Pan Admun Republic of Western Blog

My snowboarding season has come to an end. Time to look back and review my progress on the journey to perfect.

Achievements
- better advance sliding turn, anticipation improved on toe side, starting to able to "push n' drive" into the turn
- less falling on heel side
- down un-weight turn

Still Need Improvement
- carving still slipping out on the back
- earlier/aggressive pivoting, early flexion
- need more work on switch riding
- laying backward on some turns, need to move back to center of board
- moguls

Nothing happens at week 7, weather was so bad while I was snowboarding in Mt. Tremblant in -30 temperature and ice-cube littered slope, anyway....



Week 8 starts in a snowing Saturday. With some snow, we have fun.

Mike gave us a mogul session. However, I just keep falling on every turn because the lack of independent leg movement and rapid body anticipation.

Ezio once again with us on Sunday, and we have more fun trying out down un-weight turn. I did much better on Heck and finally start getting the mechanic. The trick is to extend and push on the board throughout the turn, and use the bounce to suck the board back in to pivot on the next turn. My new used Shaun White is very poppy and helps a lot for the turns.

The advantage of down un-weight turn is to maintain maximum board contact on snow, which allow better pressure on snow for speed control and edging. The up un-weight turn as we all do usually has a window that the board's pressure is unloaded from snow as pivot is happening (relatively) slowly.

Monday night session is the last one this year, Tamara continues on improving our turn's effectiveness through anticipation. We try to incorporate flexion into the anticipation. The push-on-the-shoulder to drive the body into the turn for earlier pivoting.

It wasn't a good night for me while I almost got hit twice; The first time happens in the 3rd run when I hit the U-shape pit. I made a mistake while bombing down and flex too much on the bottom of the pit. This put all the downward pressure on the board while the slope going uphill again. The pressure has nowhere to go and start pushing the board sideway, resulting me wiping out. And a ski patrol was right behind me and almost crash into me..... I heard it's coming and thought "Shit" and trying to get up but it's already too late. The snow flying all over the place and luckily he was able to avoid me, else I am sure I will be in the hospital at this moment. Then another guy in the session take off for a jump and crash on to me from behind while I am down un-weighting down the pit. He barely missed me.....

Now my snowboarding season is finished.

Just watched Before Sunrise, because I am going to watch Before Sunset.

- Dialogues, a lot of talking, nice words
- All about love, relationship, life, knowing the person.
- You just love Ethan Hawke. I like this actor a lot.
- What a good demonstration how to pick up girls in train, and be a smooth operator.
- A great how-to tour a city over night.
- The characters' personality is so three-dimension, you can feel what kind of person is in front of of you.

It's all happened before sunrise.

Saw it on lanyang about a home-brew video by a asian guy, it's a funny video. It asks a question many have asked: Why do asian girls go out with white guys but hardly any white girl goes out with asian guy?

How classic and stereotyping. Why asian girls like gwai lo? It's not just happen in North America, we often saw the scene at places like Lan Kwai Fong. There is a popular believe that certain body part is a BIG reason. We must have watched too much xxx movie.

Maybe it's just a episode of identity crisis?

I've been sitting on this for sometimes now. It's official that I will be on a 6 months assignment to work with development team in China. I will be station in Guangzhou. It's only 2.5 hours from Hong Kong, so I am sure I will be there often. I am so looking forward to it.

The weather is holding in a low minus. The runs are turning icy while we did not get any new snow.



Benoit runs a session of mixed tricks on Saturday. We starts having fun doing switch top-gun. I follow another instructor down the hill switch... mostly. Then we rip some tornado turns down the hill. We continue rolling off rollers trying to absorb and stay contact on snow. Last, but not least, we invade slalom course before the skiers close the course.

Sunday we have the honor to have Ezio joining us. We tried to improve our craving turns
- We focus on early pressure
- In order to improve our craving, we were trying to pivot /steer earlier. However, we continue to flex into our turn later. This put a lot of pressure on the edge, result into slipping.
- A early flexion allow prolong, gradual pressure apply throughout the turn.
- If flexion is started on the fall-line, it's already too late. It should starts before that.
- Extension and flexion should be integrated into anticipation.
- Driving into the turn with shoulder, as flexion occurred.
- Anticipate with extension.

