What's your heritage?

[Dida]

In '96 or '97 my dad took me to try snowboarding (I was 8 or 9 yeras old). I was excited about softboots and how cool they are compared to hardboots skiers use. And I was pi**ed when all the softboots at the shop were rented and they only had hardboots. But what the hell, I tried it with hardboots. And at the end of the day, my dad reserved some softboots for me for tomorrow.

The next day, I was so excited about trying softboots, "this is real snowboarding", I said...

and then...

"what is this POS? I cant control the board in this slippers...". I hated softboots so much that since then, I never ever stepped into them again.

I just thank God that the shop didn't have softboots the first day I came there. Maybe I wouldn't experience the joy of the Dark side, ever.

So, all in all, I'm buckled up from day one.

[b0ardski]

"what is this POS? I cant control the board in this slippers...". I hated softboots so much that since then, I never ever stepped into them again.

yeah, old ski boot liners in sorels didn't cut the mustard an laces and straps are still laces & straps.

My buddy Russ has a motto I really like;

Real men were stiffies

[boarderboy]

since '64. (19)

BB

[energyrail]

wow some of you are really dating yourself

[snowboardworm]

"Dating yourselves" says the young fella from dawson creek.

i started skiing in the middle 70's a couple times a yr. i never really enjoyed it but hated being beaten by a sport. xc skier, slalom water ski, speed skater and softboot boarder 1999. loved the sport even tho it gave me a really bad concussion on the 3rd day. bought a helmet for the next season and haven't looked back. started hard bootin and skiing march 2009. love the control and speed that ski boots and hard boots give, but it is still filler for between snowfalls and when the groomers are nice.

[photodad2001]

Not sure about the percentages however....

I have English blood. My mother's maiden name is Severn and if you follow our history there is a Severn Castle and coat of arms, also the Severn River in England (not sure if direct decent). Great grandmother on mother's side is Cherokee. Father's side German (grandfather was in WWII in a U-boat... US, he came to the states as a child) and also Irish and a splash of Ukraine.

[jpenn]

Snurfing in early 70's, then skiing, skateboarding. Took some time off for marraige and kids, then skiing again and then softboots in 95 and hardboots in 06. Rails were impossible to learn without breaking some part of me.

[boarderboy]

wow some of you are really dating yourself

I've always found myself to be a congenial and, above all, Cheap Date ....

BB

[Dave ESPI]

The last option is actualy closer than all the others.

I had to have some lowerleg braces when I was young because my ankles were not growing properly. I had braced ankles and orthotic arch supports until I was 6 years old. I was blessed with super stong ankles that later in life became a godsend with snowboarding as I tend to ride with a lot of ankle based movements.

I rode a skateboard for a little while, and had a nasty spill that took out a few teeth and required stitches in my chin, but it did not keep me from snowboarding later that year in 1995, and the rest well.... been boarding ever since.

For the past few years, I've done "carving" on the lake with Jetskis in the summer.

AS to my bloodlines, I'm Black Irish.

[Monster Carver]

Skiing 1969

Surf 1976

Snowboarding 1988

carving 1990

[NateW]

Born 1972 (German, Scandinavian, more or less)

Skateboarding 1978ish, kinda (plastic banana board... no tricks)

Skiing 1982

Skateboarding (for real) 1984 or so (ramps, ollies, etc)

Made a snowboard in shop class in 1985 or so, rode it twice, it sucked.

Started snowboarding for real in 1988 or so.

Haven't skied in about 3 seasons, but I vow to again, eventually. Need boots.

[steamboatrailer]

Started skating on clay wheels,then came Sims Pure Juice wheels.I'm sure a few can remember these.Soft boots(1984-90).Hard boots to present.I cut my teeth snowboarding on Berthoud Pass,riding with Butch Bendell and Mike Troutman.These guys were making thermoplastic boards ,ULTIMATE CONTROL BOARDS(UCB).

