Robert2

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH Now you all got me laughing. Thanks for all the input guys. What tickles me most is how I was just advised to go back to my home mountain to teach. My only reason to buy a Blue season pass this year was to be able to meet relatives who come up from Philadelphia and Bethlehem for Friday night snowboarding. These people are coming from a day at school and Blue is the shortest time on buses so they pick Blue over BB. It works for them so I figured I'd hang at Blue on Fridays. There is no comparing JF and BB immaculate groomed conditions to the sharp volcanic ash of Blue. Remember... it wasn't me who posted all those Blue death cookie reports. My first day on the snow is tomorrow at JF. This will be my 4th year daily snowboarding at JF. Its a retirement plan. It sure beats fishing in Florida. I will only go to Blue for teaching so there better be a beginner area in good condition on Fridays. When I say good condition I mean a flat surface. It doesn't matter if its fluffy snow or sweet N low powder or sugar granular ..or even if its solid boiler plate ice. WE ALWAYS WEAR ARMOR. What matters is if there is chunks of broken ice sticking out of hardpack to trip riders. Thats all. Death cookies. Which until I went to Blue I never actually encountered such shitty conditions on beginner slopes. I can understand the off path trail thats got logs to trip on but chunks of ice on beginner hills sort of says somebody needs to be fired, then dragged over those hills behind a snowmobile. They won't fuck that up again.... him or his replacement running the groomers. We take kids onto the hardpack and teach them how to stop and turn and then they get totally fucked injured because of poor grooming? Tripping on jagged blocks of ice? Its just not right. There's no excuse for opening a hill not ready for riding. Ski patrol should be making the open or close decision after inspecting every inch of every hill..every day. Not a groomer riding in a cat treaded heated cab. And if ski patrol opens a hill with death cookies then ski patrol should be fired.. and yes... dragged behind a snowmobile through the field of death cookies so ... you all getting this yet???.... so the next ski patrol won't fuck up that job again. Last year I gave a case of beer to JF groomers for a job well done.

I'll be at JF Tuesdays through Fridays noon to close this winter unless I teach at Blue on Fridays. I got midweek season passes so I won't be there on weekends unless I pay for lift tickets. I'm in Bethlehem Mondays for fiddle lessons.

Funny? Funny is good. I try not to be too much of a dick when I post here. Seriously though, this is a real legitimate concern of mine. I've had to teach total noobies on every kind of surface from warm slush to boilerplate ice in every kind of weather from 5 degrees to 50 degrees. BUT THESE DEATH COOKIES have NEVER been an issue at Big Boulder and Jack Frost. They ONLY place I ever saw such a chunky sharp icy mess was at Blue. So I'd like to know on a Friday morning if grooming has ceased on the ski school areas BEFORE I get on a bus to meet people at Blue. If I get there and find such conditions we will move off Blue as our teaching mountain. Thats why I want to know if we can get a true conditions report from ADDERICK or any other employee that has the balls to post something real here. And he's going to need balls. You guys don't speak too highly of Blue employees so if he posts here he's going to have to be tough enough to take all your horse shit too.

I really don't care if the whole mountain is open or not. What I NEED to know is if the upper ski school area is groomed to perfection and DOES have a tow rope lift running AND I need to know if the lower ski school slopes are groomed to perfection and if the carpet lift and school slope lift is running. I never , ever , trusted a ski resort conditions report that says trails and lifts are open. Not after riding sharp junks of dirty volcanic ash at Blue the last week Blue was open last year. From opening day post: Me, AJeff and Root also met Adderick who was working the Vista chair...seems like a nice guy.. says to me that Adderick is a lift operator so he wins the inside man award. So how about a real conditions report from a Blue employee this winter describing the ski school hills conditions and if the tow rope, carpet lift, and lift are running. I have plans to bring beginners to Blue this winter and if we get there and find that the beginner areas have not been groomed to be a safe learning surface we will quit Blue for sure.

