Robert2

Perhaps you missed the whole purpose of the total body arm thread. My wife asked me to teach her how to snowboard this year. We're not little kids. We are members of AARP. So when you teach an old lady how to snowboard you have to consider what the damage factor can be and armor up. One fall for her could mean a long term serious injury. The crash pads pants by R.E.D. were the only ones we found in local stores and they only carry kiddie clothes. Nothing for fat old people. So I resorted to looking online for a pads source and the pictures online really don't show a hockey pants next to a crash pad pants so we bought them thinking they keep hockey players from breaking bones so they should work. It wasn't until we pulled them out of the box that we saw how huge they really were. Huge or not, they are perfect for a "never ever been on snow" beginner lesson.

holy shit haha.......what are you 5? I'm stimulating the economy. I really didn't care what padding costs. If I can't touch it in a store I have to go online. Comparing the various protective pants online really was worthless to me. A picture just doesn't do these products any justice. The R.E.D. pants look online just as protective as the hockey pants and it wasn't until we pulled the hockey pants out of the box that we realized these hockey pants were sooooooooooo huge. I put them on to check out the armor movement and it was like I was stepping into a freaking Mini Cooper compared to painting on the spandex R.E.D. pants. You shouldn't skimp on armor because of cost. The most common snowboard injury is a broken wrist and its not from jumping big air or tripping on rails. Its usually from catching an edge and cartwheeling. The second most common injury is a concussion. Both of these injuries can be avoided easily with a 5 dollar wrist guard and a $40 helmet. Add knee pads and you get to play all day without ever worrying about a hard fall. For brand new beginners who are not athletic you elevate your chances for really bad injuries from even the most trivial of falls. You wouldn't think of doing a split like a cheerleader but lose some footing while skating with one foot out...like you must do to get on the lift.... and you end up stretching joints and tendons you never even knew you had before. Take a good spill and spin out like the Tazmanian Devil and you easily can rip up a hip and limp for a month or more. I don't care how tough you are. You can't fall on concrete and push all your body weight onto one hand without breaking your arm or your wrist. I know a high school football player who broke his wrist snowboarding last year. The bigger you are, the harder you fall. So ... armor up... and bounce instead breaking something. Forget about cheaping out on the armor. What you save on armor you will pay for later... maybe for the rest of your life. Get a head injury.... and that stain you left on a tree may be the last thing you ever see. A medovac helicopter ride to the ER costs something like $20,000 now. So go ahead, don't wear a helmet. If you get hurt bad you will be paying for it for the rest of your life. Owe money for medical bills and you can't get good credit, can't buy a house, can't buy a car... can't get a good job. Employers do credit checks on new employees and when they see a guy has $250,000 of medical bills they wonder if this employee can be trusted... or will your crushing debt cause you to try something illegal some day to pay off your debt. I wouldn't hire you if I knew you had more medical bills than a house mortgage. And you may be a good skier but what about all the nimrods who are not? It just takes one idiot to wipe out and cut you off then send you into a tree. So armor up and have fun.

None of the local ski shops stock body armor that fits adults here. The largest snowsport armor we found in a store was an adult size L which is no bigger than a size 34 mens pants. The last time I wore a size 34 I was in junior high school. I called around and everyone told me they could special order padding and I just gave up because its obvious that we have to try on these pants. Then I resorted to hockey armor because they make hockey armor for adults. Big adults. And old ladies.

You know all I wanted to do here is share some thoughts about armoring up for the hard pack. Not everyone is invincible and there are soooooooo many great options for wearing protective armor that newbies could use some input from old farts like me. But tainting my forum posts will not be tolerated this year. ALL stupid shit will be replied with something a little more caustic this year.

The R.E.D. pad pant we first got for her looks a lot like your example here but they didn't fit my wife. I barely could stuff me into them. Seems they manufacture the crash pad pants sort of targeting the athletic body type and really miss the mark for everyone else... like me and my wife.

21 degrees ....some flurries ... no more big bad ass winds. Surface was immaculate groomed conditions again with sweet and low powder. JADIP This is sort of the real start of winter for me. Up until now was all those partial weeks with those pesky holiday distractions keeping me off the snow. Now the daily riding starts.

I agree... way too much bulk.. would never have thought of it until she said I had to teach her how to snowboard this year. At her age.... breaking a hip or tail bone would be very possible so I figured we would wrap her up with as much armor as possible. Roller blade knee pads, wrist guards, elbow guards... standard stuff... I put on all my students.... plus a real ski helmet... not a bike or skater helmet.... and this hockey pants completes the total body armor with hip and tail bone protection. What kind do you wear? We couldn't find anything that fit my wife. All the pads we found were cut more to fit me than her.

