Robert2

I had one hell of run for 20 years. I got a commodore 64 computer and learned BASIC and then I started out in data entry and worked up to system operator and learned to program IBM midrange computers System/34, System/36, System/38, and AS/400 in a language called RPG II. I ran a steel company in 1985 with a System/34 that had 64 kilobytes of RAM and 64 megabytes of disk space. My cell phone now has 10 times more memory than that steel company computer had disk space. I wrote software for pacemakers and 911 emergency services. So when you call for police, fire, or rescue in Monroe County a dispatcher keys into my software. I wrote software for IBM S/390 mainframes in COBOL and then got into dragon slaying. The old IBM mainframes where the dragons of old. UNIX and 400 mhz PCs could do so much so fast that it came time to move off the mainframes and do CGI programming in PERL to distribute processes and data entry across networks of dirt cheap PCs instead of using 5 million dollar mainframes. Only problem there is the COBOL programming staff fought tooth and nail kicking and screaming to keep their kingdom intact for another 20 years but sooner or later a guy like me would come along and know both the PC, UNIX, CGI stuff, and the old time mainframe stuff and port the mainframe tasks down to UNIX using PERL CGI. IT really wasn't all that complicated once you got past their technology. They were very much the same, just bigger or smaller , faster or slower. You just had to sneak under their radar, learn how they did something in COBOL and you owned it.... go do it on UNIX. It actually was fun. A lot more fun than pacemakers. You screw up pacemaker or 911 software and people die. I learned microcontroller programming to make a few toys and tools over the years. Anything electronic that beeps or controls or senses has microcontrollers in them and you can use assembly language or C or BASIC on them. I bought a Microengineeringlabs MELABS PicBasicPro compiler. I highly recommend it instead of trying to learn assembly language. Microcontrollers cost $2 for a complete computer system the size of your thumbnail. So I did some real serious shit for a long time and now I kayak or snowboard every day I can. Its a retirement plan.

Yea... I'm king Douchebag because my local shop owner has 12 boards in his shop so when I walk in he must sell me one of the 2 boards he has in my size...and they are only his $500 and $700 boards... ... and those boards have graphics shit on them I would never display to the public. I'm a grandparent and I have bought thousands of dollars of bikes, kayaks, rock climbing harnesses, snowboards, boots, bindings, skis...... all from my local sports shops and last month I paid more for 3 shirts...padagonia base layers , capilene 4, $255 at this local shop then I paid for the snowboard so don't think you can ever accuse me of dicking a local store out of a snowboard sale when I support my local shops big time. Yea... I'm the king Doughebag because I take a bus 30 miles away to "the big town with the malls" to see what they have to offer in their ski shops and the last place I look is the ARMY NAVY store that sold me 2 kayaks for the price I would have paid for one kayak at Cabellos. So yea... I have a history of finding deals at the ARMY NAVY store after shopping around all the others. Whats wrong with that? I'd still like to find out what board, by any manufacturer, is designed for 220 pound adults riding hardpack. Why do you think we come here? To get input about gear so whats with all the bullshit? I can't believe a damn thing I hear from sales people if a year later they can sell a $400 board for $200. 90 percent of the kids and parents who buy snowboards would easily have paid the $400 price tag and never have known dick about it being last years board without the store setting those boards at half price. How can they do that if the boards didn't cost them less than $200 wholesale? They didn't lose any money on me buying this board for $200.

Who ever said I never progressed? I started off doing nothing more than falling leaves and breaking all the way down the hill THEN a race instructor taught me how to carve real fast on ice. So thats all I really do now. Carve really fast and have a blast doing it. It took a few years before they built park features and a decent half pipe. So I never really grew up with rail grinding and jumping like you young guys. I only learned speed and control and how to teach newbies how to ride without getting killed. Then my real work, computer programming, took me away from the snow a few years and when I came back it was only after my health and vision was failing so now all I do is "lap the blues" . So what. At least I get to snowboard every day for the whole season. Its a retirement plan I can live with.

