Bud Man

Good for Wish. It is such a waste to dispose of something someone can use. I would always take the faded off of my private leased pond and put them in front of my house at public Lake Murray.

John, I don’t know if automatic post numbering a hard or easy thing to add. It might be neat to be able to refer to number when replying to a certain post. Just a thought.

I like it John. Don’t let it frustrate you too much. Just take a break and go do something easier than building a Website, you know, like running -41.

Nope, trash can did not delete upload. I'll try editing post.

It worked that time but a bit large though. MattP, I notice a trash can by my thumbnail. Must be to delete upload. Ill try to delete the one I just posted.

I'll try picture again.

Video works great but when I went to preview picture it was not mine nor had I ever seen it that I can recall.

I'll try inserting a picture and embeding a video.

MattP, Mine just says "Attach a file"; are you saying that it will insert a picture? And do I just paste to embed You Tube?

John, I like the look. You must have been working long and hard. Good job. I do get a “Done, but with errors on page.” With Explorer 8, but I don’t see the errors. I don’t see icons for adding pictures and videos, am I just overlooking them.

David Nelson and I have communicated via phone and email discussing slalom theory. Some of our opinions are similar and some differ. I am very impressed by the charts that he has mathematically produced. He also did some very extensive test a number of years back also. I have asked him to include them for all of us to learn from. As I said from the beginning, I am eager to run my own test to prove myself wrong or right. I think that it is good to be open-minded and look at everything. David knows that I have a tremendous respect for him and his work, and it is OK if we don’t see everything exactly the same way. It is a great thing that we can share opinions and stimulate good discussions.

Brent, Very well said, and I agree with you 100%. I guess I might lack the confidence in myself to implement the good advice that I would receive. Or maybe I’m afraid that I will drive all the way there and back and only be told to do something that I have already been working on and just haven’t been successful in accomplishing it. When I used to work, I always had the excuse that I was too busy. I retired a little over 10 years ago and still continue to come up with new excuses. Oh well, at least I’m honest. I love to ski, I love to improve and I love to help others learn and improve. I do not like leaving home and that is why I rarely go anywhere. By the way, before I retired, I worked at home. To give a better idea how much I dislike leaving home; since 1993, and currently, I lease a private ski lake 30 minutes from my new home and the owner was going to allow me to build a garage to keep my boat in. Rather than be faced with that drive, I built a ski lake where I live.

Well that was fun to watch. Thanks for posting it KM.

ShaneH and OB, Both of your posts are good and accurate. But, please dont misunderstand my great esteem for Chets abilities to coach and ski. I have heard from so many people that he is THE BEST coach in the world, and I have no reason to doubt it. I have only met him once and enjoyed our conversation. It was at the record tournament where Chris Parrish and I both set records. His was a great 1 ½ at 9.75m and mine a measly 2 at 10.75m. (H2Osmosis Swerve Session, Johns Island, SC, 8/27/2005 to 8/28/2005.) There were a bunch of MM skiers like Chris LaPoint, Wim D. Steve C. Chet, etc¦ I have never considered myself as a good skier, but I was surprised at how many of the MM skiers did not reach my score. I came home and told my wife about the tournament and how I was surprised that all of those people did not blow past my score. She said that I was a good skier, and I said not really, and there came the €œyou are so hard headed.€ So the answer is yes Shane. And Shane; your analogy is great when you said: €œhe employees an engineer and architect to craft the design, then builds the foundation that they indicate.€ That fits perfectly like a skier going to get coached by Chet. Who better to engineer a foundation for slalom. The really weird thing about your analogy being so right is that I have gone about BOTH the wrong way and just got lucky. I have never been to ski school but have run 10.75m (-39.5) a few times and I have never had any engineering or construction education but I have drawn a few sets of blueprints and built a few houses myself. (including rough and finish construction, elec, plumb, HVAC) I did hire out the pouring of the concrete slabs though. One was three stories and of about 5000 sq. ft. and the most current one is two stories with an indoor swimming pool and elevator. It is 100% handicap accessible. And yes, yes, yes, OB change is so hard for me. When I once in a while make a slow turn with a tight line like I saw you do in your 11.25m video it all falls into place and feels so good. If I could fix that ONE thing, then I would be more opened to working on the other hundred things I am doing wrong. I do want to change! It is hard enough to change that one thing so I know it would be even harder if I were trying to change several things at once. I did try what Chad suggested and other things nice people suggested and I do appreciated their help. I am still open-minded for suggestions. I posted a video of me struggling with slack rope coming out of 2/4 at 11.25m. Wade replied and suggested to (if I remember right) take.005€ out of the fin. I made the change and appreciated his suggestion, but I don™t want to take the time to go to a ski school to hear something like that. An example of the point of this thread is this: Let™s say a skier (on a current model ski with stock settings) was not in good body position at 14.25m and the ski was not coming around his off side very well. A shim might be to add length to his fin and he says wow, the ski sure does come around my off side better now. But he is still in that same wrong body position. A foundation might be to go back to 16m or slow the boat down and learn how to ski in a stacked position. This thread was to bring awareness to the difference to help people build stronger foundations in their slalom. I might add some more latter, but my wife and I have to run somewhere right not.

