Justo8484

they do ability levels with their comps. no ages. you ski in your ability level. for skiers there was just intermediate and advanced last year. kids who skied intermediate but really should have been advanced definately were not looked upon kindly.

well said, ski. that pelican business sounds like it was pretty shady, were you one of those kids? i am not usually the one stuck with the slave labor, since i have been at nestors for five years now, i usually get out of the crappy stuff. i'm definately seeing a little resentment being thrown back and forth right now. i cant comment, because i havent really skied with many people on this message board besides romeOp, bcparkcrew, insomniac and gurp, so i didnt see whatever papa was talking about. judging from your posts about your kid's soccer team though, you dont seem to be the type of person to pull something like that. besides, its nastar, its supposed to be a fun way to measure yourself against other recreational racers, right? i think we all just need a good one foot dump of snow to make everybody realize why we all come to this message board; because we all love sliding down some snow covered hill somewhere.

yeah the pay is not good thats for sure. its a fun job, i get to hang out with other people who are into the same stuff as me, play with cool gear, and i get all my stuff cheap through reps. i'm curious about what the pelican guy did, wanna fill me in on that? i know of a few shop owners who arent the cleanest businessmen themselves. also do you have a link to those online footbeds? i wanna do a little comparison for my own knowledge.

technically we are supposed to charge for materials. in most cases, it will come to less than $10 though, most problems are fixed with a few wrap pads or moving the position on some buckles or cuff pieces.

ski, if you were referring to my comment about coming into a shop to get a bootfit, i have experience with the shop i work at. we just had a clinic on bootfitting on sunday night, and i can tell you that we do more at nestors than i had ever encountered at any other shop i visited with boot issues prior to working at nestors. i can't say anything about the "custom" footbeds you order online, because i have never seen them. do they take into account the rigidity of your arch or how much flex your forefoot has? are the impressions made weighted or unweighted? is the posting firm, or soft, or nonexistent? these are all key factors in truly customizing the footbed to maximize the performance of your boots that we take into account when making the custom footbeds. you are lucky in that you have an average foot thats not that hard to find a boot that fits. most people aren't so lucky. personally, either langes or race boots are the only boots that come close to fitting me properly, and even with those, i have to blow out the toe of the boot a bit to give myself a little more room in certain areas. this is definitely not something i can get from buying a boot online. i guess my point was that, sure, you can buy boots online, and in your case it works out ok because you have easy to fit feet. most people would not encounter the same degree of success. for example, someone with a bunion needs extra room in the boot right behind their first metatarsal. the common process would be to just buy a wider boot to accomodate it, but then you have extra room in the boot where you don't want it. a good shop with a qualified bootfitter will realize that you don't need a wider boot, you just need to make more room in a specific spot, and either stretch the shell or mill it out in that area to give you the proper snug fit a ski boot should have. that's just one example of why i feel you can't go to ebay for everything, and that you can't completely write off ski shops.

phil, buying boots online without trying them on is very sketchy, even if they are brand new. two nordica gts8 boots in a 27.5 may very well fit differently just because the liners are not identical. also, what happens if you get the boot and it doesnt fit the way it should? you either deal with a poorly fitting boot and your performance suffers from it, or you go into a shop and end up paying even more money to fix the problem. if there's one item not to buy online, its boots.

i like blue mountain's policy of not having any at all. i havent been to CB in a long time, i guess blue's ski patrol does the job of the rangers and first aid at CD? if thats the case, the same things happen at blue. my friend's six year old sister almost lost her lift ticket for skiing in the ruts on the side of the trail. another incident happened when my brother and i were hiking blue's c rail. a patroller came through the park with his son, both his the lip of the c rail as if it were a jump, then stopped right on the landing to stand around and watch. needless to say, they got ripped apart by us. but on the other hand, there are some ski patrol who are cool with the terrain park scene and actually listen to what we have to say and try and "police" the park better so that we dont have to worry about hitting kids on landings and stuff like that. i admire what you are trying to do, but agree with ben in that your conscious effort to make things better might just encourage others to overexert their power in ways we wouldnt really like.