BECAUSE ITS A JOB. Its not play land and you don't expect instructors to come sit around waiting for lessons and then only pay them if they teach a lesson. As a job on the snow it also had cold weather restrictions. You were not allowed to teach for longer than 2 hours without getting at least an hour of lodge time to warm up. So there was always some crew of ski instructors just hanging out in the instructor locker room/lunch room. February was always hardest for the ski instructors. They wore tight bunny suits and froze while the snowboard instructors wore baggy clothes and could always layer on more warm clothes. I don't know what they do now but 13 years ago you got paid by the clock. You were expected to be there an hour before lifts opened to the public and when someone called for a ski lesson they could book the lessons and management knew that they hand enough instructors present to even book the lessons and teach group lessons. I didn't care about the money. I was computer programmer making enough money in 3 months to pay all my bills for a year so taking 12 weeks off programming to be a snowboard instructor was nothing more than my winter fitness program.... and they paid me to be there.

You ever used Zardoz? It lasts 2 hours. Or maybe I just think it lasts 2 hours. But hey, what do I know. Probably much less about snowboarding than any of you all because I don't ride rails or half pipe or jumps. I just ride the hardpack every day for 14 weeks. The ski techs at Jack Frost for the last 2 years that worked on my board were older than 50 years old and once or twice a new kid would wax my board. They clean up the edges with a sander like a dremel mototool drum sander. Well.... enough banter. I have to leave now to go kayaking. Have a nice day.

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH YEEEEEESSSSSSSS YOU GOT THAT RIGHT! HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD!!!!! ANYONE THAT WOULD HIRE ME TO BE INSTRUCTOR after ONE YEAR of snowboarding was really desperate for instructors!!!!! But you miss the point about being an instructor. It doesn't matter if you are GREAT at snowboarding black diamonds. All that matters is that you can teach the new kids how to stop and turn and ride down the hill in control and how to get on and off the lift. Thats it. Thats all. Do just that much and no more and you have a ski resort that will generate new riders every year who PAY to have fun and WILL return for more fun year after year. Do anything less and you have a skate park and a date with a medovac. SO then as you wait for lessons all day long you , the instructor with no students MOST of the day during week days, you get to ride, and ride you do all day long and get paid for it. Yea.... paid by the hour to ride.....even if you aren't teaching lessons. Its a job. Punch a clock... get paid by the hour. OH , and when you teach, you get tips. You might be too young to remember the time when skiers were only rich people and a ski lesson was done with great care to protect the life of the student.... and the student, students parents, tipped you for not getting them killed. Lessons cost $70 and tips were usually $20 to $50 for private lessons. SO IF YOU EVER TAKE A LESSON remember to tip the instructor. They are like waiters, they work for tips, not the $6 an hour hourly pay rate. Instructors can be certified also. These people are serious about learning how to teach. So when you say ANYONE can be an instructor you have separate the levels of these people's commitment to being an instructor. Some just teach the new kids and some really learned how to fly the jumps and ride half pipe. Either way..... I spent 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 12 weeks at BB and got paid for it. It was one of the best job I ever had.

I DONT look for boards and service at the ARMY NAVY store. I look for boards in the small ski shops and get information about boards THEN go to ARMY NAVY LAST to see if they have what I learned about. I did not expect to ever find ANY Burton board for $200. It just turned out that way this time. And just what service do you EVER get for a snowboard at any ski shop? I give my boards to ski techs at Frost once a week for a wax job and edge sharpening and I oil it every day before I ride with Zardoz NotWAX teflon fluropolymer oil.

The first burton link won't fly for me. I get 404 The page cannot be found The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try the following: * Make sure that the Web site address displayed in the address bar of your browser is spelled and formatted correctly. * If you reached this page by clicking a link, contact the Web site administrator to alert them that the link is incorrectly formatted. * Click the Back button to try another link. HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found. Internet Information Services (IIS) Technical Information (for support personnel) * Go to Microsoft Product Support Services and perform a title search for the words HTTP and 404. * Open IIS Help, which is accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr), and search for topics titled Web Site Setup, Common Administrative Tasks, and About Custom Error Messages. How did you get to that first Burton link? Perhaps I have to navigate into it from another page and set cookies and shit.

