Carving Demographics

[Jack M]

3 hours ago, Eric Brammer aka PSR said:

Yeah, I will shut up now....

Please don't!!  Love hearing about the old days, and your carving expertise is a treasure here. 

[jim_s]

LoL, found a picture of the board that ended my skiing days! 

I was a dedicated skier - skied SL and GS skis because I loved carving turns. Literally, one hour on this beast of a board (it had the Burton aluminum tube style bindings - Variplate, maybe?), and I went out and tracked down an alpine board - an old beat-up Checkered Pig that some guy at the local ski shop was trying to get rid of. The K2 belonged to my brother, who never really got into it, but it was a life-changer for me! :-)

 

[lowrider]

Love those early sidewinders !

[b0ardski]

wish I could replace the crumbling flex pads, I'd ride it again

way less of a noodle than the asym-air

Edited March 23, 2018 by b0ardski

[Mig]

13 hours ago, lowrider said:

Love those early sidewinders !

Those Emery were super fun but soooo scary too. Frequently had either front or rear foot popping out when landing jumps.

Edited March 23, 2018 by Mig

[pokkis]

Yep, worst bindings i ever used

[philw]

On 21/03/2018 at 12:00 PM, Eboot said:

Arriving at first lift this morning I was suprised to see all the "old" people in line.  ....

.....question 2 when they started to carve.  Boot type is not important.

Actually one thing I like about snowboarding is that until I take my gear off, you don't know how old I am. In January I rode with some nice people, one of whom was a crazy American guy who'd had a long "rock and roll" lifestyle. There were scars, physical and mental, but he wasn't bad on a pair of skis. Anyway, later he was talking in the bar about some shit-hot "boarder kid" he'd been riding with... well there was only me and we all had a laugh as he discovered that the "kid" was in fact... probably about the same age as he was. Just like in real life, inside I@m 18 and outside there's this old guy.... well boarding, it's the other way around. It's possible that kids would assume that possession of a race board is a geriatric signifier, so this effect may only work on old people. 

Question 2: I skied and monoskied before I snowboarded - those were all the toys we had back then. So it was just obvious that to turn a snowboard you had to stick it on edge, like a ski. Hence the "when did you start to carve" question dumbfounded me when some US person asked it in rec.skiing.snowboard in the 1990s... I didn't know what "carving" was - it was just "riding" to me. 

The term "carver" is like calling skiers "parallelers".

[b0ardski]

i'm a paralleler on skis

and take it real easy on those surfs a couple times a decade.

Edited March 24, 2018 by b0ardski

[Emdee406]

46 minutes ago, philw said:

Actually one thing I like about snowboarding is that until I take my gear off, you don't know how old I am.

I love this aspect too! I look young for my age, but I ride much younger! I love going out riding with our new hire instructors, who assume I'm ancient i.e. 30+, therefore how can I walk, let alone ride. Well, after 3hrs of riding every kind of terrain we have, moguls, steeps, trees and dynamic carves on runs they'd rather skid on, they've changed their minds. 

Funnier still, is when I let on that I'll be 58 in May, and I'm older than most of their parents...

#BlackDontCrack

[barryj]

On 3/23/2018 at 8:53 PM, Emdee406 said:

I ride much younger!

 

Yep....that's me!   My ski racer students say I'm pretty fast for a slow guy!

Which translates as:  I'm pretty fast (on the snow) for a slow guy..... of 62!  Ha!

[jim_s]

One of the common threads to discussions or comments I get from people in the lift line is along the lines of, "That thing must be FAST!", to which I reply that it can be, but that I spend all of my focus and energy trying to make it go slower. :-)

[scottishsurfer]

42 minutes ago, jim_s said:

One of the common threads to discussions or comments I get from people in the lift line is along the lines of, "That thing must be FAST!", to which I reply that it can be, but that I spend all of my focus and energy trying to make it go slower. :-)

I had a conversation along those lines with a skier when i shared a t-bar with him, It pretty much went.

Skier: That's an odd shape board(my sg soul) i guess its fast
Me: pretty fast but it turns really well
skier: don't most snowboards do that
Me: not really *points at other snowboarders skidding down the adjacent blue*
 

[AcousticBoarder]

I'm in the minority here in the 20-30 years "olf" category haha, turning 27 next month. My older brother who worked ski patrol turned me onto hardbooting at an early age too.