tail height. The goal is to have the minimum effective edge when I'm riding with the base flat or at low edge angles (for low speed agility), and maximum effective edge when carving (for high speed edge hold). It's a bit of a gamble, but the no-camber early-rise powder board I bought last year exceeded expectations and I've been obsessed with this idea ever since. Jack, I'm told that you might be consulted regarding stiffness.

Yes! Thanks. It's been so long I'd forgotten what it was called. Since I moved 9 years ago, all of my boards have been stored in a rack on a wall in a guest room that's used for almost nothing else... but I do run my glove dryer in there, so there might be something to the ozone theory. The weird thing is that this happened so suddenly. For over ten years these things were just like new And then last week I found them liquid. My best theory so far was that high temperatures last summer pushed them over a threshold, because we set some records in the Seattle area and my house doesn't have AC, so it was well into the 90s for a week or two. But maybe the motor in the glove dryer just started cranking out way more ozone last winter. I wish I knew for sure whether I looked at these things last year, but unfortunately I don't. I think I took it out early in the season, but the Kessler might have been my backup all season. So maybe it took a year and a half to melt. Or maybe it took six months. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Waaaaay back when, if you felt that the "soft" TD2 pads weren't soft enough for your liking, you could buy an extra-soft pad and sandwich it between the binding and the board. I've had this setup so long I don't remember when I bought it, but I'm guessing around 2005. It's been on an F2 Speedster 183. I almost always head to that mountain with that board as a backup or an optional change of pace, and it comes out when conditions are good and crowds are sparse, because that 183 is happiest at speeds that are borderline stupid. But last year, that role was filled by a Kessler, so it might have been more than a year since I last rode it. Definitely not more than a year and a half though. Anyway, a funny thing happened since the last time I rode that board: It's the weirdest thing. I swear those pads were rubber the last time I saw them. Now they're basically just goo that flows very, very, very slowly. Not sticky to the touch, but peeling it off the board was a chore. Just to be clear: I really don't care. They were fun while they lasted, but I'll remount the bindings without them and I'll enjoy the board no less. I'm just flabbergasted.

I had the same idea. The smallest kart tires I could find were 11 inches, which is pretty big by skateboard standards. Most pneumatic tires are 6 to 8 inches. But I ordered a set anyway... Maybe not the smartest choice as I still need to find compatible wheels... I will probably end up putting together a whole new board around them. I'm intrigued by the idea of mounting the trucks upside-down to compensate for the increased tire diameter.

I bought a Propel Endeavor 2 Pro. Good news: it feels a lot like carving on a snowboard, and the power is pretty respectable. Empty parking areas are a lot of fun. Bad news: It needs a lot more lateral grip, and the bushing stiffness is a bit wonky. It's basically like carving on an icy day. Fun, but there's still much to be desired. I think there's a lot of untapped potential, if only better tires were available. With very few exceptions, the electric skateboard industry just uses scooter tires, which have a very rounded profile and thus have tiny contact patches. Scooter tires are probably good for rolling resistance but they're terrible for grip. The few exceptions are all out of stock. The steering response feels great most of the time. But when you slow down and try to take a tight turn, and you get about 3/4 of the way to of the steering limit, the bushings suddenly turn soft, which feels really weird. I think it's a solvable problem but we'll see.

OneWheels are pretty cool for mild carving on smooth surfaces, but outside those constraints their capabilities are rather limited. The sidewalks in my neighborhood are full of cracks from tree roots, and that makes them pretty treacherous on a OneWheel. I had a great time on a sort of flash-mob ride through Seattle last weekend, and got to see a Propel Endeavor skateboard up close. The guy said it was pretty close to carving on a snowboard. The wheels are too skinny to match what you see in that video above, but I bet the taller wheels and suspension makes it pretty versatile. Decisions decisions....

Spotted at https://forum.esk8.news/t/3-link-18s5p-street-bro-ss/61489/33?u=moestooge

I hadn't noticed the heelside-only part, thanks for pointing that out. Does switch-heelside make it easier to go faster?

I should have mentioned, it's called Duthie Hill park. That place is fantastic. It opened back around 2010 and I try to get out there once a week in the off-season. I'm a little surprised I don't already know the guy in those videos.