It's been a wet week, it's rained a lot and quite warm. The snow was slower than usual, sometimes even sticky.

Monday night, just riding with Marco since no one show up.

Saturday, the focus is on short radius turns on Heck (double black)
- tactic is to do the un-weight on front-foot, lift up back-foot turn, with a side-slip in between
- the tactic helps putting body in the middle of the board on steep terrain

Sunday, down un-weight turn
- it's used for speed control on steeper terrain
- a level 3 technique (wow!!)
- instead of extend to un-weight before pivoting, a rider compress to un-weight
- during the turn, a rider extend to increase pressure on the edge to control speed
- when this is done in a dynamic fashion, it is similar to a push and extend into the turn and use the re-bounce to compress and pivot into the next turn.

It's been a good week up the hill, a lot of people come out for lessons. The snow wasn't as bad as I thought even we've been getting some rain.



Monday night sessions is on improving turns
- as we getting more advance, the pivoting happens early
- imagine spreading the skier coming from behind us at 12 o'clock
- problem #1: I need to be more aggressive on pivoting (so it happens earlier)
- problem #2: I have a backward lay posture on toe side turn, it seem to happen when I tried to flex further into the turn

Saturday session is working more on edging
- body needs to align with the edge
- on heel side, pointing up the toe and bend on the knee and ankle
- on toe side, bend knee and lifting up heel
- a static inclination/angulation exercise can help explore how to increasing edging
- rail-to-rail (aka sidecut turn) can be used for students to feel the edge at work on snow. This is done by incline/angulate (kind of like rocking back and forth) on the board.
- "spread the crowd" up the hill (or to the side), which enforce early pivoting and edging
- "sponsor" turn, which imagine to increase edging to show the base of the board to the people down the hill

On Sunday session we go through some tactic on teaching switch
- maintain in the center of the board
- body alignment to anticipate the turn
- toe-to-toe/heel-to-heel turn can help rider adjust to the new body position
- we also tried a "hop 180" exercise

Burton was having a demo day at Camp Fortune last Sunday, I took the opportunity to try out some of their boards.

I've been shopping a bit since last year for a stiffer board and the board on the top of the list is Ride's Timeless. My friend Nelson and Janus is riding one and it looks like a good board. In fact, I almost bought one last year in San Francisco when I saw a 152 for $250US... oh well, I should have bought it!

So, I asked for a stiff deck to try. They suggest Shaun White, one of the Pro models. They put a mission binding on and hand it over to me. When I first hold it in my hand, the first impression was: wow, it's light! I think it's at least 50% lighter than my GNU Carbon Highbeam w/ K2 V8 binding.

So, I strap on and go up for a ride. However, I then realize that the binding is a bit too big. Anyway, I go for a ride! The next thing I notice is the board is quite fast, maybe because it is new. The ride feels very smooth, turn after turn the board is very precise and lively. The pivoting is very quick in response and pop nicely from edge to edge. The deck I was on is a 152cm, which is longer than my GNU Carbon High-beam 150cm. But to my surprise, the board spins around very fast and effortless. It almost feel like I am on a 143 deck. Another thing I noticed is this board is very stable on snow that it feels like I am riding on water, there was very little chatter.

I ride it for a few runs, the only problem I had is that somehow I lost my heel edge every time when I turn really hard on heel side. I didn't realized at first what cause it and why. So, I assumed it's my riding skill that cause such an issue.... until someone suggests that there might be a heel drag. I go back to the demo tent and they change the binding angle, the problem reduces after the change.

Overall, this is a very fun board to ride and I am now trying to find one if it's cheaper than the suggested $700+ here in Canada..... I just can't shake it out of my mind.

Since I tried SW, I did some reseach on other boards. It looks like Custom/CustomX (even T6) is a more expensive fit for SW, and Air is a cheaper fit if I can't affort SW. I also check out Ride's No4 and Prophet. They also looks like good board to get.