Slalom.Steve

Hmm I'm size 10.5 and I use a Large. It's fine except for right across the ball of my foot, the side by my little toe kinda hurts after 6 passes or so. BUT, I know that part of my foot is a bit wider than usual (like I have issues in that spot in a variety of shoes on both feet, but size 11 shoes slide at my heel). Any sense if your foot tends to run wide or narrow? I may be inclined to try the XL, since you could just cinch the laces real tight, but I'm not sure.

@UCFskier - true story! Needless to say, they didn’t buy it lol. Got arrested for underage possession.

BigSpray is like that time when I was 17 and the cops pulled me over and found a bunch of beers in my trunk and I told them they were my Dad's... "What's that, mister officer? The beers are cold and loose in a backpack? Well... that must be because there... he was at a work party! Yeah yeah, earlier that night, and he must've brought home the leftover beer!... So he put them in the backpack that... he takes to all his work parties! But then! He forgot them in the trunk!" :D As we all certainly know, the first piece of gear that really needs to be dialed in when getting back into skiing (or... not getting back into skiing?) is ropes, and you gotta try all the new unknown brands right away and post your opinions of them online.

I've been surprised how little talk there's been on here about the Neo. Doesn't seem like too many people have tried it yet? I have not, just FYI, but I like keeping up with the ski news.

@mike_mapple - I didn't even realize there were tall versions until your comments! Lots of sites don't even list it as an option. That would be perfect, but... I wear a Small and looks like they only do a Medium Tall and a Large Tall?

@Minelickskier cool thanks! I actually have the Slasher already and really like it except it's a bit too short on me, and I've heard the Hyperfreak is longer. I also looked around and it seems O'Neill stopped making the Hyperfreak in 2021 anyways though.

Yeah it still all seems too odd. Particularly calling it "Z Lines." Hey I'm gonna start a ski company called D4 and a boat company called MisterCraft... but like, no relation to anything, just my own vibe here! :# @BigSpray you keep saying you've been on since 2011, but you have 14 total posts and all or nearly all of them have come in the last month commenting on S-Lines and now Z-Lines. Interesting time to become a passionate poster... Feels like Dave and now Z-Lines has been alienating a lot of ML customers and Russell came in to try to save face.

Last I heard Stokes didn't even have an estimate of restock time for the Evo.

Anybody have experience comparing the O'Neill Slasher to the O'Neill Hyperfreak comp vests?

There is definitely room for improvement, the video quality and video editing was really bad for sure. But to try to find a bit of balance: 1. I don't know that we can complain about our sport being small and not being on ESPN, then complain when sponsors are willing to pay money to be advertised during skiing events. Is it annoying? yes. Is it a necessary evil to have financial backing? yes. I would love if we had to mention Red Bull in between each pass lol. It was a bit overdone but I'm not really gonna hold it against them. 2. I agree Dano's announcing is very bad for TV/webcast, but probably very good for the live/outdoor loud speakers. Particularly for anyone who's not a full-on ski fan and on the beach talking with people, playing in the water, etc, the "over-hyped" announcing draws attention to the water and creates excitement, and outdoors from a wide-range speaker it doesn't come across as yelling in your face like it does in your living room. What they really need is two different feeds. 3. I see criticism for the judging in regards to Freddie, but it seems to me more a failure of the video crew that they failed to capture Freddie's turn at 6? If the judges had an adequate video to review, I imagine they'd have made the right call, but at least from what was shown on the webcast, I don't see how anyone could tell, so I can't say that they did a good job or a bad job.

Relevant other thread to reference: /forum#/discussion/19906/what-zero-off-settings-do-you-use/p1

@SkiJay, when you gonna release the "Zero Off Whispering" book? :D For how much I've read about it, I feel like I still don't really understand. Or more accurately: I understand "what ZO does" on paper, but I don't understand how that translates to the actual feel on the water, or what the hell setting I should use lol. I feel like the danger even with trying a variety of settings to find "your setting" is you may just be best at whatever setting you were using previously, since your technique will have adjusted to that setting.

