tufty

Bob, get off the computer and onto the snow.

You're doing fine, then. The RS176 should be fine, but it might be worth finding out if you can get to any of the skwal association's tryout days first.

I'm running 90/89 or thereabouts. The two in that photo appear to be goofy, but with the panther set up "wrong footed". That's just plain wierd, but whatever works, I guess.

One of the other lifties' kids : "Hey, I'm going snowboarding later. You snowboard too, right?" Me : "this *is* a snowboard" Kid that hangs around at the top of one of our lifts : "Your snowboard's wierd" Me : "Really? In what way" Kid : "It's square at the end" Me : "Yep, got fed up with it falling over when it was leant against the cabin, so I chainsawed the end off" Kid looks at me, then looks at the board, and then looks at me again, then starts looking *really* closely at the back of the board. Kid : "Can you do that to mine?" My son, seeing my new skwal for the first time : "Trop STYLE!"

If you're in Poland like your profile says, your best bet is probably ebay or the polish equivalent of leboncoin (which is a French free ads site *not* linked to frickin' paypal, but most people don't wanna ship, so you have to look locally). Or, if you can afford to pay for a new plank, there's a few online shops dealing with skwals (http://shop.skwal.eu/ is the european skwal association's shop, they sell Lagriffe boards direct - if I had the money that's where I would have gone, the Lagriffe boards rule). There's always a few chancers out there, there's one guy on leboncoin who regularly advertises a "snow-skwal" at ~150€ which is, in reality, a fat, straight, 1980s ski with elfgen snowboard bindings screwed to it (it has a radius of >50m, but he doesn't advertise that). If you're up for trying to organise shipping, here's an auto translated (french-polish, change the "tl=pl" to "tl=en" for french-english) link to leboncoin : http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=pl&u=http://www.leboncoin.fr/annonces/offres/rhone_alpes/occasions/%3Ff%3Da%26th%3D1%26q%3Dskwal the other option is the skwalzone.org forum personal ads. The SK200 is a fantastic board, but massively fast with a big radius. Like you say, a rocket. To learn on, you might do better with a 173°F or 183°F, although carving at Mach 10 on the SK200 is insanely addictive once you've got a handle on it.

Being based in France helps, there seem to be more here than anywhere else. Could have got myself a second SK200 as well, but the guy wanted more for that than the Panther... http://www.leboncoin.fr is the place to look. Had to wait for 2 years before one came up at the right price, though. Took it out this morning. Most amusing.

Finally! Mubarak has gone, and I have a 3-axis skwal. And it's a palindromic date. 1 pretty much spanking new 178 Panther, 100€

You bastards! It's been a month today since we had even a cloud in the sky, let alone snow. Still, the cord is cordy. Carry on enjoying yourselves, you jammy sods.

Riding with absolutely flat bindings almost certainly results in a twisted board whilst riding. It may result in a permanent twist on your board. I have 3 boards from 3 separate manufacturers with the same twist. I now run lifts toe and heel.

Eyeballing mine, I'd say it's probably M8.

Ride somewhere else or avoid the rocks better.

Haven't fallen this season, but I've got 2 reasons for riding well within the envelope. Firstly, boarding is forbidden at work (the boss knows I ride and tolerates it, but if I **** myself up there is zero cover, and it's probably sackable), and secondly I can't afford to **** myself up even if it were covered. Also, I ride like a god. A greek god. The ancient greeks were good carvers, right? Dionysos.

Buckles give you a 100% repeatable tightening. Shame your feet & socks aren't always 100% repeatable... I wouldn't bother with changing them. Swapping out the adjuster for a Raichle "RAB" isn't worth the effort. A Bomber BTS might be be worth the money, but you'd be better putting the money towards (later) getting boots with a better articulation than the SB series IMO. As for walk mode - who frickin' cares?

Same colour as the 2003 Hot Blast. And yes, it rocks. People look at your board and say "what the **** is that" *before* they've realised it has a square end and you're wearing "ski boots"...

Buckles (4 times so far), one walk adjuster (clipped it climbing a pylon and it disintegrated), both ankle pivots on one boot ripped out, the inner one took a load of shell with it and KOed the boot. Sadly, they were replaced with a new pair of the "updated" model, which is showing signs of doing the same. Yeah, my boots are paid for by the resort. No, I don't have a choice. The first pair lasted a season and a half, so 120 or so days with maybe an hour skiing per day. Fit is personal, of course; I only managed to make mine tolerable with the addition of 3rd party footbeds and a pair of volume reducers to lift the arch of my foot above the rivets. A lot of the people I work with have the same problem, to the point of not being able to wear them for more than an hour or so. Seeing the damage the rivets did to the liners of my first pair, though, I can't say I think it's a good design.

You forgot to mention "but they are horribly uncomfortable and fragile". The unconventional overlap leaves a pair of rivets pushing into the arch of the foot (personalised footbeds help a little with this) and all the moving parts break as soon as you fart in their general direction.

... replacing on a drag the other day, two american park rats arrive, chatting loudly (lift services not only a very mild blue slope, but also the small boardercross and the airbag) APR #1 : Man, I hate pomas, I fall off every time. APR #2 : Me too, I'm walking up. Makes me laugh every time, that one. All of our lifts, with the exception of the 2 little über-beginner ropes and one chair by Skirail, are made by POMA, and marked as such on every pylon and chair in big blue letters. After grinning broadly, I showed them the basics of "taking drags without falling on your ass before pylon 1".

Cable catchers won't always save you, of course. Your comment brings up the question of whether it's legal to run a lift *without* catchers, though. Ah, and there you go. Going off to eat mid post is not recommended. Also, It's not a legal requirement? WTF?

