Summer season

[nils]

looks like a gov .45 ? must be fun to shoot haven't done hand gun shooting since the army thu...

Nils
Just went to hydraulic brakes on my MB now i'm like safe for summer season !

[István]

Guys, just accomplished a 2 days course on the Hungaroring (the Hungarian F1 ring) in motorbiking. We used Suzuki GSX-R 600 bikes, and the best Hungarian racer was the leading instructor, together with other racer fellas.

All I can say is that I've learnt much more in these two days then all the years before. Couple of times I have shit my pants, but otherwise it was a great fun, I can recommend similiar courses (if available in your vountries) to all the carvers - it is very similar to EC, first you don't believe that it is feasible, it is against sanity and phyics, but it works....

No need to say that the real pros live in the Matrix and can ammend physics when needed resulting in 20-30% faster laps.

Will have pics and vids, will try to post them.

All da best,

István

[Silber]

Cool, have fun...

however, if u feel like one more day of carving u could fly to Milan Saturday July 2nd early morning and come with me to les 2 alpes...

Ciao!!

[raphael]

Summer time is time for preparing the winter.
I'm very far from the level of the EC masters so there is still a lot of room for improvement.
But i can't spend much time on the snow every year (maximum is 10 days... too bad ).

So praticing through the rest of the year is a necessity.
I do two things i recommend:

carving the street
and classic longboard surfing

I've been looking a lot for the perfect tool for street carving.
I found two very convincing solutions:
Carveboard and Flexboardz

I'll explain later there qualities and use (in my opinion).

[István]

Hi to all,

With regards to Raphael's request on 'street carving' and in addition to my previous posting, I attached a pic that was taken yesterday on the Hungaroring (the F1 ring of Hungary).

Sorry for the poor quality, it was taken by the girlfriend of my friend (#0) who was chasing me (#20) on the attached pic (he does this every time, once he'll slip up into my ass.... )

So anyone feels like missing some carving in the summertime, try this, it is really similar.

Cheers,

István

ps.: Should you not feel brave enough to do it yourself, there is a multiple time champion Hungarian rider that takes you for a ride with his bike (Suzuki GSX R-1000, K5, 175 horsepowers) that has special grips for the second person). You try it and will fall into love with the sport (of course, only after shitting your pants.... hehe.... )

[Dmitry]

Cool, have fun...

however, if u feel like one more day of carving u could fly to Milan Saturday July 2nd early morning and come with me to les 2 alpes...

Ciao!!

Hi!
Have one day of carving 08 Aug.

Silberfile good on ice, but backside turn very hard

http://rm.kz/turns.wmv

Dmitry

[István]

Dmitry,

Good video! As for the Silberpfeil, I believe that backside is possibe, although I have to admit that indeed it is a bit more difficult than on my Virus (at least for me). Maybe Silber can add something based on his experience - he is a great fan of SP, even his name is similar

I believe you had difficulties on the backside due to the counter-rotation you do, which I think is mainly coming from the fact that your frontside is not finished in a sense that your shoulders are not twisted enough.

Well, this is only my personal view, don't get it wrong, some bigger experts here might have a more sofisticated judgement on the video and style.


All the best,

István

[raphael]

Hi again all.

I'm back from holiday.
I'm ready for another of my never ending posts.

Today's subject:
Street surfers as practice tools for extremecarving

I first read this subject from Ditch and Rob Crobar ( viewtopic.php?t=429&start=0&postdays=0& ... carveboard ).
That got me very interested in the carveboard and the street carving idea. So i began investigating the net.
By the time i gathered enough money to try and by something, i was focused on 2 solutions that looked really convincing to me:

- The Carveboard from California, USA http://www.carveboard.com/
- The Flexboardz from Basque country, France http://www.flexboardz.com/

I finaly bought a second hand Carveboard Stik this summer. And later in the summer i met Patrick Pierron who invented the Flexboardz.

Before i give any opinion, keep in mind the following facts. I don't do much sport, i'm not able to make my snowboard turns totally laid, i practiced the Carveboard Stik for 1 month, then the Flexboardz models only for 2 hours. So what i say might be useful, but it's not the ultimate review.

The good news is i liked both boards, they are pretty different, and i think both are useful to practice and enhance your carving skills.

Too bad i didn't try the Carveboard wave (the original model with big air-filled wheels). I finally believe it must be much better carver than the Stik model (with skateboard-like wheels).

I used the Carve Stik for more than 1 month, almost daily. So i began to get really used with it and i've come to really love it. To be honest i liked it from the very beginning. It feels soft on the road (thanks to special construction and special wheels) and the springs feel soft and progressive (you angle very easly). Quickly i learned to control my speed thanks to the good grip and very short turn radius. What i disliked at first and that makes it far from the pleasure of snowboarding, is that when you angle a lot it turns too short to enjoy the turn. Maximum angle is around 45 degrees, which is not bad. The other thing i may sometimes dislike is you can't take much speed, for it starts wobbling and the grip vs turn radius ratio starts to be inefficant (you turn to brutal for the grip to handle). An other difficulty i've had, is finding steep enough streets. If i angle a lot, i often reduce my speed too much. So, to keep linking very angulated turns, i need very steep streets (and they'd better be large aswell)... not very easy to find.