Shims or foundation. Brent started a good thread on goals for this season. I did not want to sidetrack his thread, so this is something to think about when working on improving our slalom. Imagine constructing a building. It is easy to get ahead of ourselves by skipping a good solid foundation to hurry up the project. Then we start to see it leaning so we shim it to attempt to get it straight and move a little further along. If we are not careful, we do nothing but shove shims everywhere but never really get anywhere because we never built a good solid foundation. List everything you can think of that you need to do better. (Excel will work well for this.) Now put an S or an F beside each one. Then number them in order of importance. When this is done rewrite into two lists in descending order. You can use this to review each time BEFORE you ski to pick what you are going to work on. It might seem to take us longer to climb down and really get that foundation right, but if we do, it should be able to support us all the way to the shortest lines

All the new stuff sounds good. I wonder if there will be a big price jump. Hope not.

My thoughts are to take the measurements from the buoy cross line not parallel line. I hope to superimpose the video images onto a graph. But I plan to share my raw data. When I’m through, you should be able to break it down to even more segments if you want to. We should be able to get a wealth of knowledge from this, especially is some different style skiers will participate. Any advocates of wide and early Interested? How about any pros? Contact me if you are.

Horton, This might sound like a joke but it might be the simplest depending on what you are trying to do. Get an action figure or “Ken†or “Barbie†then simply put it in the position and post the picture. I hope I haven’t planted a seed in your hairy head to manufacture “The Krista†doll.  If the action figure will not move into the position you are trying to illustrate, maybe use pipe cleaners, then post a picture. Might be easier than working with a new software package.  http://kwikcrafts.com/crafts/category/Pipe-Cleaners.html?gclid=CKiSmqXM3acCFcns7QodA15g9whttp://kwikcrafts.com/Merchant5/graphics/pc_stems.jpg http://kwikcrafts.com/Merchant5/graphics/pc_stems.jpghttp://kwikcrafts.com/Merchant5/graphics/pc_stems.jpghttp://kwikcrafts.com/crafts/category/Pipe-Cleaners.html?gclid=CKiSmqXM3acCFcns7QodA15g9w

If my picture and name is not posted at the post office or in the obits, it is a good day.  But seriously; It’s all good!

Laz, It looks like you are a good skier. It appears that the boat speed was about 33mph and I have heard Schnitz say that a good technique for learning a new rope length is to slow the speed down.  You said: “Second, i'm too compressed, especially after I cross the wake.†I believe maybe that ought to be your number one focus. There are compressed styles that work for skiing, but it sounds to me that is not your target. Hearing your comment lends me to believe you are after a leverage body position (Chris Parrish) instead of a counter weight compressed position (Marcus Brown).  You asked for suggestions, so here is mine. Pick the skier you want to ski like and print a freeze frame of their leverage positions (left and right). Burn that image in your head. Attach a rope to something that will allow you to get into that position. Stand up a mirror so that you can see yourself with the pictures at the top to compare yourself to. Spend as much time as you can on that rope with the mirror and two pictures. Then when you get on the water repeat the pulling position starting your first pass without the buoys, I read where Ed J. suggested entering the gates from the right to completely avoid the buoys but still get a feel of the width of the course. He is a wise skier to listen to with a wealth of knowledge.  Post another video after a while and let us see your progress.  Brent, You are such a help to embed the videos. Thank you.

