david_quail

none of the above. Our income will only increase with my wife being an ICU physician. I'd feel more guilty about that if she weren't having to go through what she is ... :(

Like always, it's a balance of risk/reward. In Alberta, we've been instructed to not even travel to our cabins to isolate there. I'm inclined to travel to our cabin and continue to ski - but will wait to see how things unfold in emergency departments. Unfortunately, just as it's peaking in Alberta (mid May), is when we'll have the chance to ski.

@Horton I have had moments thinking "I'll go around licking elevator buttons and doorknobs and get this over with too." This however assumes that immunity is actually built up (which isn't clear) and that it hasn't/won't mutate to become more problematic for young healthy people (it's already mutated several times). My wife is an ICU physician (and infectious disease sub specialist), and part of a Canadian board managing the national strategy, so I'm exposed to a lot of the data, and the data is indeed alarming (not just for old people). Of all the stuff I've heard from her though, I thought this article walked through the problem and potential solution the best. Data. As you say. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56?fbclid=IwAR1XqMmHuns86NW4jJsMmehL1cMyRn2dWq-5937BYzapPytTMsxEPphRDH8

Definitely approach this with lean startup / SCRUM in mind. You'll have a million and one feature requests ... people will want your app to brew them coffee and have it waiting in the dock for when they finish their set. 80, 20 rule applies. 80% of the value will be in 20% of the features. Start incredibly small. Almost embarrassingly small. Test that with people. Go from there.

Has anyone ever put together or seen a slalom specific training program? Off season and in season? With the help of a couple people very experienced in slalom, and in athletic training, we're putting together just that; so would love to learn anything specific people have done. I, like many on here, would be exercising 5-6 days a week (usually a combo of crossfit, orange theory, running outdoors, swimming) even if Slalom didn't exist. It's so key to my health and happiness. So I figure I may as well be applying those training hours directly to my passion (slalom) to better those results and reduce injury risk.

My non-scientific single anecdote ... I went vegan and lost 15 lbs (I was in good shape even before). I've never felt better. Mentally and physically. But much like others making the lifestyle change ... it was part of a big lifestyle change which included giving up booze, and starting 2 hours of exercise daily training for a triathlon. So is hard to separate causation from correlation.

@horton - In your opinion why just lower level skiers? I believe, if I am not mistaken, that Terry skis mostly at relatively comfortable passes. Can’t even elite level skiers benefit from this approach?

I’m convinced that not scrambling chasing the next buoy is what is great about free skiing and it’s ability to allow you to focus on stack. You can also accomplish this in the course by practicing most of your passes at a comfortable line length that’s relatively easy, allowing you to really focus on form ... rather than survival. Borrowing heavily here from @twhisper whose convinced me.

@Fraser Not me! He makes us look like the complete hacks we are! Inferiority complex I now have. Kidding of course. Great dude. Always willing to give us hacks advice and coaching tips (even though he says he's not good at coaching)l

Also wrt getting worse before it gets better. I switched at the beginning of the season when everything feels foreign. After 3 sets or so I was back to my prior seasons level of skiing. It wasn’t as big of an adjustment as I thought it would be. That said, it was only my second or 3rd year of skiing ... so it was a new trick but the dog wasn’t THAT old.

I had the exact same fall as you (2nd wake heading to offside LFF). Knee felt funny but not terrible. Actually went home and did a 45 minute spin. But later that night I could barely bend my knee. Diagnosed with a very bad, grade 2 MCL tear. 6 months before it started to feel close to normal. I was in hard shells releasables which did release. Just a bit too late I assume. Another buddy of mine ruptured his Achilles at the end of this season in a releasable Reflex. I do quite like the bindings, and am guessing they do prevent some injury, but that’s my long winded way of saying they aren’t fool proof.

I'm a massive fan of spending most of my sets (75%) at a relatively easy line length. Any time I deviate from this and start chasing buoys, my skiing suffers. That said, it's important for me to every other set or so, try my hardest pass. This exposes areas of weakness that I can focus on at easier line length. My ideal is 2 sets, with ~15-30 minutes in between. First set is spent entirely at 34mph, 15 off. Second set I start there for a couple passes and then cut the line after each pass I make, eventually getting into 32 off (which I've yet to run).