They don't care about early openings. They are running a business that caters to snow bunnies, people who see snow in their own back yard and THEN make the mad dash to the mountains. And with last month's warm weather , nobody is making that mad dash to the mountains. Don't bother me with my saying NOBODY and say 1,500 people came to BB last week. That was the shitshow to avoid for sure. You wouldn't see 1,500 guests at Blue every day next week even if they open today for the season. They have 20 years of statistics that shows who comes to play early and late in the season and its up to management to figure out where to cut the losses at the beginning start up date and the ending shut down date. How many times have you skied until the last week of March totally alone on the hill because people were at the flower show instead of going skiing? Some of us die hards will always enjoy that quiet time having the mountain to ourselves all day long. We've had snow on Halloween and seen the hardpack not melt until after Easter so you can pick on Blue for not opening a longer season but the reality is just how many people and services they have to pay to run the place compared to how many guests actually show up in December or March. And for all you wussies complaining about driving 100 miles to go ski a few times a month, I drove from Jim Thorpe to Haddonfield NJ every day for years. 100 miles each way every day for work. It was good work. I wrote software for pacemakers. If you think you want to ski more and drive less....move closer to a ski hill.

A dame is a terrible thing. Wouldn't want to be dame bramaged from a crash.... or trying to read a forum. Keep your braincells. You may need them some day.

No Was a VP for 5 years though.

Someone said here that the people reading this forum don't need lessons. You never know who reads this forum and anyone who wants to try skiing or snowboarding who pokes around the internet may end up here reading this forum. The winters in PA don't give us deep powder for 4 months so our ski resorts manufacture a slab of ice that they groom daily to make it have a sugar or corduroy coating. Call it Pocono Hardpack or nick name it anything else , this does not change the fact that if you don't know how to ride on it you will get injured. So lessons are very important for beginners. How you get that lesson is up to you and if you think your best bud with the skater rat moves in the park is going to teach you how to ride in control on even the baby hills then you get what you paid for. The rest of us pay for lessons from a qualified instructor. Our snow isn't 3 feet of Utah champaign powder. Hell... when it snows 3 feet here we declare a state of emergency and you aren't even allowed to get on the turnpikes. So forget comparing our tiny piss ant hills with Vermont or out west. We don't get snow. We get groomed ice. This base surface can be as hard as concrete at times. There is no just giving up while riding out of control and diving face first off the snowboard like you can do when you go surfing in the ocean. Surfer dudes come play on the snow and get the worst injuries. They have to learn that diving face first into a block of ice will knock you out. The best way to avoid breaking bones on this ice is to learn how to ride on this ice. There are no second chances. Get it way wrong once and you are a stain on a tree. So YES you need to take a lesson and if you don't learn in that lesson then take another lesson until you can ride in control. Speaking of control.... if you run someone over and they bleed.. YOU are responsible and can be sued for damages and medical bills. Being out of control is not an excuse for hurting anybody. Your lift ticket is a contract with the ski resort that says you understand you can't sue the ski resort, but that does mean you are not liable for hurting somebody else. The most common injury on the snow is a broken wrist. Every year I witnessed a fall, a broken wrist, a ski patrol rescue, and an ambulance extraction out of Blue or Jack Frost. These were people who were "never evers". Kids who never skied before and never took lessons and never wore armor. I've seen kids do inverted flights and pile drive their skulls on the jumps at JF and then get to have that really cool medovac lifeflight ride for a broken neck. So telling people they don't need lessons and they don't need helmets and wristguards and kneepads is not the way to make more new skiers. As far as lesson cost and qualified instructors go ...its going to be a real crapshoot no matter who teaches you. You can pay the highest price for a private lesson and wind up with the worst instructor for you. Just because we are all people and not one of us will be perfect for all of us. THE BEST WAY TO PAY LESS FOR LESSONS is go midweek, Monday,Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday during the day and pay the cheapest price for a group lesson. The ski resorts here in PA are empty, ghost town empty, during midweek day time skiing. So when you pay for that cheap group lesson you get to go out to the ski school lesson area and instead of you being in some big group lesson you can wind up ONE ON ONE with your own instructor. And remember to tip your instructors. I don't care if its a group lesson or a private lesson. You are getting service from someone getting paid minimum wage to baby sit you on a block of ice and keep you from getting hurt. Thats got to be worth something to you. Its worth $50 to me.

