mwetskier

@SkiJay -perhaps a way to characterize it is to think of ' smear ' as the primary set and the different variations like skidding, drifting, sliding, hole-digging, hockey stops, etc as *sub*sets. in other words every skid, drift, slide, etc is a smear in that its a variation in the overall category we call smear.

@Than_Bogan -the taller of the two warp girls reminds me of a ' carnac the magnificent ' joke johnny carson did one time where the answer was ' yasser arafat ', and the question was ' describe the sound made when dolly parton takes off her bra '.

two words:' funnel tunnel '. designed by mike suyderhoud and manufactured by western wood it was one of the first modern skis to be patented.

@skispray -one point i don't think i've seen made here is that the most powerful connection to the boat during a pulling phase is one that applies the load to the ski somewhere between your feet. if the pull comes from out in front of your hips you will probably over load the ski tip and break at the waist as your hips go out behind you as you try to regain balance. at the other extreme if the pull comes from too far back you will end up on your tail and find it very difficult to gain enough acceleration early enough to ski ' up on the boat '. but if the handle is locked to your right hip it will much easier to maintain a balanced stack and get the immediate acceleration your looking for in the pull out. you don't have the strength to keep the handle down at your hips if you open up for your pull out -no one does. your hands are going to come up away from your center of mass and the resulting pull will be coming through your shoulders instead of your hip. closed off with most load taken on your lead arm as advised by @AdamCord is far more efficient. what makes this idea hard to grasp is the fact that your gate pull out is 100 per cent opposite of all the other pulls you do in the course. for the gate your initiating your pull right at the center line and then just maintaining pressure as you ski out past the 45 degree point. but on all the rest of your pulls you will be initiating your pull out wider and then just maintain your pressure as you pass the center line. because the two pulls are opposites of each other it makes sense that your body positions might be opposite of each other too.

the z turn concept reminds me of steve shnitz old ' coordinates skiing ' system.

@Ed_Johnson -from the old west coast video we learned that the rope pressure before the wake can build up near 600 lbs. if your using your body mass after the wake to maintain pressure on the rope but you feel its not enough i recommend introducing more jelly donuts into your diet. that approach seems to be working for me.

does it come with a backboard and a few different sizes of cervical collars?

buy borrow or steal a copy of suyderhouds ' west coast style ' instructional video. theres an entire section on video analysis of terry winter and marcus brown skiing shortline and some of the clips have a time readout and strain gauge window that give real time values of elapsed time and rope loads. that may very well be some of the most accurate and reliable data you will ever find on the subject.

even as i write this i am cringing at the thought of publicly correcting @AdamCord but i feel compelled to point out that, while i may not be exactly sure what ' smear ' is, i know for a fact that ' shmear ' is a thin lay of cream cheese applied to a bagel at brents deli in northridge california.

i don't think i have ever seen anyone discuss ' smear ' with more clear understanding than @jayski so i would like to see him weigh in on this and i would consider anything he writes about teh subject pretty much carved in granite. just my opinion of course. don't shoot the messenger.

as @RichardDoane can tell you a couple of neoprene sleeves over the lower legs will keep a bag suit from dragging in the water and you can wear as many warm dry layers under it as you want. an additional bonus is that it sheds water immediately so you can simply roll it up and put it away in your ski bag. i've owned several hybrid suits and the neoprene legs are always soaking wet after skiing which means you will have to hang it up to dry.

@Stevie Boy -in conjunction with your suggestion about painting a plastic bottle and using it for a temporary marker we found two things that help that idea work good. first off after removing the outside label off a water bottle paint it by splashing fast drying paint *inside* the bottle. now the color is on the inside so it will never wear off and you can reuse the bottle over and over right up to the time you lose it or run over it with the prop. second drill a small hole through the lid of the bottle and run a loop of nylon cord out the hole with a big knot on the inside. this makes a great attachment point and and because the cap end is down theres no worry about water leaking in through the hole. those two steps make a great reusable temporary buoy.

