gator1

@horton @chrisrossi. That sucked. My apologies. Temporary Self ban in 3. 2. 1

@rawly: Nope. No need for popcorn. Like I said, show's over.

@mwetskier: Title of this thread "Ask Rossi". Not "Make Rossi referee a couple of noobs having a semantics debate". I fear we've already derailed the thread into something I'd avoid like the plague if I were Chris. So, I'm signing off.

@mwetskier: I'm not sure I'm due any respect, as this is the internet, but you are correct, I do know a lot more about snow skiing than you. Go read my original post. You'll find "as we scrub just enough speed to make the eventual edged turn". Sounds pretty much exactly like your quote from SKI "Drift past that rock without dumping much speed...............when you've cleared the obstacle, then you're ready to set an edge,...." You can argue the semantics of "scrub just enough speed" vs "without dumping much speed". But you can't argue it with me.

@skijay: not me. I think its a cool crossover use of a term that's never been applied to waterskiing in this context (that I've heard anyway). I agree its only a part of the good technique required to run the course. I am curious though if @chrisrossi thinks of it as an indicator that all else has gone well, or as a conscious move that he needs to make. Or if he's just so damn good he's trying to describe to us mortals what something we'll never achieve feels like.

@mwetskier Nope. You're wrong about the snow ski part of it. If you want to MAINTAIN speed on/in snow you carve the turn, with ski tipped up on edge with the goal of minimum transverse slippage. If you want to scrub speed on hard snow you skid the turn, with skis less edged. If you want to scrub speed in soft snow, you smear the turn, with skis less edged. I'm pretty sure, starting with your misunderstanding of the smear in snow, you're wrong about how it applies to water.

@chrisrossi is a snow skier and transplanted the term SMEAR from snow to water. I've been cogitating on that, and want to see if I've grasped it. On deep snow, smear means to toss the skis sideways while edging them less than would be required for a crisp carved turn. Instead of carving an arc, the skis will slide partially sideways while continuing to arc around the corner. But the radius of the corner will be much greater than if the skis were tipped up on edge. The effect is to change direction while scrubbing quite a bit of speed. The smeared turn was not really possible in deep snow until snow skis got wide enough to plane up on soft snow while travelling transversely. I "THINK" what Chris is saying is that we need to get up on the wide part of the ski, and use that extra nose width to get the un-edged ski to plane sideways as we scrub just enough speed to make the eventual edged turn, followed by the edged hookup, without creating slack. And, by scrubbing speed without getting on the tail, the hookup is stacked rather than transitioning from tail to stacked. And, since the ski has already partially rotated during the smear, the edged portion of the rotation is shorter, getting us to the hookup earlier. Or, I don't got it.

So, @OB, does that mean in a real tense tournament situation your first PDP is complete, thus attenuating your tension level to perfectly match your practice level? Seems like you'd want all the strength available in a tournament situation, so your tension attenuation routine is creating suboptimal strength reserves. We're in some deep (and pissy) waters here, and your approach needs some explaining.

It is a rush forever if you keep going farther. Dead stick autos in the helicopter, 190 in the vette, cliff drops, $100 mil deals, snorkel deep pow, 39.5, nothing comes close. 25 yrs later I still dream it.

My experience seems to point to need for canting as the determinant of how tough switching from rubber to hard shells will be. If you're bowlegged, and need canting, and don't cant your new hard shell, good luck. Its gonna suck. Took me 13 tries to get up on my reflex first set, couldn't get through the gates. Canted it, next set no issues. Didn't like it though, and went to Stealths. My buddies gave me all kinds of crap, then one of them bought a Reflex the following year. 'Bout drowned getting up, tried two sets, gave up. He's pretty bowlegged also, didn't want to mess with cants. BTW, anybody wants a brand new Reflex size 12 LFF with two sets on it let me know.

@patmaster, search BOS for thread called "gatormod patent is filed". I put a bunch of pics of modded stealths on that post. Also, I just shipped the first gatormodded powershell/Velcro system off to our brave test pilot @ob. He's gonna post some vids of his adventures with Velcrogatormod V1.0.

@mwetskier: You're a better man then I. Hats off to you for shouldering the burden of other people's kids. Raising my own was about all I could take... Peace out. Now, @ShaneH: Seems like mwetskier has posited an excellent idea for a new website with potential for growing the sport. I think you should look into it.

@mwetskier: Don't think dropping the youths off on Sprague Ave (our red light district) and watching to see them survive is the same. If I tried to make sense out of your histrionic scenario I guess that'd be equivalent to making them watch Horton down a bottle of tea colored water, then forcing them to drink a bottle of real Kilo and drive home. And by golly, after botching that analogy, yep there it is, you're talking lawyers and associated crap. Don't know why folks think you can legislate the stupid and foolish out of people's behavior. But I am convinced hiding it from your kids does a lot more damage then letting them see it, explaining it, making sure they understand it AND the consequences of adopting stupid as their modus operandi. I WOULD suggest you drive the kids down to Sprague, show them the hookers and drug addicts and say "screw up and that can be you". Acting, legislating, thinking, policing as if people behave as they should, rather than the way they actually do, in my opinion, causes much more harm than admitting people are people, have been people, will be people, and sex, drugs, booze, thievery, lies, brutality are going to be a part of life until we can genetically modify humans. Hiding from it, passing laws to try to hide from it, trying to censor some website to hide from it, all fall into my definition of harmful futility. This isn't a FCC controlled TV station. But, sounds like Horton has decided to "move to the center", so whatever that's his decision. I give up. Surprised (but happy) the girls in swimsuits are still on here. Don't really know why I even commented. Going back to my mantra "I didn't mess this up, I can't fix it, it's not my fault". That, plus a lot of booze, gets me through the evening news. And soon, here in good old WA, I can substitute a couple of tokes for the booze and wake up even more chipper!