I wonder... an issue that all skiers face at least some of the time is slack line out of the turn. So wouldn't it be advantageous to have the boat actually do it's accelerating when we're *not* under line load (ie at the turn), so that the boat is moving away from us and pulling any slack out? If that's the case, perhaps the late and long pulls of A1/A2 achieve more of this? Please note - I don't really have any idea what I'm taking about, just thinking out loud. All of this needs verification or rebuttal from someone with more knowledge/skill than me.

@MISkier - what boat/engine are you skiing behind?

I live on a tight budget and spent any new-ski money this season on a 3-day stint at The Boarding School. Worth it. I'm currently on a 2016 Vapor Lithium and running 15off/32mph pretty consistently after only 5 days on the water this season, so I hope to move past that quickly. I've told myself that once I can run 22off/34mph and am taking looks at 28off, I'll treat myself to an upgrade of a used C85. I'm hoping whenever Denali comes out with a new model, people will be gettin' rid of their 85s for a bargain ;)

@swbca Legitimate question, but probably deserves it's own thread, to keep this thread focused on the C85 rather than the T-Factor.

@6balls always be alpha in my mind

Same. The branding on the NEO sounds like it's perhaps designed for short-line skiers, but all the pros are still on IONs (now ION 2s).

Overall amazing skiing and amazing broadcast, thank you to everyone involved and especially TWBC! My comments: 1. I concur with the difficulty of watching the drone video swinging left and right, it's a very cool angle but better to have it stay flat. 2. The quality and stability of the in-boat video seemed not great? That's really the most important part of the whole broadcast, and I know more stable, higher-quality ski recordings can be achieved, like . But maybe there's a quality limitation with having to send the signal over air from the boat to the broadcast booth in real time? I have no idea. For stability, I'm no camera expert, but I believe some kind of camera stabilizer or gimbal could be super helpful, as long as it can pan back and forth fast enough? 3. Even if more overall stability is achieved, I think I'd also prefer a slightly less-zoomed-in video from the boat. The high-zoom shows more of the skier, but it also makes for a lot of intense back-and-forth screen motion, which can be fatiguing on the eyes and brain (similar to the drone swinging, just not as extreme). Again, something like that Denali video seems like a good compromise on the zoom level. You could maybe even run the live feed a little wider and then slow-mo replays more zoomed in (if the broadcasting software can do that), since slow-mo would make the screen movements slower as well. 5. Was Travers's handle rope fraying? It looked like something was dangling right about where the handle rope attaches, and then he snapped the rope a couple times at the end of a pass, maybe to try to break it all the way? (would he get the chance to use a different one then?) 5. And wondering like several others - in a sport where a thousand of an inch in the fin makes a difference, how could running over a good bit of lake vegetation not be disruptive?

My brother @Nautique99 and I could never find a good source of ski boat pictures on Instagram. You can scroll through the Mastercraft or Nautique page, or an account like OnlyInboards, but you get about 95% wake boats and 5% ski boats. I know there's also stuff like the classicmastercrafts page but that's a specific era/manufacturer. So I created the "Slalom Water Ski Boat Gallery" (handle skiboats_only), which will feature only water ski boats, no wakesurf barges. I'll be focusing more on modern boats (some classic mixed in) and from all manufacturers. I put up a couple pictures just to start but I will be posting new ones daily. If you're on Instagram, give me a follow! And please feel free to send me boat pictures! I have a bunch saved ready to post but can never have too many. Ideally send them to the account on Instagram directly, but you could also send them here or to skiboats@stevenflorian.com.

Already signed up for the one in Illinois!

Yeah I heard the same though - Whitney hung them up (her life vest and gloves) after a practice session for this tournament season :D

as opposed to rumors and speculation

@braindamage Nature taking the problem into it's own hands.

Instagram needs a panda option.