Leave that board discussion out of this topic. I had not bought a new board in 10 years and was looking for input when that zoo errupted. Loooooong before I was an instructor there were ski instructors being paid $50 tips. When I was an instructor I got tips daily between $20 and $50. Now it seems tipping was lost on this new breed of poor skater rat kid that can't afford lunch, let alone a lesson..... so forget about tipping. ALL private instruction, all person to person services, I don't care what it is or where you are, when you get personal service you can make the choice to tip according to how much YOU valued that personal service. How do you place a dollar value on your personal safety? I don't care if the ski resort charges $75 for the lesson. Its not about the ski resort finding you that instructor and reserving a time slot. Tipping is about your personal achievements during your time with that instructor. Sure times are tough, more people are scraping to get by, but , that doesn't change the fact that if you do have the means to ski and do have the means to pay for proper instruction, then don't forget to tip the instructor. Without tipping , sooner or later ski instructors will be giving the same kind of service you get at the LEHIGH PUB.

ITs not about THE PERCENTAGE you dumphuq. Its about what you consider the value of the knowledge learned in the lesson from a person who made $50 worth of effort to keep YOU alive for an hour and teach you how to stay alive EVERY TIME YOU COME BACK TO PLAY ON THE ICE. So if you spend $200 on instruction and tips this year and then get to play on the snow 200 times in the coming years you will think it was $200 well spent. There are lots of private instructors not affiliated in any way with specific mountains. Its really just up to you to find them. All the ski resorts want the skiers to be safe and ski in control so there never is any rule that says you can't bring your own instructor to their mountain. If you learn to ski, you will be back to buy another lift ticket, with your kids too someday, so they don't care who teaches you.

Mostly I fear overshooting. When I went into the park at JF to film the jumpers last year I found that as I rode down the hills to make movies I always overran the speed that the jumpers were heading into the ramps. If I hit those ramps with my normal cruising speeds I do on those angles of steepness I'll pop way far out and the drop distance will be no way the right place for a smooth controlled landing. I weigh a hundred pounds more than a lot of these jumpers to my speed and trajectory is going to be nothing like them. Following someone else to see what the right speed is might not work out real good for me.

We saw the sky lit up tonight on the way home from Bethlehem tonight. It was sort of like a sunset. I got me a good one hour nap at the Carmike theater while my wife watched some vampire movie.

You would be real surprised at the levels some of these instructors train for teaching special needs skiers. JFBB has an adaptive program that teaches blind people and amputees. It all boils down to finding the right level of instruction for you. The brand new out of control bomber that is going to be a stain on a tree and a medovac lifeflight is going to need no more than basic training for stopping, turning, and speed control. The intermediate skiers are the ones that need analysis and matching up with the right instructor. There are lots of instructors that just push through the motions and others who take the time to figure out how to best teach you. Its a real crap shoot to get the right instructor for you so ask a lot of questions at ski school before you are assigned your instructor and the right match could happen. TAKE A PRIVATE LESSON If you only can ski when its crowded and end up with group lessons you may find your instructor really isn't paying enough attention to you. I've taught groups of 20 kids at a time and it was really grueling work. Not every instructor will put in that effort for $6 an hour. Spend the extra $75 on a private lesson and TIP the instructor $50 after the lesson if you survive the lesson totally uninjured. A good instructor will not put you in harms way and will teach you how to ski in control within your abilities. The private instructors DO NOT GET PAID that $75 you pay ski school for a private lesson. They get paid minimum wages and live on tips. Its like a fancy resteraunt. You pay a lot for a meal and the waiter does the running around for peanuts and lives on tips. But a ski instructor is not serving you food. Your ski instructor is teaching you how to not get killed on a slope of ice. Your life should be worth more than your beers. Think about it like this: You spend a high dollar amount to learn how to have fun FIRST then since you learned how to not get hurt you get to come back again and again and again for the rest of your life. OR you could do what too many people do. You can get in on some cheap ski trip and crash and burn and get killed or maimed and never actually learn how to enjoy snow sports. If you get hurt when you ski you will be paying for it big time the rest of your life. One Medovac lifeflight can cost you $10,000. But forget the money cost. Limping the rest of your life is what I'm talking about here. You should be able to wake up the day after you went skiing without having any aches or pains anywhere in your body. TAKE A PRIVATE LESSON You can thank me later.

