A softbooters wanderings...

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

I am probably one of the few on this board who LOVE carving in softboots.

I grew up ski-racing slalom and giant slalom...always using extremely stiiff racing boots...and after a day of practicing on the slopes and in the gates, those boots had ALWAYS begun to feel like medival torture devices rather than ski-boots.

To me it was pure and utter heaven when I finally switched from two boards to one board...not just heaven in the fact that I can gloriously SURF down the mountain, but also because the equipment needed was so utterly simple and I must admit, FAR more comfortable than my racing kit.

No more clunky, hard-plastic racing boot-torture devices...no more silly ski-poles...no more complicated Marker bindings. Just me, my board and my boots! And those boots....wow! For the FIRST time I was able ride all day long without adjusting and re-adjusting those vice-like racing boots. With my soft-boots, I was able to walk right off my board and walk ANYWHERE in comfort...even drive my old land-rover with them on. No blisters...no more counting the minutes to finally be able to take my boots off (but I DO miss the pure and undeniable ecstacy when I DID let my feet out of those racing foot bear-traps!!). So if those hard-boots were my anathema, then that softbooter's kit was my salvation...and the mountains opened themselves up to be both my cathedral and my heaven.

I was fine with the jibbing and the park-stuff at first...even if the groms at the various parks and pipes irritated the bajeezus out of me. But by and by, I started to miss the SPEED. It was like an old-friend that I never saw much of anymore and I was sad for it. Indeed I missed that delicous dance with gravity that can only be begotten from going down a mountain AT SPEED. I've never TRULY felt at home on a mountain unless my parke was absolutely flapping in the wind of my fast passage...that was always my guage.

So I guess it was absolutely normal for me to rediscover the ecstacy of the carve. But to this day, I will never again put my feet in hard-boots...they've endured enough of that agony. I have grown to totally love my softboot set-up...and I will trade it for none. I have always been in love with speed...in fact, I have always had a problem with going slow...just can't wrap my mind around "slow". "Slow" is some forlorn stranger that I do not care to meet. So I carve...and I flatboard...and I rip, because that is who am and what I am. But I do it in softboots, with my feet at 15 and 5...and most of all, I do it on my big old (16 years old, to be exact) K2 FatBob...because gravity is non-partisan. And as my flapping parka can attest, my softboots and my FatBob don't slow me down.

My Kit: K2 FatBob 162...Vans "Jamie Lynn" custom competion softboots; Preston EX bindings...regular...at 15 and 5 degrees.

Gravity is life.

Reminds me of a cheap jigsaw puzzle that no one seams to want to play with.