You don't think so? Not even a little bit? Admittedly, my statement was a bit OTT, but something of that sort feels pretty much like a constant undercurrent to me. This might be a culture clash thing, of course, "two countries separated by a common language" and all that.

Sorry John, but you're so far off the money here it's not even funny. I saw a guy today on an old F2 (and I do mean old - the base had the "fun and function" logo) who was doing stuff I can't even dream of, and which approached caspercarver levels of what-the-****ery. It was truly beautiful to watch. The guy himself was in his late 50s. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It's not what you ride, it's how you ride. Nobody's claiming that the newer boards aren't significantly better (not to mention, probably less "ridden out") than the older stuff, but they aren't, at least to the majority of people I know, $600-$2000 better. If I was to go out today and buy a brand new alpine board, I'd be dropping what amounts to the better part of a month's rent for most people round here. In my case, it would be getting on for 6 month's worth of mortgage payments, but I only have a small mortgage. And that would be for something little better than what I already have. To go to something "serious", I'd be looking at 3 to 4 months rent (or, for me, a year's mortgage payments). In a world where a significant number of people have trouble "joining the two ends" at the end of the month - well - you get the idea. As I see it, snowboarding itself is in danger of collapsing on itself, imploding under the weight of park-style-fashion-wank NAB*s encouraged / imposed by the "business" side of things. Freecarving is something that could attract a significant part of the snowboarding public, if only they knew it was an option. But no, alpine is alpine, it's exclusive, and if you haven't got a metal board that's worth more than a small car, you can **** off out of our club. That attitude is worse than anything you'll find in the park - at least there you'll only get snubbed by 50% of the other rats for having last year's hat. Think back to your youth. Think about all those cool sports cars you would have loved to have when you were 17, but couldn't afford to run. Who is the majority that can afford to drive those cars now? It's not "cool 17 year olds", it's "paunchy, balding, middle aged accountants". They are usually divorced. Wanna be seen as that? To a lot of people, that's how alpine looks today. It doesn't matter what you ride. Just go out and ride. Carve trenches. Show the skidders what it's all about (literally - chat with them, explain to them on the lifts, take the time to show them how to do the norm, point them to rental shops that still have carveable gear - don't tell them their gear is inferior, don't be an *******). Above all, though, have fun. Whatever you're riding, that's what it's about. * NAB = "Nain a Bonnet" (literally, "dwarf in a bobble-hat") - the "park classic" of baggy trousers hanging around the knees, big bobble hat, and the very latest most extremely rockered park board.

Oh, my misread. Still, it's the stuff this lifty's nightmares are made of.

Holy crap. Saw the aftermath of a cable down last year, made me feel sick to the pit of my stomach. Can't imagine what it would be like not only to see it come down, but to do so with a family member on board. Glad everyone is at least alive...

The only time I'd suggest teaching beginners or intermediates at hardboot angles is if they were riding hardboots themselves. That used to happen (I was taught, as an absolute beginner, in hardboots) but it doesn't happen now because there is precious little hard gear in the shops (and even less demand for it). I think it's a taken that the vast majority (99.999999%) of students will be riding softboots, and that's fine; it shouldn't preclude the teacher being on hardboots anyway as long as they can teach. What I was really getting at is not about gear but about angles. I can say with almost 100% confidence that *every* rental board in my resort is coming out of the shop mounted duck at at +-15 to 20° or so. A few riders turn up at my lift, ask for a screwdriver, start unscrewing their bindings and mounting them at something more sane. Why "sane"? Duck makes very little sense outside the park. It's great for landing (or taking off) switch, sliding rails, and that's about it. Otherwise, it's a rotten position for riding a board as opposed to "falling leaf" down a slope on the heelside edge. Most students won't go near the park, they will be cruising on the groomers and occasionally dipping into a bit of chewed-up powder on the edge of the slopes. They don't need or want to be mounted duck, they need and want a forward bias; duck is hurting their progression, not helping it. It's not helping snowboarding as a whole, either - if people find it difficult to progress beyond the absolute beginner level, and can feel that they are being held back by the equipment (they are, and they can), they can, will, and do, go back to skiing - you can jump on a pair of reasonably modern skis, know which end is the front, point them down a groomer, lean, and leave big smooth train tracks down the slopes. Of course, duck is great for the rental shops, who don't have to think about which way to mount a board - mount 'em all the same, slap 'em in the racks, and churn 'em out the door - gone are the days where a shop would take your leg measurement and calculate stance width for you. The client's choice is not so much "what style of board do you want, what are you going to be riding" as "what colour do you want". It's great for the ski instructors, too - everyone is mounted the same, and you don't have to explain to 25% of the students that their boards are mounted with the bindings facing the tail.

She's got no nipples, and there's clearly an alien about to burst from her stomach.

I'm seeing a year-on-year decrease in boarders as a percentage of clients overall. More and more people are going back to skis - the "new" shaped skis and boots that are both stiff and comfortable are pulling people back to two sticks. I see far more people who can carve on skis than on boards, and that includes the instructors. Had a chat with one of the ESF guys a week or so back, after seeing him ripping it up (frontside only, his backside turns were "skarved" at best). It seems that the ESF, at least in my resort, are also not only requiring softboots, but also requiring duck stance. No forward stance, however mild, is permitted. The instructors (or, at least, the ones who know how to ride) know that this is pure marketing bull****, but it's imposed from above. They're supposed to be teaching people to jump and flip, but there's probably under 1% of our "terminally medium" clientele who will ever go near a park, let alone start throwing big **** on the modules; the clients are left mounted uncomfortably on boards that are wrong for what they are doing, and wondering what all this hype about "snowboarding" is all about.