for those of you who are familiar with driving 145 north to get to blue, turn right at the stoplight at the top of the hill right after sheetz, take that road over the brigde into northampton, and make the second right, after northampton seafood. follow that for about a quarter mile and the roxy parking lot is on the left.

how bout a rail jam mary? it will get you a ton of kids there to check everything else out, as well as good publicity for the mountain. i know andy is pushing for it.

well he's got the park ability and the personality, so i guess having him do a little race training should serve him pretty well.

that's why we arent just straight up teaching kids how to huck themselves. we're starting from the ground up and making sure kids can actually ski before we take them to the park. i completely agree that you need a solid foundation to be a good skier in the park, but racing isnt for everyone. take sage cattabriga alosa for example. he's one of the best in the game right now, and had no formal training whatsoever. i guess it does make more sense to have steven up at CB for you though, since ridge will already be there. best of luck with that.

the guys at nemo are artistic geniouses, by the way. anyone see the intro to that snowboard video they did? so sick.

ok heres how it goes: k2 didnt advertise in freeskier this year. instead, they spent their freeride advertising budget on SKEEZE magazine, so that is their advertising for this year. their is one issue, thats all for this year, maybe another one this year if its well recieved. its free, because like i said, its advertising, and they arent going to charge people for their own advertisements. its edited by micheal jaquette, who used to be the editor of freeze, hence the freeze references everyhwere. in my opinion, its a good idea, but it could have been edited a little better; i.e. lots of typos, and the contributors opinions are just that; very opinionated. but hey, its free.

you dont have to pay for it, we got a bunch of them in at nestors, so if you are interested, stop in. its good stuff, especially for free.

don't take freeskier's gear guide as a sole resource. anyone notice how k2 got worse reviews than any other ski? did you also notice how k2 didnt advertise in freeskier? its not just an odd coincidence.

nestors quakertown is this weekend, and nestors whitehall is two weekends from now. mark your calendars people.

shops are supposed to have them, but we didnt get any in. and about the freeskier buyers guide, i find it appalling that they hold the krypton to the same level as the lange 120fr.

its MSP, they make awesome intros, the first segment is usually pretty good, and it all just goes downhill from there. lots of snowmobiling and base jumping, which personally, i dont care to see in a ski movie. even if the movie does suck this year, which i have heard as well, i will still go to the premier because its a crazy atmosphere, lots of kids excited to ski, you get to hang out with pro skiers and get lots of free stuff.

thats a pretty decent deal for brand new stuff. i already have two pairs of skis, with a third being ordered pretty soon though.

the movie is called hit list, it was at barley creek 2 years ago, pocono brewing co last year, apparently this year it is at camelback, and MSP sucks at life, but i will go anyway

arent the skis bode is on a sidewall construction anyway? they sure look it... and yeah, sidewall skis generally are tosionally stiffer, have better edge hold, and for a park ski, hold up better because there is more support for the edge.

in nestor's defense (we do a seasonal rental program as well, don't know the prices off the top of my head, but i think they are significantly cheaper), we have two options. used rentals, which are cheaper, and renting brand new equipment. the used rentals are all shaped skis from the past 5 years or so, usually Axis for kids or K2 skis for adults. we don't rent out straight skis or out of date gear. i know its not even necesary to post this on this site, cause we all own our own stuff, but i just wanted to get the word out that we try to do a little better job than the rest of our competition.

they impressed me, the site is up before they said it would be. its still kind of ugly, but definately an improvement over last year's

yeah that helps too. but its the same concept that makes a down coat really warm. all those feathers trap a lot of air between them, and that air stays warmer longer, thus keeping you warmer. but yeah, you are right too.

get a large. the extra air trapped inside the glove is what makes them warm, if you dont have any space at all in there, your hands will get cold. thats why mittens are almost always warmer than gloves.