NateW

Joecarve, how do the Randals compare to the Seismics? I have Seismics on two boards and am thinking about trying Randals just for grins.

The way I see it, Fin has two options: 1) Obnoxious people get booted, or 2) The site gets more obnoxious over time And CMC had two options: 1) Play nice and stick around, or 2) annoy the host and get booted I'm bummed that CMC chose option 2, but I'm glad that Fin chose option 1. All this crap about free speech is, well, crap. Fin runs this joint, we can stay or go, he can choose who gets in. Don't pee on his couch, other people use it too.

Haven't been to Woodinville but I've heard it's fun. I just bruised my knee pretty bad tonight but when I'm able to skate again we should hook up.

People are trying to sell me these things five or ten times every day. I've been deleting those emails left and right for years, I had no idea they'd be useful for making snowboards too.

I skated a lot from about 87-93 and then kinda went into remission. But a nice bowl got built about 30 minutes from where I live, and I was going there 2-3 times a week in May and June. Then I messed up my back landscaping. Then I sprained my ankle on a friend's new mini-ramp. Now I'm getting back into it. It sucks being old, but it's nice to have a bunch of new stuff to ride. I just got back from carving the hill in front of my house. Seismic trucks are just awesome, carving this hill feels a LOT like carving on a snowboard. Cross-over, cross-under, it's all there. There are some other novel truck designs on the market too but Seismic is the only kind I've tried so far... it's such a huge improvement over the classic truck design, it's incredible. Less less wobbly at speed, yet turns 180 in about six feet. Super cool. Might try me some Exkates before the summer is up.

Right on, Mark. You crack me up. :D

If I let the lower cuff strap get loose, my ankle moves up and forward and I get some pressure on my toes. It's no big deal in my case, but you might try tighening that strap further and see if it holds your foot back a little more. I'd be surprised if that was sufficient in itself, but it might help a little. My problem with Raichles has been width - my boot fitter put some foam strips on the sides of my feet to get more room, but we ended up stretching the shells later anyhow. The foam just didn't make enough room. If the liner around your toe is thick enough that remolding with a thicker toe-cap could give enough room, then that's worth a shot, but if you can stretch the shell in the area over your toe that might be preferable. It was definitely required in my case, but our situations may not really be comparable so it's hard to say... It's worth investigating though. Ken, have you looked into stretching the toes of your size 26 boots' shells? I had an extra 1/8" added to the width of my Raichle 324s across the toes and I'm going to have the same stretch done a little further back. I suspect you could stretch the toe box forward about as much. In the heel pocket, the 324 (and its siblings) have a lot of material at the that can be ground out, which might also gain you some more room at the toes. My heels have bumps sticking out and my boot fitter ground quite a bit of material (3/16" maybe) out of the heel of the boot, around the bottom of the lean adjuster. I have a pair of ski boots that had the shells punched out in the same area. FWIW, I wear size 10 shoes and went with the Raichle's sizing chart's mondo 28 recommendation and that was too big. Mondo 27 is MUCH better and I'm contemplating UPS boots in mondo 26 now because I hear they are wider and I think I could go shorter (and I know I could go tighter in the ankle area). I wanted some last year but they sold out. Ken, if you end up getting rid of those size-26 boots, let me know. If they are UPS, I am interested. If not, I might still be interested. :-)

The main problem, I think, is about versatility. Alpine gear is widely perceived as good for racing and bad for everything else. Personally I ride an all-mountain setup all over the mountain and wouldn't have it any other way, so I know that perception is wrong - but alpine will remain a niche interest until that perception changes. And then theres the cost... as hard booting lost popularity, production shrunk, so per-unit costs went up... since it's more expensive it's less popular, so production shrunk further (shrunk to zero for many brands). The cycle repeats until we have three brands of boots to choose from, all of which cost two or three times what soft gear costs, and none of which are carried in more than a handful of retail shops. I try to put a positive spin on the economic thing when people ask me how much my setup cost. Yes, it's more expensive - because it's worth it. But that's a tough sell when I'm talking to people in the terrain park, even if I'm getting more air than most of them. :) The high prices can't come down until the volumes come up, but that's going to be a challenge when hard boots and bindings cost twice as much as soft stuff and most people think they're only useful for racing. It's going to be difficult for the alpine segment to lift itself out of this hole. I kinda wonder what would happen if the manufacturers put some of the top pros on all-mountain alpine setups and put some hard carving and big hardbooted air into the videos. Would consumers follow? There's been a resurgence of long-board skateboarding lately, and I have a hunch that it's due to aging skateboarders. It will be interesting to see if alpine snowboarding benefits from the same changing demographics. I'm hoping that it will, but I'm not ready to place any bets yet.