YES there are pictures... and actually film also. Real film. They made some advertising films for Big Boulder and had film crews filming lessons one day. I'll see what I can track down. It was over a decade ago.

troll? huh? x snowboard instructor.... did it for 5 years... one year full time days then night lessons 4 years. I walked into Big Boulder 13 years ago and asked how to become an instructor. They asked me if I would show up at 8AM all winter. Then they asked me if I wanted part time or full time.... full time being 4 days or more a week. I said 6 days of paid snow time sounds fun to me. They paid instructors to teach the new bunch of instructors and hundreds of skiers every year would come and say they would teach...because EVERY SKI INSTRUCTOR GOT FREE SEASON PASSES FOR THEIR ENTIRE FAMILY. So anyone who could ski a little came out to be an instructor hoping to get the free season passes for their families. IF you had 3 kids and a wife that skied you were making out big time there because you could show up for 3 or 4 lessons a month on busy weekends and your whole family skied free all winter. So to weed out the riffraff they charged $150 for Instructor Training Class.... ITC....and $250 for a North Face red uniform jacket....if you got hired. Then after 2 weekends of ITC they picked the top 30 NEW instructors and everyone else was just out $150. So I said gee...wow.. I didn't know so many people wanted to be snowboard instructors. They blinked and said YOU... YOU want to be a snowboard instructor? NOT a SKI instructor? And I said I don't know how to ski, is that a problem, I only snowboard. They then said they waive the $150 ITC fee and hired me on the spot. Because... You see... back then they had brand new snowboards to rent but the only people who knew how to TEACH snowboarding back then were skater rats, kids, and surfer dudes, who had no work ethic so they wouldn't show up for work at 8AM, would miss lessons, go ride , get lunch, miss lessons, get high, go ride, and bug out when it got dark and icy, and yes... miss the 6PM lessons. The SKI instructors were a whole other breed of dicks who would have nothing to do at all with this great band of snowboard lowlifes.... and of course...would have nothing to do with learning how to snowboard themselves. Sooooo...I got hired because I'm an adult. Their first snowboard instructor adult. I looked old.... beard and bald... and I would show up at 8AM for the job like an adult and none of this kiddie shit blowing off lessons. They also required ALL of the SKI instructors to learn to be snowboard instructors because they couldn't keep selling lessons and the damned kids wouldn't show up to teach. Then they said it works both ways... I had to learn to ski and teach skiing also. I said that if I tried to ski and got injured I would be out of the snowboard teaching for the winter and we can't have that happen now could we. So then they said I don't have to ski now but will have to learn at the very end of the season. They had just started renting shaped skis back then and at the very end of the season with maybe 2 weeks of mashed potato snow I then finally had 3 ski lessons and then did not ski again until last year. So... yes... I was a snowboard instructor and that first year did it full time 6 days a week. I taught more than 500 kids how to snowboard that year...sent 5 to the hospital...all were treated and released.....and I did school groups of 30 kids at a time after school... 6 PM to 8 PM at night on solid ice hardpack. Big Boulder used to be open all day long and the surface would be pocked with foot prints and then when the sun went down each foot print froze and made little craters and sharp gopher holes. There were very few days of teaching on powder. So... yes... ICE is NICE. Learn to ride ICE and then SPEED is GOOD. I hope you found this amusing. What I find amusing is the guys saying they can't read long posts. As if they posting "HOLY SHIT I'M NOT READING THAT" is why we read forums. Yea ... I look forward to finding more insightful and meaningful posts from Toast and First Grade Teacher. Not.