My wife's last piece of armor showed up in the mail today. She didn't fit in any of the R.E.D. hip guards so we resorted to real hockey pants. These pants showed up in the mail today and holy chit this is some really good padding. I can see why hockey players are totally invincible to getting smacked into the wall. My wife likes them and thinks they are better worn OUTside, not inside her snow clothes ... so... yes... gape all you want........ look for them at BLUE. Somebody ... please take pictures. http://www.totalhockey.net/tab3.asp?item=5810

Big time comeback from that typhoon this weekend. I played on Jane's Lane , Lehigh, and Exhibition today and found %100 coverage with immaculate grooming... as C1 said ... frozen cord with some blown powder. Absolutely fantastic speeds riding conditions with up on edge carving everywhere. The holiday tourists were few and far between with the temperature freezing them off the hills and into the lodge. A few notes about -10 degree wind chills and frozen cord. First off.... this was THE DRESS LIKE AN ASTRONAUT day for sure. The wind blowing UPHILL and pushing the powder so fast that it looked like a moving 60 foot wide stream on Exhibition all day. If you haven't figure out by now that cotton sweatshirts, denim jeans, flannel, hoodies and bare hands aren't proper ski attire then today was your day to die in the woods. And frozen cord...... really one of the best rides you can have but sort of like tequilla if you don't know what you are doing. IF YOU CAN'T RIDE FROZEN CORD then take a private lesson. Once you learn to LIKE frozen cord you will ski anywhere anytime without fearing conditions that you USED to think sucked. ICE IS NICE. SPEED IS GOOD. Invest in wrists guards, kneepads, and a helmet. And wear mittens instead of gloves. I've been wearing a Burton mitten that has its own mitten liner, plus a thin glove liner, same thing as any $3 Jersey fleece glove, with a roller blade wrist guard plate between the glove liner and the mitten liner. Its not tight. It's warm. And its armor. Falling on solid ice wearing armor... and bouncing up uninjured sort of changes the whole fear of flying thing. Once you wear armor... you go faster and jump higher because you don't fear a fall. Funny thing is... when I spend more time pointing down the hill instead of checking speed for safety, I wind up riding faster and with less wear and tear on me. After the fun on the snow I got a really nice surprise.... a live band playing in the bar. JADIP

TOO WINDY? What's too windy? What wind speed do you draw the limit at to declare its TOO windy to ski? IT IS VERY WINDY TODAY. Constant 20 MPH wind with 35 mph gusts. ITs 18 degrees now with todays high to be 24 degrees. The wind chill now is minus 2. So dress like an astronaut kiddies and go ski.

heh heh ... 14 I wish. Funny thing about getting old. You make your choices to be or do what you want and nobody can tell you stop or don't do shit. I went to a Christmas party last Friday night for school teachers. Don't let the school teachers fool you. School teachers are wound pretty tight all week with those kids so you get them liquored up and they pop like watch springs. A few of the teachers were retired and when asked about retirement they said KEEP WORKING AS LONG AS YOU CAN. They really hated their dreary retirements. They complained about boredom and they complained about chores around the house and they complained about their kids...who are all grownups with their own kids. Apparently they didn't get my memo. So then I tell the teachers still working to forget that old fart shit. I snowboard every day or kayak every day. Have some fun and forget about boredom. You make your fun any way you can.... at any age. So what if I haven't driven a car in 8 years. I take the Timmy Bus. You grow old and fall apart... get arthritis...have pain... BUT NO DRUG IS BETTER THAN ENDORPHINS from WIKI: ======================================================================================================= Endorphins are endogenous opioid polypeptide compounds. They are produced by the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus in vertebrates during strenuous exercise,[1] excitement, pain, consumption of spicy food and orgasm,[2][3] and they resemble the opiates in their abilities to produce analgesia and a feeling of well-being. Endorphins work as "natural pain relievers." The term "endorphin" implies a pharmacological activity (analogous to the activity of the corticosteroid category of biochemicals) as opposed to a specific chemical formulation. It consists of two parts: endo- and -orphin; these are short forms of the words endogenous and morphine, intended to mean "a morphine-like substance originating from within the body."[4] The term endorphin rush has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress,[1] supposedly due to the influence of endorphins. When a nerve impulse reaches the spinal cord, endorphins are released which prevent nerve cells from releasing more pain signals. Immediately after injury, endorphins allow humans to feel a sense of power and control over themselves that allows them to persist with activity for an extended time. =============================================================================================== So get your FAT OLD ASS OFF THAT COUCH AND GO SKI or SNOWBOARD.

My point here is that YOU MAKE YOUR FUN WHERE EVER YOU are comfortable. It doesn't matter to me if there are steeper or narrower trails on the east side of JF. I lapped the blues and greens all day, 5 days a week without ever coming close to getting injured so far....and this is year 4 of this fitness program for me. I just couldn't do it every day if I was getting overly worn out on black diamonds. For me its a daily fitness program. It sure beats jerking iron bars in a gym. I think the east side goes into shadows before the west side. As the sun sets, the trails east of ONE PARK turn bluish gray in the shadow of the mountain while the west side still has sun lit trails. That might not matter for you but I had a hell of time reading the terrain in ONE PARK at 3:30 yesterday.