3 season on skis (combo or slalom). 130~ish sets. Started year making 50% of 32mph, 15 off. Ended making 50% of 34mph, 28 off. A WHOLE lot of inconsistency, awful skiing, and ups and downs in between. Every time I started to focus on chasing buoys, I'd ski like garbage. Every time I'd start to focus on chasing body position, I'd ski well and the buoys would come. But yet ... I mostly focused on chasing buoys. It's engrained in the ski culture (driver always goes to shorten the rope the second you run a pass). Next year, I'm sticking to the @twhisper mantra more stubbornly, and keeping 75% of my passes at an "easy" length that I can really focus on form and technique, and taking video more often. Despite what my driver and spotter try to do with the rope. Competed in my first tournament. Hadn't missed 34mph 15 off for a month before the tournament and was consistently getting into 28 or 32 ... but come tournament I got 2 at 32mph/15 my first attempt. And OTF'd going to 3 ball at 34/15 my second attempt. Despite it being a low key, just for fun tourney with just the locals I always ski with ... it taught me a thing or two about being more mentally prepared. Despite skiing terribly, it's given me the bug and I'll do it often next year. 8 yr old daughter got up on a slalom ski for first time. 5 yr old son got up on combos for the first time. Super fun year. Weather in Alberta was sub par. But there was very few days I wasn't able to ski because of it. Already looking forward to next year (snow this weekend so we're done), and started training for it. Crossfit (2X per week), swimming (1X per week), Orange Theory (2X per week), yoga (as often as possible).

Ditto I ski behind a 2014 SN, a 2019 SN, and a 2017 Prostar I was at 30mph, 15 off last year, and have progressed to 34mph, into 32 off this year. They all ski amazingly well ... they’re all a bit different ... but the wake / pull has never been anything but great on all of them. I’d shop for the best deal and the one that just feels right and pull the trigger on that.

I looked into the statistics and accident rates are actually lower for towing vehicles than non towing. I reckon because drivers are like me ... extra slow and cautious when towing. Also, I probably instinctively give trailers/boats extra space on the highway when I see them.

Looks ... super fun.

I had issues with my “Gen 1” hoop. Also with the originally 3D printed foot bed. Both of which were handled, no questions asked, by my local dealer. Other than those 2 hiccups, love the setup and have had zero issues since they replaced the parts with their modern equivalent.

Driving from Edmonton to waskesiu (about 650km) for a week. I was going to pull the SN200 (which lives on our boat lift for the summer). I’m getting the gears from others in the family that pulling the boat this far may not be the most responsible thing (putting it politely). I’ve never considered any safety issues ... assumed boats/trailers were designed to be towed safely. Our vehicle is well within the towing capacity. But maybe I’m out to lunch. I assume most on here ski on private lakes or keep their boats on lifts ... but aren’t we the extreme minority? Ie most boat owners pull their boats thousands of miles per year to use it with their family? Now more than proving a point ... I’m curious what most boaters do (again, people on this forum probably don’t represent the majority of boat owners :| )

I wanted to buy, but needed a question answered. I left probably 10 un-returned messages. The last few my verbiage was along the lines of “I want to give you money. Please let me give you my money.” But still no dice. Eventually my local Nautique dealer got through to them. I think he reached out to Freddy.

Super annoying. But thankfully, fixing buckled PVC is *relatively* easy and cheap, as you suggest. I have accidentally caused this when being too aggressive tightening the course.

More like “which ones don’t?”

@Wish Ah good point. Hadn't considered the boat speed. How about then, add an ice maker and blast out cubes! Probably making this more difficult than needed. Love the idea ...

I wonder, for their next version, if a reasonably sized squirt of water could be used as a projectile. I'm sure we've all been to amusement parks where they shoot water at greater distances. A closed system, not requiring re-loads, would be pretty sweet.

It's worth the upgrade IMO. I had a 2003 SN running PP which I upgraded to ZBOX. Like you, none of the people skiing behind the boat are setting records any time soon. After upgrading, it seemed to provide a pull more similar to ZO ... but I'm probably not good enough to REALLY notice the difference. That said, as a driver, I noticed it definitely didn't oscillate it's speed as much through the course after the upgrade. Whether you care about that and that it feels more like ZO is another question. By the sounds of it though, you also ski behind a ZO boat. Which I did too. After upgrading it made transitioning between the two easier given they were more similar pulls. But the thing I definitely DID notice and justified the upgrade was how the speed control engaged much easier. Prior to upgrading it was pretty sensitive to over / under throttling. But it seemed pretty dummy proof after. First time drivers had no issues engaging the system. Free skiing is just fine with ZBox. We used to go into "Simple Slalom" mode for that. Otherwise it seemed to run 0.5 - 1Mph faster than the set speed. I think it was at a higher speed / rpm waiting for the gate hit that never came... Hope that's helpful ...

In Canada ... So next weekend will take the buoys off and watch the course sink .Sad face. Usually in the spring we spend a few hours trolling, anchor on bottom, trying to catch us a mainline rather than a whopper. As fun as that is with the ski buds and a few pops, I'm Iooking to expedite the process. What about this? .. I have a 1/16th stainless steel line attached to the mainline and anchored the other end in front of our cabin in a spot I can easily find in the spring (about 4 feet of water). From there I can trace back to the main line. Question ... Is there a better solution? How accurate can GPS be? Is there an app for that? Is 4 feet of depth enough? I'm kind of worried about the ice grabbing my trace line and depositing the course on the other side of the lake . Other ideas? Where oh where art thou my sunken course?