============================================================================================== If you haven't learned how to jump how to jump before going on the airbag it won't do much good because you are missing the most important part from the whole thing - landing. ========================================================================================= I never learned how to jump anything. I thought the airbag would be the way to learn jumping... and landing. Not just kamakazie new shit that you wouldn't want to try on hardpack.

Maybe not. This may actually be a good thing. I can't count how many people I witnessed pound the snot out of themselves again and again and after a few Tazmanian devil spinouts and close calls cutting me off I asked them politely if they ever had lessons and do they think they need help. 9 times out of 10 they replied that they never had a lesson AND COULD NOT AFFORD TO PAY for a lesson so they just resolved to break bones or walk off the hill. Then I offer to teach them how to snowboard and give a 15 minute beginner lesson. Better I teach them to stop and turn in control instead of them bombing the hill and blast me with an uncontrolled fall and turn. Out of my 50 days on the snow I probably teach no less than 10 free lessons each winter.

This airbag was mentioned in the job fair thread. Sort of breaking it off to talk about it instead of the job fair topics. So whats up with this airbag? I couldn't find anything on the web about it. What is the this airbag used for?

I set the garden hose on mist and spray the yard until the hose freezes. PASR NAX makes snow in Marlton NJ Advice from NAX: You might be on to something there as far as cooling the incoming water. Last year I built a small pre-cooler for my T-gun. it consisted of a 5gallon bucket from home depot and about 25 feet of rubber hose and some fittings. I know some people on the forum are also drying their compressed air by pumping it through a series of old baseboard heaters. with the heaters mounted on a wall, in levels - the compressed air gets dried out as the air is forced from the top level down to the bottom. The drier the air - the better quality snow you can make So you picked up a pressure washer...the summer time is a perfect time to start building a snowgun and preparing your water lines and hoses. reason being, is you'll be able to get the rig all setup and the leaks worked-out without provoking frost bite. The first thing that i would suggest, is to build a T-gun (also called Y-gun). However - this gun does not use a pressure washer. but it is essential in learning the fundumentals of snowmaking. it is also a precursor to learning how the larger combo guns work (SM4, miniSM4, and several others you will find at www.snowguns.com). if you do a search for "T-gun". it may be obscure to find a direct parts list on the website for the T-gun, so check out this link for a good diagram and parts list: http://www.snowathome.com/free_plans/SAH-SG1_y-type_internal_mix.php'>http://www.snowathome.com/free_plans/SAH-SG1_y-type_internal_mix.php This is the gun that I started with. I think the plans say something about hooking up a pressure washer to it, but I would not recommend doing that with this particular gun. If you read up on the snowguns.com website, they will most likely agree. the pressure washer is used for the combo guns like the SM4 and the MiniSM4. with this type of gun, you should not set the air compressor higher than your water supplly pressure, or the air will back up into your house supply and rattle the hell out of your pipes.before getting started with anything you should know what your supply pressure is, for this particular reason. also by using one-way valves in your gun design, you elimnate the possiblilty of backflowing compressed airinto your house supply line. a few things to consider before starting: 1.) read-up about the T-gun and build one www.snowguns.com & http://www.snowathome.com/free_plans/SAH-SG1_y-type_internal_mix.php 2.) incorporate oneway flow valves into your gun design (http://www.pressureparts.com/ - i order all of my spray nozzles and parts that i cant find at Homedepot, here) 3.) use garden hose for your air supply line 3/4 or 5/8. Do not use the standard 3/8 air line typically used with compressors. this small hose will freeze up in a short period of time. it's inside diameter is just way too small. 4.) get an air compressor if you dont have one. without this, you cant make snow. you want to look at CFM ratings. typically you want about 5-6CFM @40psi. this is the one that most of the guys on snowguns use. i have read that it works well with everything but a fan-gun. so it will be plenty for a t-gun and later on ...a combo gun, when you are ready. http://www.eatoncompressor.com/catalog/item/733537/450646.htm It looks small, but the CFM rating on this little beast is key. 5.) prepare your outdoor water spigot, as it will take some abuse during winter use..on...off...on...off...freez....thaw....freeze..thaw...you get the picture. make sure it is in good condition. i think homedepot sells the freeze-proof ones...i forget exactly what they are called, but they are supoosed to prevent freezeups. i use a shut-off valve directly insdie my house in addition to the outside pipe. this i also have the pipe exposed inside the house, so i can heat it with a hairdrier if it freezes and i always shut it off at night when i go to bed, to ensure that i dont wake up to an iceskating rink or worse yet pool on my downstairs floor. another idea is to use that pipeheater radiating element for oil heaters. you wrap it around the pipe and plug it in to an outlet...i thik it has a transformer on it to step down to AC to a low voltage DC.