For the people reading HOW WAS FLOYDS not knowing why this is a dickhead posting perhaps we needs to splain a little bit here. GSS.... this friendly fellow.. likes to ski black diamonds while I stick to only greens and blues because I snowboard 5 days a week for 4 years.... my retirement plan. Floyds is a steep hill at Jack Frost that I will never see so EVERY TIME you see GSS post here "HOW WAS FLOYDS"... he's just being a dick. We only are into the second week of skiing and already GSS is being a dick. What a surprise.

HEELLLLS YEAA I got my happy pill today. I went snowboarding at JF. Thats my happy pill.

The Timmy Bus schedule is set for Fridays at Blue. But since the next 2 Fridays are Christmas and New Years they do not run the Timmy Bus at all anywhere so I figure no Blue for me until January 8th.

Well thanks for that diaper load Johnny Law. I don't watch the Simpsons on TV. I always thought the Simpsons were garbage waiting to be taken to the curb. Or more like the turd waiting to be flushed in the toilet. Yea ...so keep imbedding Simpsons videos here on PASR. Just another waste of bandwidth and more crap to skip over in a post.

As C1er said: A little more crowded today, holiday crowds starting to arrive - nice bluebird sky and great snow. But I wouldn't call it crowded. Maybe "more crowded" than total solitude hills to myself all winter during midweek skiing. I could count on one hand all the people in front of me any time today on any hill and I never had to wait for a lift line today. Just pick a hill and lap it. The snow guns were still running on Lehigh today and one thing interesting there was that there was grooming done before this current layer of snow so it wasn't 2 feet deep anymore.... it was more like a good shaped groomed base with 2 inches of fresh powder. Again... very nice snow everywhere I went today on the west side. JADIP

Nope. I've never been east of Exhibition. I ride 3 hours every weekday all winter and I stay away from the black diamonds because I'd like to come back the next day. Its a retirement plan. You make your fun any way you can where ever you play. I don't need to get all worn out fast or hurt on black diamonds. I'm in it for the whole winter, not just once so I'd like to make sure I will be back the next day.

Its a tourist week with a lot of families skipping school to ski so it was just a little active today... not crowded... a handful of people on the hills... nothing like WMMR day. I never waited in a lift line today. Jane's Lane was empty most of the day and I got to lap it for an hour with no other people getting in my way. Sort of the secret stash. Noobies are afraid of the steep winding hills and expert skiers wouldn't be caught on a lame BLUE SQUARE on the west side of the mountain. Cool. More private hill time for me. The top of Jane's was still blowing fan guns.. lots of mounds of fresh snow while the headwalls and hills were real nice sweet'N low powder. I couldn't help noticing how the snow guns were blasting on Lehigh while I was on the lift... and how there was no OFF LIMITS ROPES up even though the snow was ungroomed. Just one huge mass from top to bottom of fresh snow and still blowing. I couldn't take it any longer... I just had to jump into that mist. So I crossed over from Jane's Lane above the headwall and as soon as I hit the fresh powder I sank into a two feet deep snowbank until I was almost flat and swimming in the snow. As I tried to get up I looked mostly like I was just making snow angels. So then I had to figure out if Lehigh was even ridable with snow this deep. As I was getting covered by the blowing snowguns I figured this might not be a good idea to get trapped under the blowing snow in deep snow all the way down the hill. As always, I was dressed like an astronaut but I didn't want to press my luck with this deep snow anymore so I unstrapped one boot and skated over to ONE PARK. ONE PARK was dry , no snowmaking guns blasting, and the surface was immaculately groomed. I liked the steepness between the features. I could get good speeds out of those angles. I don't jump anything so I just blasted around the features and lapped ONE PARK a few times while inspecting Exhibition from the lift. Exhibition was 100% open. I never made it to Exhibition though. I wore myself out lapping ONE PARK. JADIP

Yes Seriously. As big as school buses. You know how this works. It gets real cold and if its dry JF and BB blast those fan guns until the base is built up to something like 10 feet thick. So any time you see cold and clear in the weather report you get fresh deep man made powder in December. Just one problem .... I don't get on the snow until noon so if you want a phone call about conditions its not going to be until late , not early in the day.

Absolutely phenomenal conditions today. 3 feet and deeper drifts ...as big a school buses .... of champagne snow. Real dry nice stuff. I guess this is the closest we ever get to the conditions they see out west.

I thought the bomb squad armor post was funny too.

I arrived at noon. First day back for me. I liked the surface. It was groomed hardpack with soft sticky on the sides closest to the trees. Nice fast controllable riding all afternoon. Just another day in paradise. I'm going to buy another case of beer for JF groomers. First day back...45 degrees.. and the surface was just as ridable as any winter day. Somebody is doing a good job here.