[queequeg]

I started skating when I lived in Tokyo. My parents wouldn't let me so I borrowed spare decks from friends, usually a vision Mark Gonzales, Psycho or a powell McGill. My first deck was a Vision Grigley that my uncle bought me against their will as a reward for good grades/behaviour (I was a hellraiser ... and he was my favorite!), with G&S trucks and Sawblades, which my parents STILL didn't want me riding ... I used to sneak it out of the house. Sometimes when they were away at a party I would skate out on the balcony (we had this enormous balcony on the 14th floor, it was really fun to skate there, but I would always get in trouble for leaving marks on the floor).

Snowboarding was much the same: I started out on borrowed boards, Burton Elites, Burton Cruise's, and a Kemper Mini-Rampage. Once my boarding school allowed it, I started renting snowboards at Mt.Sunapee during weekly school ski trips .. that was usually a Free 5 or a Free 6 (I saw a Free series board this weekend at Stratton - took me back!). My first board was an Avalanche Kick Freestyle 165 Damian with incredibly lame wintersurf bindings (PAINFUL!), I saved all summer to buy it. Ripped those bindings out of the deck at least five times. Thing looked like swiss cheeze by the time I was done with it. I remember trying to carve on that board ... I kept seeing pictures of alpine riders in transworld (back when they covered us) and finally saw some dude carving at Temple Mtn in NH (there were a bunch of carvers there) and bought my first PJ 6 with that summer's earnings. I've been in plates ever since :-D.

[carvedog]

I didn't see a category for me.

Which is: I tried to ski but it sucked in so many ways, I needed to find a better way to enjoy winter.

I would not say that I was a skier. I did not have much proficiency at it and while it was better than staying home on the couch - at times it wasn't much fun.

[eastcoasticerider]

The kids in our neighborhood started back in 63.we rode those neat metal wheel skateboards down some hairy Pittsburgh topography. They actually let off sparks at night.....bearings meltdown.......we brought the boards back from a California trip.......then built more from rink rollerskates.....

[teach]

Skateboarding in mid 70s in midwest led to desire to mount little skis in place of wheels to ride on snow (back before global warming, we had full snow cover the whole winter). Finally got the idea to turn a small toboggan into a stand-up steerable snow vehicle with some "air shooms" and a small fin. Saw the photos of Tom Sims and Lonnie Toft in Skateboarder on "skiboards" and wrote to Sims asking how to get one. They asked for a few dollars postage and sent me what I guess was a prototype. That made my winter, and the next!

[John Gilmour]

A roller skater.... at 17 months old (1965)... My mom hated dragging strollers in NYC (ever try to shop at Bloomingdales on a Saturday with a stroller in the 1970's???) ... she walked everywhere....and dragged me...

I did ski early at age 3, I was skiing at Stowe... and by 4 or 5 I was at Aspen/Snowmass for its grand opening..(Yes I have photos to prove all of this)

Skateboarding... I embraced Rad pads after my first deck .... a Wayne Brown Kicktail with Sure-grips and road riders 4's every deck I have ever owned since then has had tilt risers of some sort... until I started hanging out with Peter Verdone...

http://www.peterverdonedesigns.com/pvdtrucks.htm

These are the only trucks I ride without tilt risers..

Bought my first Slalom skateboard in 1974 Fibreflex 30" pro slalom w/ camber with Trackers and road rider 4's, then 28" Henry Hester cutaway w/ OJ superjuice and Bennett Pro Ad -Tracs, followed by Sims Slalom Full nose (Made by Bob Turner of Turner Summer Ski for Sims) with Tracker Full tracks and Kryptonics CS- 62mm Orange in front and CS-62mm Reds in the rear. Slalom and downhill skateboarding were my favorite sports as a child. I set some insane high speed slalom courses in the 1970's down cat hill in Central park...against traffic....

Snurfers- rode them in 1976. Owned my first set of Skis in 1976, barely used 'em. Started skiing again in 1982.

