gator1

Ah, cmon @than_bogan. My stuff always makes sense even though its often wrong.

@webdawg99 he's left foot forward.

@Than_Bogan I'm in a travel heavy mode right now, following 6 weeks down time waiting for scoped knee to heal, got a grand total of 11 passes so far this spring. Going nuts and killing time while sitting in airports. Fly two days for a 1 hour meeting. Travel is so glamorous.

@lieutenant Dan: Yep..torque around an axis perpendicular to the ski surface, penetrating the ski between front and rear foot. I am saying they at least net less negative torque (negative torque defined as tending to rotate ski towards boat, forcing body to hold ski cross course using rope as leverage point), and it feels to me like a net positive torque as the ski wants to head towards the wake of its own accord.

We filmed one of team Spokane stroking 28 off. Tried pretty hard to keep the respective position of Heli to skier constant to allow the tech heads to get a good consistent look at the path. Anybody want to bet what differences there will be between this path and 38?

@swerveit You're on the right path. Just because somebody skied it for years doesn't mean its safe. I get a kick out of all the people bitching about why we can't get bindings like the snow ski industry. They've obviously never seen the stats on knee and ankle injuries for snow ski. In the absence of data, which may not exist and if it did isn't going to be something the manufacturers want to share, what do we do? The only path I can see is to analyze the designed release modes of a given binding against the known types of falls we have. I think it was you that went just a little ways down that path by asking about a simultaneous release on a certain binding. The ballers didn't like that. I find in general that binding manufacturers don't want to answer questions about how their design works, because EVERY binding on the market has a theoretical flaw when its release modes are compared against three basic fall types: crushing OTF, peeling OTF, and twisting. And, lawyers. People who use a given binding don't want to engage in the theoretical discussion, because few want to think about bad stuff happening to them, few have the mechanical aptitude to join the discussion, and when you look for the people who are both willing to talk about bad stuff and have the aptitude to add to the discussion the population is very small. Since you asked the question, my answer is: beyond any shadow of a doubt, ALL IN. Than Bogan is a smart guy, so it'd be interesting to hear his theories. But I had 9 months and two surgeries more motivation to think about it than he has. I can tell you at length why, but I'm very tired of this mortally wounded horse. Most of my buddies are now safe, another batch of gatormods ships this weekend, and once @OB gets done fighting the city of Atlanta we'll get a read on the ultimate answer.

I can't believe you coach year round. I'm so much better than you.

@kfennell I tried 9 posts above yours. That's my best shot .

Nah. @ob is using voodoo.

1) Positive torque on ski in accel 2)Shoulders behind chest in all phases 3)Angular momentum conservation 4)G-force conservation around ball-turn radius optimization 5)On side pull vs off side pull difference 6)Convert angular momentum to 14 inch COM movement 7)Speed conservation at hookup 8)Gate is max torque at hookup, not max pull. Those are the common denominators I saw. All IMO. The reference to 9 was discussing the fact that this is IMO, and there may be any number more or less.

Don't have to focus on all 8. Just fix the broke ones

@than_bogan, well, since, like half naked skier pics, those who are offended by public nerdity can just skip the post, lets see if my personal weakest variable makes sense: Torque: How much positive torque does the skier create with the ski during the acceleration phase? This is the moment created by the offset of the center of pressure of the water flow on the bottom and edge of the ski as compared to the center of pressure on the top of the ski by the skiers two feet, and the moment about that center of pressure caused by the difference in load between those two feet. Its not just ski in the water. If you get a lot of the ski in the water by standing on the front foot, you can move the center of water pressure towards the front of the ski. This is good, because when the center of pressure is forward, and ahead of the feet center of pressure, the ski is trying to help you get more angle-a positive torque is created. But, since you got more ski in the water by standing on your front foot, you've negated the gains because you've also moved your foot center of pressure forward. And when you hit the wake you are toast. So, the angle of the spray off the ski in the accel phase is a measure of the torque being created by the ski and skier. Very little spray means L/D ratio is good, and most force is going to accel. Lots of spray means more force going to drag. If you accept that Miller and Nate kill the torque category, how do they do that? I think they use the rope as an anchor point, and rotate the tip of the ski down into the water with core, hip, knee and ankles. This becomes an instable system as the ski curvature digs for more angle, and the only way to restore stability is to shove the ski in front of the hips to negate the positive torque as they cross the wake.

@shaneH, Ya, we did get beat up a lot IN grade school. Because we made fun of guys with poor grammar skills. Born 20 years early, now I'm told its cool to be a nerd.