No... the board does not have to be a Burton. Whats Rajeev? Person, place or thing? I picked Burton only because its a trusted name brand. I've been in stores selling 5 names I've never heard of and boards that had bling graphics to match bling boots and bling bindings and bling jackets and had sales people tell me they are hot sellers....the kids love them.... and it all means dick if they now sell snowboards to gapers wannabees that will never do more than sit in the snow like potted plants looking good in their bling but never really do any snowboarding. Snowboarding is not a team sport. I just go out and ride. I'll never understand these kids sitting in the snow just watching. I sit on the lift and never sit in snow, not even to strap in. So then when I say I want a board for carving on ice, not a rail grinder I get blank stares from sales clerks that only sell to park riders now. Then they try to sell me a stiff ARBOR board for $800. I just figured Burton would have some documentation somewhere for training purposes that says to store owners that here is THE board for hardpack alpine riding, here is THE board for powder, here is THE board for PARK rail grinders, here is THE board for HALF PIPE. No?

2 boards I rode the last two years are both SILENCE MRI 155. I also have a LIQUID RANGE 156. Sort of a backup and loner board. I never rode the Liquid. My kids came last year for Boulder Midnight Madness and I lent them gear. You can never have enough boards in the house when you have 3 kids with spouses who all snowboard. Back to me.... so this year I figured I'd buy Burton. My first board many years ago was a Burton hollow core that cost $500 for just the deck and I rode that board for 5 years when I was an instructor. So I figured buying this Burton Air 157 was good for me on length but raises these questions about what is Burtons logic in making the weight range 125-175 for this board. I'll ride it just to see what its like but I still want to know what the ranging really means.

So what Burton board is a really stiff board? All I keep hearing from sales people is flex flex flex...got good flex.

So does that mean since all I do is carve I should be on a 165? I thought the 165 would be too long for me.... leg and body size wise...not weight wise.

I've been board shopping and I run into this weight range issue. I'm 5'6" so a board that is 157 comes up to my nose and that's good for me as a carver but I thought rail and halfpipe riders like a shorter snowboard. I've been riding 155 boards for the last 2 years and as I go to stores now to buy a new board I have a sales clerk ask me how much I weigh and they check the chart on the snowboards and its got these weight ranges: 157 125-175 161 140-190 165 150-200 which raises questions. Will I break a 157 board because I weigh 225 pounds when dressed for snow because I weigh 50 pounds more than the board was designed to carry? Will the board perform extremely bad because I weigh 50 pounds more than the board was designed to carry? Will my extra 50 pounds make the board flex wildly and cause loss of control? Does Burton expect me to buy their 165 because its designed to carry an adult? A 165 would be taller than me! I'm not a big fat man. I'm a little old guy and most of the kids on the hill are taller than me so I just can't figure how Burton ranges their boards.