Did it all help with learning snowboarding??? Not one bit. I got beat up....the 3 fins and lack of highbaks and sidecut on my Sims FE 150 ...At least it had screwed in metal edges... just made frozen granular impossible to ride.

I made my first highbacks out of soccer shin guards which I shoe gooed together (To increase their stiffness and resistance to tearing) and put a skateboard spacer block on it and multiple holes because I did not know how much lean was appropriate.. I did copy the lean of my Koflach Valuga 4000 lites (a Ski randonee Boot) as a reference (I had already gone to hard boots- thought softboots crippled your performance and Saw it as a main reason why TOM SIMS won races on his Hardshell Koflachs... followed also by Tom Burt and Damian Saunders (Avalanche)) and wanted something to use with soft boots while I sent my original pair of hard shells back (The original pair I ordered was a full size too large ..I actually had to become a Koflach dealer to order them- though I got'em at wholesale). I was never happy with the performance of my proto highback.. in part because the buckles were fastex clips... and I could never get them tight enough on my LL bean Boots- I got bone bruises on top of my feet from the fastex clips that took 20-25 years to go away.

I think I sold 6 Sims Snowboards in my first year as their East Coast Rep...and perhaps 15 total in three years...lol... You took such a beating learning...and unbelievable beating....on East Coast scratch.. I never thought it would ever get popular.

Heritage...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigoths

nearly half...

part Comanche indian

the rest is Chinese.. so I guess German/Chinese mostly..

[groovastic]

This is me explaining correct EC technique to my sister back in '76 in my 3 buckles..... (well, back then I was goofy...) she just had no clue 'bout it.....

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

[carver]

One of the first pro surfers. Hap Jacobs rep at first surf trade show in 1959. Yeah, big deal, free surfboards. Started skiing in 1959. Many of the surf guys got into skiing then. Many raced and got real good at it. Snowboard in 1992. Alpine in 1999. Yee haaa! To think a little more on this. Being part of the surf mat rats at 22nd st in Hermosa Beach from 49 to 52 or 53? Then to surfing, which was not to big of transition because we were standing up on our mats. For you skate board guys, it started in front of my house on 25th and Silverstrand in Hermosa Beach. None of us can remember who took the box off the 2x4. We went to a 1x6 real quick and as they say, the rest is history.

[C5 Golfer]

It all started back in the 16th or 17th century when my GreatX8Grandfather was carving around the family Castle in the Alsace area in what is now known as France. He was the first to mount his boots to a long metal bread pan with bindings made out of worn out Lederhosen and broken cow bells. Please make note of “metal bread pan” -- I believe he was the first to use “metal” on a very early version of what is now known as a snowboard. He was pretty much a snowbum until 1689 when Louis XIV came along and destroyed his ski Castle and sent him riding into Prussia. See link to the family Castle.

http://www.ot-lembach.com/site_Fleckenstein/index_angls.htm

Not much is known after this expulsion from the slopes until my Great Grandfather left Prussia in 1860 with 3 metal snowboards and immigrated to the USA into the fine State of Iowa. He found flat land everywhere, no place to ride so he removed the archaic bindings and used these pans to display watches and jewelry in his newly formed watch repair business. He had a son who followed in his footsteps of watch repair and inherited none of the family athletic genes of Alsace – he did not even ice skate. As he grew older he married a fine young woman named Eda and fathered a son – my father - who shed the watch repair desire and became a photographer, married a fine woman named Marjorie from close by farming community. In 1947 they had a 2nd son and named him C5 Golfer. I grew up in western Iowa where I ice skated 5X a week and rode my heavy steel Schwinn bike in the deep snow. In 1967 driving a beautiful red 63 Pontiac to the finer State of Washington found this Great Pacific Northwest was the place to live for the rest of my life. For the next 30 years I bought and raced several Autos and 4X4 Jeeps – ate many suppers on the greasy decks of Chevy small block motors. During this time I fathered two children who during the education process enrolled in several ski and snowboard schools. I could not understand the desire to put a couple of sticks on your feet and freeze to death. At the ripe old age of 50 my son, bless his heart, kept after me about taking him to the slopes with this thing called a snowboard. Being the good dad that I was – I gladly took him up to the Pass where he boarded with friends while I watched. He and his sister kept after me to try snowboarding with them so that Christmas day 13 years ago I took them up on it. After more falls on my A$$ than I can remember – pretty much beat up - I cooked them dog food for dinner that night. Being a Stubborn European I said to myself “Self, get back on that board” and so I did.

