Ultimate compliment from a shop tech

I am visiting daughter and family in VT were they get their family pass at Mad River. They just took their skis in for the preseason tune. The tech looked at the bases of each pair, said "OK", put a number sticky on them and put them in the queue. When he came to oldest grandson Conor (12) a very good and very bold skier, he looked long and hard at the bases, gave him a fist bump and yelled, "DUDE".

Denis, That makes me smile, give Conor some knuckles from me.




I'm curious how many schools ot thought there are on this? I've met some skiers who worry about the condition of their bases, some who don't, allo to varying degrees. I took my short pair of rock skis to the shop towards the end of season last to get an idea what it would cost to get an edge, wax and a few "base blemishes" repaired. To make a long story short she told me if i intended to keep skiing them where i'd been skiing them it would probably be best to just wax and edge them.


I agreed,

It is nice to have one set of skis that you can take onto a race course so you don't hear after the run, "Dude. Dude? Try snowboarding next time."

Beyond that, as long as the edges are relatively de-burred and there are no gouges to the base core, that's about as much as I can hope for.

Never had a wipe-out that I could *legitimately* blame on the condition of my equipment. Versus ice/roller hockey. Imagine what happens when you step on a loose skate lace or lose an axle bolt. It always seems to happen when executing some forward-backward transition...

Actually, it happened to me at about 60 mph on a downhill...nothing quite like seeing your own iliac bone.

On blades? You're a crazier man than me.

I think in 10 years we'll all be asking Denis for Conor's autograph.

You've never skated Fulton St to Normanstone?

Nope. Which Veep witnessed the debacle?

Back onto Denis' original post, if you can impress a shop tech, you can impress anyone. Denis, any Utube vids of the little ripper?

We'll have to get some video this season. He is going to be on the Mad River Freestyle Team

Edited to say that I do my own work and just edge and wax unless there is a core shot or one next to an edge. For that I have a base welder. Some spend a lot of money on tunes and grind down the base and edge in a season and a half. I don't get this - unless they are into admiring a pristine base. After one run it is no longer pristine.