Dusty, That was a very useful post that pinpointed some issues that make the shorter lines harder to learn.  We do get used to the ability to not be patient and start loading right at the buoy when we learn the longer lines. Then we have to latter stop skiing that way after it is burned into our brains and muscles and change to a more patient style of riding the ski with its leftover speed back to a point closer to the wake as you pointed out. Now there is a choice to load our mass hard and fast to make it around the next buoy or less intense but longer. I believe either work but hearing people talk about ZO, the second way might be more conducive for ZO and your body as well.  And what you said about watching short line skiing from the boat is something that I think might be the biggest hurdle for us all. As you said: “Can't tell much about their path from the boat as it's sort of two dimensional from there.† You are so right, but that is where most of us try to learn from.  And you said: “…the skier is for sure further up on the boat at the ball at 38 off than 32 off than 15 off.†I would believe that most everyone thinks that. I know I did until recently. I no longer believe that. I think the skier is in the same place and the boat is what is in a different place causing an optical illusion, which in turn hurts our skiing progress.  In reference to this picture: It looks like the man is much larger than the woman but it is just an illusion. They are both normal size. When we hit the water with the illusion in mind that we have to get up on the boat, I believe that it is detrimental to our progress. At this point in my thinking, I believe that we simply need to see the path that we need to follow, and I believe that it is ALMOST the exact path for all the middle four lines and it might hold true for others as well.  Again, good post Dusty. Let’s hear some more thoughts or questions from everyone.http://ldifrq.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pLDhyTc2mCjl6iYLwB2jqlhb20iERSfbGC-U8-53fBacLI3y0-jYNpT48x889nJ4AHian4qOsXPdq9vmI6ObljZdUK_H_4vxH/illusion.jpg?psid=1 http://ldifrq.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pLDhyTc2mCjl6iYLwB2jqlhb20iERSfbGC-U8-53fBacLI3y0-jYNpT48x889nJ4AHian4qOsXPdq9vmI6ObljZdUK_H_4vxH/illusion.jpg?psid=1

It’s been a while since I watched the program about carbon nano tubes, but it seems like the great thing about it was its size to strength ratio, (like spider silk). So, applications like bullet proof clothing make for good applications, but it seemed like the price to produce was very high. Maybe the “Twist†is that they only changed the ski a nano amount. But with the winning record Goode has, why change more. I also like the graphics shown in the picture.

More thoughts on the speed during different segments through the course.  When the direct overhead video in done and the images are superimposed on a grid, there should be four distinguishable segments that the paths can be measured and the average speed of those segments can be calculated. 1.      Gates to buoy 1 2.      Buoy to wake 3.      Wake to Buoy 4.      Buoy 6 to gates I think I will find that the slowest segment will be # 4, next slowest # 1, next slowest # 3 and the fastest #2. However though, # 2 and # 4 are hard for me to guess without plotting it from directly above because your acceleration is delayed coming out of the buoy. Even though the distant is the same between (the gates and # 1) and (# 6 and the gates), I think the paths and speeds are greatly different. Longer path and faster average speed verses shorter path and slower average speed. It could be a tossup at this point to which of these two is faster and slower.  I also hope to be able to possible see a fifth segment. That would be the acceleration zone. I am hoping that the spray will allow me to mark and measure that segment.  Another thing that I hope to gain some understanding is the speed during loading the mass and the speed after loading the mass. To elaborate; as we come out of the buoy and “hookupâ€, the rope becomes very tight as we load our mass. Some people load hard and fast to be able change edges early, then have the mass free ride all the way to, around and then out of the buoy. I believe the mass’s “free ride†is shown by the swag in the rope. Other people load lighter and longer and have a shorter “free rideâ€. I believe at this time that this second method is more efficient and a safer way to ski. I think that Chet’s “Spray to spray†and Bruce’s “Handle control†support this second way of skiing. I am very eager to attempt to calculate the speed during and after the loading.

Carbon Nano tubes. I watched a couple of interesting shows on Nova recently. One show was Making Stuff Stronger, where they showed growing carbon nano tubes. The other was Making Stuff Smaller, where they showed growing silicone nano tubes for more memory on micro chips. Here are the links to both. They are good shows. http://video.pbs.org/video/1701025927/ http://video.pbs.org/video/1754649512/

I look for wear on the inside of the rope. For some reason there seems to be more with the dark color sections. I guess they absorb more heat from the sum. I believe the sharp edges of the rope cut the inside as the rope flexes.