Hope you enjoyed my heritage story.

[DjulezD]

I chose surfer because as a little boy I was fascinated by surfers and waves, but so far I probably spent more time on the slopes than in the water. Overall I spent probably more time roller skating than any other "sliding" sport. There should be a "all of the above" or "else" answer.

My recollection is not very accurate, since I almost started everything at the same time, around 9 or 10. First was windsurfing, then surfing, then rollerskating and skiing. Rollerskating on a daily basis. Skiing every weekend or so. Windsurfing more often than surfing, because waves needed family holidays to be seen and caught. Skate came in the mix at some point but I went higher above the vert on eight than four weels and you go way fast on roller skates, on flat, downhill or towed.

Started monoskiing at the end of the eighties and snowboarding a few years later. HB and asym of course. SB came later, with the "freeride" time. Then I rediscovered alpine carving through BoL six years ago.

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[SEJ]

C5, great story. Do you still have some of that vintage metal?

[ARCrider]

you didn't have lace up ski boots as an option

and Arlberg bindings.

skied from '65,

waterskied in the 70's

windsurfed in the 80's

snowboarding from 2000

snowkiting 2007

kiteboarding 2008

Kiting is the thrill.

[bjvircks]

In the early '60's I started as a 'do it yourself' kind of skier at about age 7 on the flatlands of northeast South Dakota.

There was a beer distributer's facility across the street from my house and in the winter they would clear the lot of snow for the semi trucks to come and go. The snow would be piled in a hill about 10 ft high... not more than 100 feet from our front door. I found a pair of tiny wooden toy skis and poles in our basement and just had to try them. The snowpile was steep and very irregular so I made a set of tracks down the side as best I could. After falling many times and getting thoroughly frustrated I turned my back on my destiny.

Many years later in '78 a college friend, for $25, sold me an old set of skis with Cubco bindings and a pair of ankle high leather boots. I drove to Wausau, Wisconsin (where I had relatives I could stay with) so I could teach myself to ski at Rib Mountain. Being the quintesential know-it-all I went up the hill with absolutely no instructions or assistance whatsoever. I still consider myself very lucky that I walked away from those days intact. In '80 I bought real ski gear, graduated, moved to Minneapolis and took lessons. I spent a lot less time skiing when I started to fly hang gliders in Mpls and later southern California.

Then in '88 came the return to the midwestern flatlands when we moved to Iowa from SoCal. Skiing and flying were essentially over... or so I thought. Divorce started in '99 helped me to reestablish who I really was as a person and allowed me to return to the activities I enjoyed. This was ('00) when my son started to show some interest in boarding. I bought him a used Kemper with bindings. He thrashed around a bit but lost interest. At the beginning of the next season I said 'what the heck' and tried it out. I was hooked on riding right from the start. Whenever I went on a trip with my area ski club I was the 'token' snowboarder.

In '05 I was complaining to a coworker that I was frustrated with the way my feet got to hurting in softboots because I would strap in so tight in order to get more control. He said 'There's this place online called "Bomber" where they snowboard in something like ski boots." And the rest fell into place like dominoes. I still do a lot of skiing with wife 2.0 She skis and rides softies, but this year at WTF'10 she tried hardbooting (sort of... ski boots)

And so... this was my journey to carving. Where to next? Who knows.

[C5 Golfer]

C5, great story. Do you still have some of that vintage metal?

Nope -- I think my Grandmother melted it all down during the Great Depression for wheels she needed for her skateboard. But then the wheels did not last very long... she sold the set up and bought a carbon bike frame.