indeed. i'm just after more fuel. (slow day at work) OK..... lets see.... perhaps a few people missed where this came from.... it wasn't about local shop bashing.... my local shops have sold me $10,000 worth of mountain bikes, snowboards, boots, bindings, skis, kayaks, rock climbing harnesses for my family of 5 for the last 15 years. I just bought 3 padagonia capilene number four baselayer shirts for $255 at Blue Mountain sports in Jim Thorpe. I bought skis at Alpina last year. I support local ski shops and big time. I could mail order anything but I ALWAYS buy from a local shop if I can. I'm a retired snowboard instructor and my kids are all grown and have kids now. I've always supported local businesses. The knock against Nestors was a totally different issue where Nestors didn't make good on a $150 goggle problem. Again..... this isn't about professionals verses kid clerks in any of these stores. I have purchased the best gear in the past at premium prices mid winter but as I grow old and stupid I figured I'd pinch a few hundred dollars and buy boots and bindings and snow clothes in the summer and buy last year's model snowboard as soon as they put stuff on the rack in the winter. I posted the original HALF PRICE at ARMY NAVY message just to share this fact so if someone could not afford a high price tag snowboard this winter then maybe they would consider blowing $200 on a "last years model" board at the ARMY NAVY store. MANY snowboarders get only a few days a year on the snow so if a cheap Burton board can be bought at the ARM NAVY store I thought I was helping those guys who can't afford the $400 snowboards. The "used board..lipstick on a pig.... verses the closet board" is always a crapshoot... you take your chances with any used board but the owner usually is the dead give away with used boards. I never said I only ride Burton boards.... I said I just bought a Burton Air for $200 at the ARMY NAVY store after spending 5 hours in Whitehall in a bunch of stores listening to a bunch of store clerks tell me why I should buy one board over another ....and everything cost $500 or more.... just for the board.... I already have boots and bindings.... so I'm not looking for a package deal. So after being totally over saturated with hours of sales talk in multiple stores I asked a clerk if he had any cheap boards I could bang the shit out of on rails in the park and not care I was busting it to shit because it was a cheap board... to which he replied.... Yea... here... we have a rack of last year's boards at half price. So I snag a Burton AIR for $200 and get told its garbage by this forum. Oh well. I thought I bought a Burton quality item, and still am pretty sure I bought a Burton quality item. I can't tell you how many sales clerks have tried to sell me snowboards for me and my kids for the last 15 years that had absolutely not a clue about the products they were selling. It always boiled down to pricing and them trying to impress me with some kind of deal of I was getting because I was buying a top of the line quality product from the industry leader... BURTON. I don't buy a board because it has cool graphics. I buy a board because I'm going to ride it 2000 times down a hill. I'd like to trust it was manufactured to withstand my fat 220 pound ass carving ribbons on edges all day long on solid ice Pocono hardpack without popping Tnuts out of the board or cracking the deck itself. So when Burton offers a product line called CRUZER and CUSTOM and DOM and AIR and sales clerks really can't give me any real reason to pay $400, $500 or $700 for a board other than "ITS GOT THE NEWEST BURTON engineering in it"....... I'm not so inclined to believe any Burton board I buy would EVER be a bad snowboard. They ALL have Burton engineering it them. I'm retired. I have all the time in the world to play now. I kayak 5 miles every weekday ......for the last 6 months around Mauch Chunk Lake...... and then as soon as they open I go snowboarding. I take the bus to Jack Frost at 10 AM every weekday. I'm on the snow riding by 11AM and come off the snow between 3 and 4PM for 14 weeks. I'll get to ride hills and lifts 2000 times this winter. And NO I have never ridden a rail or a jump.... or a double black diamond. As a grandparent I expect to play longer if I don't break bones while playing. As you get older you take longer to heal. I found out the hard way last year when I got an arm full of stitches from long board skate boarding. Yea... Santa skates too. It took 6 weeks to heal. I just ride very fast downhill, again and again and again all winter. For 3 or 4 hours. I carry 2 bottles of water, 2 cans of V8 juice, and munchie power bars with me and never come in off the snow until its time to leave. I'm not there for the party. I'm there to ride. And ride as much as I can for 14 weeks. 5 degrees.... or 50 degrees.... sun, rain, snow, fog.... it doesn't matter.... I still go every day. And midweek skiing never has ANY lift lines and rarely even has more than 5 people on any hill so its like I have the place to myself all winter. 13 years ago when I was an instructor they told me we had to teach snowboarding no matter what the weather was. People come and pay for a lesson so we must teach them, regardless of temperature or rain or snow or wind or mud or slush or solid blue ice. So when you get as old as me and don't know if you will be breathing tomorrow you don't NOT GO because the weather is too warm, to cold, too windy. You ALWAYS go and dress for all conditions and just go ride. What will YOU be doing every week day this winter? There's yer fuel.

