Quote:
Originally Posted by Daves911L
I’m still on old skinny skis, about 25 years old now. Several pair, all dead or very near to now. edges paper thin, definitely broken down structurally. But I can’t change. Been skiing since I was 3 years old. Ski bummed several semesters in college. There was a time when I got 40-50 days in a winter. I love my long thin light bump sticks. Lightning fast edge to edge. Steer the shovel in, compress, explode out on the tail. Knees welded, quads sucking it up. This modern crap? That’s not skiing. Took out a demo set for the day last season at my daughters urging. Spatulas under my feet. Soft and vague. Easy? Yes. Satisfying ? No.
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Learning to ski in the 1970's this was the mantra, some magazines even suggested binding the knees with a strap to teach the muscle memory to keep the knees together.
Well, I'm bowlegged (supine) and I could never really ski well until a friend taught me to concentrate all my turning energy on the inside edge of the downhill ski, through the big toe, modulating the turn by up and downweighting the knee into the shovel of the ski. The uphill ski was just along for the ride, more of an outrigger. My knees and feet were now acting totally independently like two McPherson struts. I COULD use the outside edge of the uphill ski if needed but that edge could also be ignored as the inside edge was most often more than enough to hold the turn. Undulations under one edge no longer affected the other.
This was a game changer, and I was able to build on this style for years and become a pretty good skier, with a smooth, fast style on most any surface or snow condition.
Now I have an artificial hip and my doc told me in no uncertain terms that skiing is no longer an option. (An awkward fall might pull the appliance apart or even out of the bone, and then I'd be Royally Screwed)
It doesn't really matter, I haven't skied downhill since sometime in the mid nineties. The cost of lift tickets and equipment pretty much priced me out,
(Brag alert, - we lived just about 40 minutes from the local ski hill, Bogus Basin, and because they offered night skiing, I was able to put something like 90 stickers on my ski pass one year, this was probably around 1980)