Falling sure would suck. Your upper body would float, because of your lungs and stuff. But I'm pretty sure that the board, with your legs attached, would just sink to the bottom.

I'm guessing (and hoping) that Bob is right - when the jib crowd's knees start to wear out, they're going to be looking for other challenges, and carving will get more popular. Skinny boards and stiff boots will get more popular as the core demographic gets into their thirties. I kind of doubt that it will ever be as popular as softbooting, but I'd like to be wrong about that. Hard boots are for people who are willing to sacrifice walking comfort for riding performance and I doubt that's more than half of the snowboarding population. I'm pretty sure that's a whole lot more people than are riding hard boots today though.

I stumbled on a sneek peek: http://www.rabansersnowboards.com/eng/eng_factory_boot.htm No real info, just a couple photos. They look like UPS boots without graphics.

Kevin, I've heard of them but haven't been out to see them. There's supposed to be a flock in south Seattle too, l forget the name of the park though. I'll keep you posted about that ramp. :)

Try the link again, it didn't work for me yesterday but it worked just now. Or try here, it's about a quarter fo the way down the page: http://www.king5.com/video/

A couple of new skateparks have sprung up in WA state lately, so I'm stoked all over again. Last week I helped a guy with some framing on a 6 foot high 24 foot wide mini ramp and we're hoping that'll be ready soon. Would be working on it tomorrow but the weather is lame. I'm building a 40"x9" deck as soon as the parts get here next week, it should be the summer version of my terrain-park-tailored alpine board. Can't wait to try it out. Not very related to board sports, but training parrots to 'get air' is almost as satisfying as getting air myself, and some friends and I just made the local news last weekend: http://www.king5.com/cgi-bin/bi/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=www.king5.com/ki_052604Abirdflyingshool.wmv I'm the long-haired guy pulling a parrot out of his hair near the beginning of the video.

For years I rode with 124s that had the same 'fourth strap' upgrade. It was well worth it, I hated that velcro strap.

As much as I like BOL, I don't really want messages printed on my board betwen the nose and the front binding.

Last season: Q: "Have you ever tried a real snowboard?" A: "Hey, I was just about to ask you the same thing!" The season before: Q: "Is that like snowboarding?" A: "It IS snowboarding!" and I should have ended with, "...only better!" but of course that didn't occur to me until much later.

Thanks for the kind words. :)

What are the bindings like? Is there anything that holds your feet down, or do you just stand on/in it? Here's the more expensive big brother: http://www.a2xtreme.com/dirtthingz/ http://www.a2xtreme.com/dirtthingz/montage.html So many toys, so little time...

That was supposed to be a reply to the other 'washington' thread but oh well. Some pics: http://www.policygov.com/skate/carnation.html Directions are in the sidebar: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/outdoors/2001903227_nwwskateboards15.html

How many of you skate, and are interested in the new bowl at Carnation? It's tons of fun, and the deep end has transitions that are suitable for my 30-year-plus knees (around 7 foot radius). I'll be there Sunday evening, maybe Friday evening too.

Best. Post. Ever.

1991 BMW 325iX, bought in 1995 (I think?) with 66k, now has a little over 150k miles on it. Every spring I think about lowering it, every winter I think lowering would be a bad idea. It would be fun though... and I'm getting that itch again...

I bought a Flint full-face helmet through this company a year or two ago. They're good people, too. The first helmet I ordered was too big but they traded it in for a smaller model with no fuss. http://shop.store.yahoo.com/csskiequipment/20giskisnhe.html

backcountrystore.com only has smalls Meanwhile this shop has a suspiciously-similar-looking BMX helmet for only a little bit more... anyone know if these are the same product? Is it a BMX helmet being sold to snowboarders, or a snowboard helmet being sold to BMXers, or two different products with the same name, or what? http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1426880&cp=1178449.1066853&parentPage=family