@mwetskier: Just my personal opinion, but as a grampa and dad, I would think, if you have so little confidence in your charges that you doubt they can differentiate between a joke and real life, then having the discussions now would be an advantageous strategy. In fact, you owe Horton some thanks for giving you a springboard to talk proactively to the youths in your charge.

@higleyskier: I thought the "drinking" was middle aged and calming.

Connelly spent two days searching their inventory to find me a flex match when I backed the truck over my new Prophecy. Can't say enough good about those guys.@jjr, I'm on a Prophecy with Stealths. Once you get the stealths set up and canted,I bet you'll love them. I've skied a lot of skis, so far Prophecy best I've tried. My buddies are chronic ski testers, but now 4 out of the six I ski with are on Stealth/prophecy. Partly so they can run Gatormod, but mainly because the ski is that good. Range from a 70 yr old that runs into 32, to a 55 yr old who runs into 38.

@cragginshred:Can't find the link to your vid. Could you post that again? I think I was doing some of those if one of them is the "lay on your side, big rubber band around your knees, knees bent, then spread your knees keeping ankles together", but I'd like to see if you have others/more/different. I cured my back by trying every non-surgical exercise, stretch or routine, and finally hit on a regime that works, so I'll try anything that makes sense on this stupid knee. And I got the PRP last Thursday. Didn't feel very good till this morning. Today, I walked up the stairs at work on both legs. Still hurt like a bitch, but haven't done that since end of Sept. Mental? Placebo? Too soon to have any affect? I don't give a damn if I can ski. Maybe the killer app is both exercise and PRP to fix the damage done.

@jjr Try this: stand on the ski on the dock with your fin hanging out in space. Both feet in the boots, ski flat on the dock. Tie a rope to a dock post, use it to approximate your normal skiing position. The pressure on the outside and inside of your leg from the cuff of the boot should be equal. If there is significantly more pressure on the outside of your leg (on that nasty blister on your leg), it means the boots are not canted enough. If this is the case, go buy some longer bolts. I'm not very bowlegged, but on my Stealth set up I've had to use all of the bolt to get it canted to match my leg. So it seems likely you are bowlegged enough that you need to cant the boot farther than the standard bolts will allow. I don't know why the water ski industry hasn't caught up with snow ski boot guys. Almost all snow ski boots have a significant angle built into the joint between boot shell and cuff. None of the hardshell water ski boots have this. If indeed you are in need of quite a bit more canting, you will be amazed at the positive difference it makes in your skiing, not to mention the effect of not having to try to ignore the pain from that big raw spot. If you are centered up, then you are dealing with a manufacturing defect and should just ignore this post.

I'd like to know if he is aiming for the same position in both weak side and strong side pull, and they just look different due to the fact theyARE weak side/strong, or is he trying for different positions to maximize the available (and different) mechanics of weak/strong stance. In other words hips rotated cross course on weak side, and more open to boat strong side. On purpose, or of necessity? Or optical illusion I shouldn't be seeing?

Not too bad. Nowhere near as bad as the patellar prp

Just got the back of my rear kneecap injected with prp. Hope it works as well as @skijay

@Horton Connelly fin sure feels plenty stiff. Its a lever. .007" movement side to side at the running surface of the fin box, which is .038" from the fulcrum (bottom edge of fin clamp)results in over .030 at the bottom of the fin.

The box on my prophecy is about .007 wider than the fin. This means the fin flops around about .o30 side to side at deepest part if it is unclamped. If the box is acting like an ersatz clamping mechanism, (I think this is what you're saying @horton) I'd have thought the fin freaks would have been obsessing about box clearance. Maybe .030 side to side doesn't matter..... Also, moving the hinge point from bottom of clamp to bottom surface of ski stiffens the fin, and spreads the stress from the bottom edge of the clamp to the bottom edge of the ski once the fin has hinged to the point it contacts the ski. But, my fin was biased up against one side of the box. This means for .060 of travel at the deepest edge, the fin is less stiff as is bends to contact the side of the box, then stiffer once the hinge point moves from the clamp to the surface of the ski. This means on my weak side turn, I have a two radius turn built into my ski. HORROR! If .030 matters, this is all very mechanically interesting. If it doesn't, don't give a damn. If varying flex of a fin matters on a modern ski, same statement holds. If PRP works on the various faulty parts of my back knee and I get to ski again, now that gatormod is finished for both fogman/stealth and powershell/dualok, screwing around with fin flex seems like a pretty good way to distract myself from my plateaued performance. p.s. for all you MIT and Stanford engineer types, U of I did teach me the proper terms for all this.

@jlittle: Cool! thanks! What's your take: was it hinging at the clamp or bending into an arc over its surface area?

@sethro, if you were chasing a perp in there and your mind was wandering you need to demand a paid leave to get some turns in somewhere in FL. Your lack of suitable swerving opportunities has become a safety issue.