Nate and Regina do lots well, but not everything close to perfect. But you're right, including all 6 would be better. But got too complicated.Each of us Spokane mortals does at least one thing pretty well. Just like in engineering multi-var, I graded them on my own standard. Not an absolute, but turns out to be valid approach to multi-var experiments. Dave Miller let me knock out a bunch of stuff, or downgrade its importance, I previously heard/thought/believed to be critical variables. For example, IMO, he sucks at angular momentum, but is best of the six at torque. I could have kept all 6 through the end of the exercise, but it was getting too complex. I posted on angular momentum conservation awhile back. Youre right, if I miss something, and there are 9, and the 9th one is the most important, have to hope it comes naturally or I'm screwed. If this works out for us this season I'll try to distill it. Many of the moves take some explanation from gatoronian semantics to common terms, too much typing work until I know if this approach works.

I compared video of Nate, Regina, CP, TW, and Dave Miller. I searched for common moves amongst these 6, and for moves that were not common and were therefore individual characteristics of the skier. My thesis was that only the common moves are dictated by physics, mechanics and hydrodynamics. I tried to be objective, but of course my search was contaminated by 40 years of chasing buoys, and all that I have heard, read, seen, been told, calculated, measured and experienced. The availability of quality video on the studs and studettes enables this type of analysis, which, before utoob and BOS, was pretty much impossible. Dave Miller was the most important test subject as his skiing deviates from the accepted ideal in many ways, and yet his performance is world class. Therefore, what is NOT common between his skiing form and the other 5 subjects is also probably NOT a critical variable. Yes, Dave is an uncommonly gifted athlete, but then so are the others. After finding 8 common moves, and denoting them as critical variables, I ranked the 6 subjects on their implementation of each of the critical variables and averaged the score. Regina ranked first, Nate a close second. Kind of a surprise there. I then combined Nate and Regina's ranked variables to determine a descending order of importance. For example, Nate has a "10" on angular momentum conservation, while Regina has a "10" on turn radius optimization. But neither of those two variables ended up on top when their two lists were combined. So I had a list of the 8 variables in descending order of importance. Then, I analyzed (I love the fact that the word starts with "anal") vids of my skiing, and my bud's. My findings were as follows: we suck. But in different ways. We all get into 38 and beyond, but, as compared to the 8 variables, we suck. So, depending on our IQ and multi-tasking abilities, we are each attempting to improve our critical variable(s), starting with the variable that has our highest combined deviation from ideal and rank. I am able to concentrate on exactly 0.7635 variables at a time, putting me dead last in our group. But, even with that, this has so far been a very exciting spring.

nope. And the ball nose allen wrench I'm talking about is 8 inches long and has a socket adapted on the drive end so you can hook it to a socket rachet

I punched holes in the toe after awhile got tired of fighting Allen wrench. Drill snags liner so be careful. Front boot fits tighter on me also.

Maja poster, Camille and O'Brien, all the Lange soft inside posters, hard bodies and swim suits are inextricably a part of our sports. If this was a chess site, I could see the issue. Anybody see Gretzky's daughter's picture on the cover of golf? @jipster43, the word you were looking for was "puritan", or if you wanted a pissing match "prude". I don't want a pissing match. I have a grandaughter I'm already freaking out over, and she's only 3. But she's gotta live in the real world. Sex sells boats, cars, motivates heroism, drives art and powers innovation. And wars. You can deny it if you want, but you are, as we say where I grew up, just crapping your pants to fool the teacher. If not seeing a picture on BOS helps you do a more thourogh job of fooling the teacher, then more power to you. Its not what I read this site to see, but if one shows up, kind of helps get over the irritation at conflicting instructional ski tips. And I can't figure out where I draw the ogle line....is it my age minus 10 years? 15? @wish will have to publish his guidelines for me. ONe good thing about being old is the universe of ogle-able gals gets bigger ever year. Can't wait till I'm 90.

This lack of consensus crap makes me nuts.

@tc‌ Terry said "lefties have a hard time with one handed gate", meaning left foot forward?

+1 on sports creel in Spokane. Been buying snow and water stuff there for 20 years. Always epic service.

@toddf Spokane.

East. Still cant get used to anywhere west of Missisipi being east!

If you get desperate, we're 5 hours west on 84

@Lucas‌ yep that's what meant. You can buy long straight BALL nosed Allen sets. Without something like that or @efw‌ frankenwrench getting the bolts in the boots tight is a bitch.