I think the Carveboard Wave would be better on these issues. It's longer, so i hope the max turn radius must be larger. The air-filled wheels give hell of a lot more grip. So you certainly can go a little faster and carving harder and longer, maybe on less steep streets. Well anyway the Flexboardz does it all. More on that later.

The carveboard as great advantages. Its easy to push, easy to pump on the flat (even a little up hill), it feels very easy to angle (like a surf or a snowboard when off-piste) and turn, easy to control your speed, and to use in narrow streets. All in all it's perfectly suited for city surfing. The Carve Stik even has an advantage here, because it's smaller and with skateboard-like wheels so nobody cares if i go everywhere with it (even to the movie theatre).

I think it really helps on enhancing the balance, ankle sensivity (and reactivity) and finding the good swiss-style carving mouvement.

But it's not extreme at all and i think my legs muscle are not strenghened a lot.

What you may like in carveboarding, it's linking soft but very angulated turns slowly. And it's pretty cool, you don't even need speed. It reminds me of the ice-skating spirit.


Next:
meeting with Patrick Pierron, infos on the flexboardz, test drive, repairing your carveboard, etc...

[frunobulax]

Hi dmitry,
agree with Istvan, too little rotation in your BS-turn, i.e. your body's not twisted enough into the turn, you´re actually facing downhill. FS is looking fine, maybe also a tiny rest of counter-rotation, but fine cross-through movement.
Nevermind, that's easy to correct in a few day's time.

Silberpfeil is difficult on BS, true, but mostly on soft surface. Good board on ice, good grip, precise carving possible, also EC. If it's skidding check your boot overhang because the SP is quite narrow but don't blame the SP for your rotation...

[raphael]

If it's skidding check your boot overhang because the SP is quite narrow but don't blame the SP for your rotation...

Oh, did anybody ever do that ? ...

More seriously, i second others comments on your video. Plus i think we see your butt to much during backside. It seems you are bending at waist instead of knees. More rotation may help keeping torso straight and you can add some extra knees-bending too.

Well this is just from what i see. Your frontside is so much better than mine that i find it hard giving advices.

Well, just one more anyway, because this winter i had a backside rotation problem too. An NSECS participant corrected me (thanks again CptCavern ) , i was pretending to do rotation but it was just like i didn't do anything. The problem was corrected by thinking of rotating my rear shoulder mainly. If you don't do it, it doesn't matter what you're doing with the front shoulder, you move your front harm and think you rotated but you're not rotating at all and the turn is not closed. Maybe this bit of advice may help you: when on heelside think of getting your rear shoulder in (and rotating of course).

[raphael]

Street surfers as practice tools for extremecarving (part II)

I hoped to try a Flexboardz this summer, but couldn't find a shop selling it. Luckily (very luckily in fact) i had to go on holiday at my grand-parent's house in the Basque country, just a few km away from the Flexboardz society.

So I wrote to Patrick Pierron (the creator) about ExtremeCarving, summer training and my questions about the board. I was very surprised (maybe i shouldn't) that while their website said nothing about it, Patrick loved alpine snowboarding and in fact created the board to practice alpine SB on hard. He knew bomber online, he knew skwalzone, he was about to buy a swallowtail... but he didn't know about Extremecarving. Well i hope he really understands what it is now, he even may come to ECS and NSECS (NSECS stands for Not-So-Extreme-Carving-Session. It is the non-official French Pyrennees smaller version of ECS).

Well ... anyway, we phoned and met in Hendaye. I hope next time we can meet in Paris with Jeanma and a camera as originaly planned. So no camera this time, we just did a cool (but short) 2 hours session with Patrick, his trainee Nicolas, my girlfriend Garance and me, far from the paparazzis.
I found the session particularly short because i was having a hard time adapting to the board. I thought it would be similar to carveboarding wich i think i handle alright. I was wrong. I felt it very hard at the beginning. The board felt hard, the springs felt hard, and the road felt hard and frightening. A road that first seemed like beginners green piste to me was making me real fast and scared. This because the flexboardz is really built differently from the carveboard (look at there website you'll understand it better than any description i might come up with). > http://www.flexboardz.com

First impression on the shorter model (Karrika), it's short (not the whole thing, i mean the actual board). Patrick says it's built to match a snowboard stance, so it should be okay. But i'm now used with the carveboard wich is much longer. Well no big problem in fact but quiet a change.
Then comes the second surprise: when you angle a little it doesn't turn. This is normal i'm told, and this is what prevents the board from whobbling, and i must admit it's true, no matter how fast i went, the board never whobbled.
Third surprise the board is hard to angle, you have to push it hard to make sharp turns, even with Patrick tuning the setup for my tastes (and his, as i think i understood).

