Sharpen Your Edges! Clean Ice and Good Winds for Friday!

Or so they say....


So the forcasts are looking pretty good for Friday as far as a speed day goes.  The ice reports I've been getting have been suprising.  After the torrential downpours we had the last few days the ice seems to relatively unscathed.  In fact the surfaces are all back to smooth glass that we had a few weeks back.  Not so good for some riders especially those on snowboards but good conditions for me and good conditions for a speed session.

This can go one of two ways.  If you've been following my blog silliness you're familiar with the entry about how easy it is to screw one's self and Friday could be one of those instances.  This could go one of two ways. 

The first (and my prefered way)... I pick a good spot with good surface and awesome winds.  I mount up a new pair of Rossignol race technician tuned speed skis to rail on the smooth ice.  I take out the12m Charger (it's itching to have a speed session and my best speeds have been in the 12-13m Peter Lynn range.) and I get some serious solid pulls getting me well past the 60mph mark for the first time this season and maybe by some fluke break 70mph.  If nothing else I just rip around the ice and have a ball just ripping around the ice.

The second (and the one that I'd like to avoid)... I pick a good spot with good surface and awesome winds.  I mount up a new pair of Rossignol race technician tuned speed skis to rail on the smooth ice. I take out the 12m Charger.  Sounds good so far right?  Okay, but here's where it can go bad.  The skis I mounted have a World Cup Rossi binding.  Unfortunately they also have a wide body brake and minimal lift so the brakes might actually hit at extreme edge angels.  The ski was tuned by an olympic class Rossi tech but I didn't tune them to my preferences. They weren't tuned with flying across glare ice towed by a kite in mind I'm pretty sure. The tune might totally suck for my application.  Then there's the fact that we haven't had any high winds for 2 weeks and it's still early season so I'm a little rusty.  I might miss an opportunity or screw something up just because my handling isn't quite there yet this season.  I could choose the wrong kite, the weather reports could be off, the sun could blow up, I could choose the wrong location.  Or I could forget my GPS and go rediculously fast and not have it recorded.

All kinds of things can wrong.  I'll do my best to avoid the second option by tuning my Salomons and bringing them just in case the new Rossi doesn't work out. I'll bring the tuning kit as well.  I'll research the hell out of the weather sites.  Google Earth is what I'm using to do a broad check of the weather and it's AWESOME!  I'll bring an extra GPS and we'll see how it goes.

Wish me luck!


Comments

  1. Saulius MuliolisJanuary 28, 2010 at 3:31 PM

    Good luck for this weekend. I'm going to be in Erie, Pa trying to beat my own speed record of 50.8mph.

    I'm using an older pair of Rosignol race skis, which I tune myself on a belt sander. I've also posted my top speeds on stormboarding.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. January 28, 2010 at 3:55 PM

    Thanks Saulius! Good luck to you over in PA. I saw your speed on this weeks roster and you smoked me and almost bagged Gary K. Nice work! If you get the winds we're supposed to you should have a good chance of beating your personal best. Keep submitting your speeds on Stormboarding.com, keep reading the blog and keep having fun out there!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Saulius MuliolisJanuary 28, 2010 at 3:57 PM

    Thanks! Sunday was VERY windy in Erie, and I managed to get out before the rain moved in. The ice was wet, and the wind was gusting to 30. Still, I was tired out from kiting all day Saturday, or I would have gotten some bigger speeds. But 50mph was my goal for this season, and I GOT IT!!!

    ReplyDelete

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