@mmosley899 -no binding system i am aware of can release straight out through the bottom of the ski unless theres some kind of hand of God miracle involved. @ELDIABLOs front leg was broken long before there was any side rotation that would have allowed your binding to save his leg by releasing. when a skier breaks his ankle or ruptures his achilles because he hit a buoy its *not* from hitting the buoy. its from the ski impacting the water after first being launched into the air while skipping off the buoy. study the footage provided by this guy closely and you will see the same mechanics at work in this fall. I don't think your binding could have saved him from injury because I don't think *any* binding could have saved him from injury. granted this only my opinion but i do have a good understanding of biomechanics and i have watched and insane amount of accident footage from many different sports and other human activities. from what i see in that video i do not think his injury can be blamed on the binding. again this is only my opinion so make of it what you will.

i watched your fall one frame at a time and i noticed it looks very similar to the kind of fall where a ski skips off of a buoy and then re impacts the water with enough force to injure the skiers ankle. i don't think your front ankle ' just gave out '. i think your ski skipped mostly out of the water first, and when the pressure on the bottom of the ski was temporarily released the resulting kinetic energy jumped way up right before your ski dug in again. so it was that sudden impact pressure that folded your front leg forward and broke your front leg bones. most bindings are designed to release forward though an upward force at the back end of the system but in this fall that upward force didn't happen. by the time your ski dug in your upper body was already folded forward and your front leg was locked straight so when the pressure suddenly increased on the bottom of the ski something had to give and that was your front leg. at the same time the ski was turned almost side ways and digging in and your momentum was mostly straight down the lake which means there was little or no leveraging force trying to trying to lift the binding away from the top of the ski -if anything i think there was actually excessive force downward against the top of the ski. under that scenario i don't think *any* binding would have released the way you wanted it to. a softer binding might have injured or torn your achilles tendon instead of breaking your leg but i think one way or another you were ' doomed ' by the nature of the fall itself.

there is at least one nation wide class action lawsuit regarding the failure of surgical mesh used for such hernia repairs. don't know much more about it but google is your friend

@Edbrazil it was called ' spin it to win it '. they got one pass at 35 to warm up and then back to back 38s with no drop until fatigue dropped them against their will. jb won, beating marcus brown by a ball or two on i think pass 6 or 7.

or let the grapes ripen before stomping out your homemade wine.

I saw an act like that once in a carnival sideshow, except the long haired half was clean shaven and wearing make up and a womans dress.

many years ago i heard a paramedic from california refer to small airplanes as ' single engine doctor killers '. apparently at the time california was the private plane ownership capital of the country (and it might still be)

@Ibskiing -your hardest challenge will be to stop skiing passes. in fact i bet you won't be able to do it because i ski with some very good skiers who can't stop skiing passes either. but if you *really* put your mind to it maybe you'll be the rare exception. when you get up out of your deep water start if your not immediately skiing with virtually zero weight on your back foot then you already started to fail. @horton once said that you need to focus on skiing in the proper body position 100% of the time. meaning when your behind the boat on your way to the course and in the turn around circle and when you glide to a stop to rest or shorten the rope. if you can't muster the focus to ski in perfect position at these no pressure times when you have no buoys to worry about then you've got no chance of doing it in the course. so your new habit building exercises have to begin outside the course. then you need to focus on pulling out for your glide to the gates in perfect body position. and heres where it gets hard -you don't get to turn in for the gate. you simply glide in perfect position for as long as possible and then let yourself swing back over next to the wake and repeat the same perfect pull out again. you can get three pull outs in the length of the course and then turn around and do it again and again until its hard to remember how you used to do it so badly. And the whole set you never got to ski around a single buoy. Which i bet you can't find the discipline to do. the same method can be used for every individual step of the course. you could easily spend many set just pulling out and gliding. or pulling out, gliding, and turning in for the gate. or even adding a 1 ball to the drill. but you cannot learn the proper body position and try to run passes at the same time. and thats what make it near impossible to change your habits, because not skiing around buoys just isn't all that much fun. again, don't shoot the messenger.

imo you need to completely change your form. currently you're hunched out over the front of the ski with your chest and balancing that by having your butt out behind you. you may actually be at your maximum ceiling right now at 22 off with that body position. you need to completely switch the positions of your hips and your chest, pushing your hips out over your front foot and getting you chest up tall and back behind you hips. thats the only way you'll ever get off the tail of your ski and progress up the rope. instead of bending at the hips when you bend your front knee you need to *straighten* your hips and bend you front ankle instead. so that amounts to driving your hips forward and not bending at the waist, along with bending your front knee and your front ankle. the more you bend your knee the more you should bend your ankle at the same time. this will move your hips forward over your front foot and your shoulders will naturally come upright and back a bit to balance yourself over the center of the ski. its actually about a 180 degree switch from what you've been doing. don't shoot the messenger.

if one man can build it another man can modify it. if your not mechanically inclined find a friend who is and do some outside the box thinking.

just remember that no matter how much time you put into learning how the clock works, in the end you're gonna care a lot more often about what time it is.

yeah, maybe stoned. but if you ax me that guy really knows how to back in skrate.

those transition pullups look like they'd be super easy for me. however i would have the bar much much lower of course.