I didn't like it a lot at slow speeds, well it was no match for the carveboard in this area. But remember i had only 2 hours, and i know it was too short for me to get used to the board. In the contrary, with speed it was incredible. Its big wheels grip like glue and makes a bad road feel soft as a carpet, and when you want to carve there is feedback, the board doesn't feel loose as with the Carve Stick . I would have felt very secure if i could control my speed, which i found real hard. This is because i found it hard turning sharp and so i was limited to very large turns and not being able to reduce my speed at will. But the turns felt very secure, perfect grip, no wobbles, board's response to angulation very firm.

Well, it felt a bit like carving large turns with my GS raceboard. Same advantages, but same difficulty: you have to push real hard to tighten your turn.

But i know you can control it better, make sharper turns and very powerful ones, because i saw Patrick and Nicolas do it with ease. I even saw Nicolas pump it up hill (well i also saw is muscles, he doesn't look like me at all, it's an athlete).

With the bigest board (Haze, wich they sell for kite) the grip was such that i never dared to push it to its limit, i was reaching mine first. It's the board i liked best, longer, very gripy, angles a lot with the good tuning. With it i managed to make a beautifull backside at the end of the session, and it felt real good.

Ah yes, i forgot to tell you. Flexbordz are tunable, and easely. That's real good, for adjusting to your style, to the road you're taking, and for maintenance when the board starts steering left or right (as every board does with time). It's tunable and fine-tunable. The only thing i think you can't tune is the turn radius response to board angulation. I'm not even sure, but all the rest you can, even the height of the board over ground.

Another point in the same spirit. Every ageing or brakeable part of the board is standard, you can buy it anywhere for a reasonable price. It's the exact opposite of the carveboard, every piece of it is manufactured by Carveboard in California, is expensive, and real hard to find.
But one must admit, it is top quality !

Ok you want comparisons to sum it up ?
Carveboard Stik feels like surfing (or light-powder-snowboarding) the street.
Flexboardz feels like alpine-snowboarding the street.

Both seem to be great as practice tools for EC. The Carveboard is very good for the balance (learning rotation and push-pull), but if you want to strenghen your muscles, you definitly need a Flexboardz.

For exemple on a carveboard, turning sharp takes only equilibrium, on the Flexboardz it's more a question of power (wich is not a big problem once you get used to trust the grip). It's a question of taste. The advantage of Flexboardz is its much easier and confortable to make large turns with it. You should have seen Patrick, he really likes linking large turns.

I think Flexboardz emulates alpine snowboarding better (you even feel some sort or edge to edge transition). But it's maybe harder to find large enough streets to practice, and you need to be in good shape to make the best of it. Pumping it seems to be harder than the Carveboard, but with a little speed to start you definitly can do it.

The Carveboard does not handle speed at all, it wobbles around 25 km/h. But it angles a little more and much easier.

This said, i saw Nicholas (the very muscled trainee) doing almost the same things with the Flexboardz that i do with the Stik.

The perfect street for carvebording is very steep. The perfect street for Flexboarding is large and long.

All in all i think the two are quiet complementary.

[nils]

IF we could have a demo model and write a review on the website maybe...
Do you think Patrick would agree...? Let him know we can arrange maybe to have a demo Swoard 2D in return since he is in France, shipping costs are very low!
If he agrees, please let him have my email

thnx!
Nils

PS: i like the look of the tool!!! Looks crazy!

[raphael]

IF we could have a demo model and write a review on the website maybe...
Do you think Patrick would agree...? Let him know we can arrange maybe to have a demo Swoard 2D in return since he is in France, shipping costs are very low!
If he agrees, please let him have my email

thnx!
Nils

PS: i like the look of the tool!!! Looks crazy!

Salut Nils.

Sure, i'll ask him.

[Dmitry]

If it's skidding check your boot overhang because the SP is quite narrow but don't blame the SP for your rotation...

Oh, did anybody ever do that ? ...

More seriously, i second others comments on your video. Plus i think we see your butt to much during backside. It seems you are bending at waist instead of knees. More rotation may help keeping torso straight and you can add some extra knees-bending too.

Well this is just from what i see. Your frontside is so much better than mine that i find it hard giving advices.

Well, just one more anyway, because this winter i had a backside rotation problem too. An NSECS participant corrected me (thanks again CptCavern ) , i was pretending to do rotation but it was just like i didn't do anything. The problem was corrected by thinking of rotating my rear shoulder mainly. If you don't do it, it doesn't matter what you're doing with the front shoulder, you move your front harm and think you rotated but you're not rotating at all and the turn is not closed. Maybe this bit of advice may help you: when on heelside think of getting your rear shoulder in (and rotating of course).

Hi Raphael, Istvan!

Thanks for corrections. I only the first season on a hardboard. I want Swoard, i think BS it will be easier. SP approaches for driving in the summer on a glacier. SP has small radius 11м. On more gentle slopes it does not turn out almost completely down.

Dmitry

[raphael]

Any body else tried a Carveboard or similar to train for EC on streets ?