Sorry Sauruss ....Which forum topic was this supposed to be in? Yes... but still..... its a Burton board and me and anyone else shopping boards could never know the difference between this board and any other Burton board that NEstors, Army Navy, or Blue Mountain Sports sells... with a jacked up price of $500 to $700. So how am I supposed to pick a board when you can't try them out before you buy them and the sales clerks aren't riders... they are sales clerks TOLD what to say by bosses who aren't rider. We always have to buy boards before the snow falls here in PA so there is no way to "try before you buy" here. ANYONE BUYING A BURTON BOARD IS BUYING A BRAND and expects that brand to be the best brand because ...well... its BURTON. And to Glenn who said: Those boards are garbage, and overpriced for the quality. Far better off being a better board used. I would ask WHO DEFINES this board as garbage? What defines its quality? Its ride? Your ride? Some company rider who gets paid to ride Burton boards in the half pipe? Does this board suck for grinding rails? Does this board suck for ollieing or half pipe or ski jumps? Really... what is wrong with this board that you say this board is garbage? DO YOU RIDE 4 hours every day all season .. from opening to close December to April like I ride? How can this board be Garbage if it was made by Burton? If Burton makes garbage boards then perhaps we no longer should trust the Burton name brand. It doesn't bother me that you say this board is garbage. I'll let you know if this board is garbage. Oh... ...and if does suck then I'll ride one of my 3 other snowboards this winter. At least I wouldn't have thrown away $700. AND Can you EVER buy any snowboard board USED and trust it? You don't know how many jumps and how hard any snowboard was abused crashing off rails and rocks so you never know just how good or bad any used board has been beat up. The ski shops Ptex the holes and sharpen the edges, clean up the crap and then what? You've got lipstick on a pig.... and its still a pig.... you know it by the guy who sells it...who says it was a great board and tells you how much fun he had with it. No.... I'll stick to buying boards new and cheap before trusting "a better used board" .... and the $300 I saved pays for the season pass to play all winter. I'll ride this $200 board 2000 times this winter and then next year I'll buy another Burton board, for $200 while the rest of the boarders get suckered into a $700 board and never use it because they can't afford lift tickets. And then you see those $700 BURTON Customs selling on EBAY after sitting in a closet in Delaware for 3 years never getting to see any snow time. Thats a used board I would buy cheap also. Its easy to ask a board owner how often they went and when they say 3 times in 3 years and the board looks totally brand new... you just know it was a in a closet for 3 years.... not a lipsticked pig.

We had this discussion last month about comparing apples to apples with the ARM NAVY store in Whitehall selling cheaper prices than Nestors. The ARMY NAVY store sells BURTON FLOW ARBOR and others and I just left there tonight with a BURTON AIR that was stickered at $400 and it was on the "LAST YEARS RACK" so the price is 50% off the sticker price. I paid $212 with tax for a snowboard that other stores are selling for $500 now. They had other boards stickered at $360 so they will sell for $180. I wonder if Nestors sells their left over from last year Burton boards for $180.

HA! I'm bald and have a white beard. I've been mistaken for Santa Clause when I was wearing my North Face red jacket and cap and Burton boots. A little kid actually said to me "I was good I was good I was good Santa". Lesson there is don't wear a red jacket and a white beard in a mall in December.

I saw a TV special about ski resorts and how they were developed in the USA and they had a real old guy who came back from WWII and started a ski resort like he had seen in Europe...and he said IF YOU REST YOU RUST but I never caught his name. The trick is to grow old without getting old.

Well it looks pretty bad for snow here for the next week. Up to 60 degrees daytime highs and 40 degrees at night. ..... global warming?.... I get another week of kayaking 5 miles every day. Who said "If you rest you rust." ? (this is a test)

I asked JFBB for a definite open date and got an email back that said WATCH JFBB.com web site for opening date. Yea..Like we weren't all already doing that. Hammer them with requests and see if they do make an official open date on the web site instead of letting us all hang in suspense. http://www.jfbb.com/contact One thing to note. The JFBB job fair is NOVEMBER 15th so they probably are not staffed up yet to really open. From JFBB web site: The majority of our winter hiring is done at the Annual Job Fair. All department managers will be available to hold interviews and make job offers during the job fair. This is the best opportunity for applicants to get hired at JFBB so mark your calendars! Job Fair Saturday, November 15 10am until 4pm Jack Frost Summit Lodge

I went to BB tonight briefly before going out to dinner with my wife and snapped a few pictures. Perhaps some of the riders got some rail grinding pictures. all I got was the mountain. Either way..... seeing snow on the peak makes me a big smile. Not long now before daily riding. http://www.paskiandride.com/forums/index.p...si&img=1290