You did not say what you wanted the socks for.... ski or snowboard. I wear thin merino in ski boots and thick wool hunting socks when snowboarding. My ski boots would never fit right with thick hunting socks. I experimented with a dozen high tech thick wool and ski socks before concluding that the most expensive best thick hunting sock at Kmart was still warmer and cheaper than any high tech ski sock. Snowboarding boots can be worn much looser than ski boots so thick wool hunting socks can be worn in a snowboarding boot. Also consider that if your feet are cold it may not be the boot or the socks that are not warm enough. It may be a simple matter of wearing boots too tight for good blood flow. If you like a tight boot for control you may be causing problems with heat loss. If your boot is too snug then you probably are not going to get as much blood flow as you would wearing a looser boot. I never had to go into the lodge to warm up toes when I wore hunting socks while snowboarding for 3 hours at 10 degrees. I couldn't do that long in a snug plastic ski boot and thin merino wool socks.

Thats just absurd. Even if this month they renewed a hundred lockers and collected $11,000, you really think that compares to the working capital they made selling 300,000 $40 lift tickets last year? They are just doing a good job kicking off the season right and calling the season pass holders who got on the list.

WHAT is the NAME of YOUR store?

WOW. You guys really missed me? To clear up the banter ... I have season passes for JFBB and Blue. I will be at JF weekdays unless I have to meet a school bus to teach snowboarding Friday nights at Blue. My wife wants to learn to snowboard this winter so that will place me at JF BB or Blue on weekends like never before as long as she wants to play so that means I'll probably be only at the beginner slopes on weekends. Oh yea.... and www.paskiandride.org was probably one of the best April fools jokes ever made.

YES They order and stock snowboarding gear too late in the season for me to wait for them. They do multiple sports... bike rentals, rock climbing , kayak sales and rentals. They have a real swamped business all summer then things go real dead around here in the winter time. Jim Thorpe is 17 miles from Big Boulder and 19 miles away from Blue so the real crowds getting off the major highways will usually skip right over Jim Thorpe. There are a few big time well invested ski shops within a 10 minute ride from Jack Frost and Big Boulder and Blue so my local ski shop really will never get the huge numbers of customers that go through Mike and Matts or Alpina or Timberline just because those stores are on the way to and from the turnpike and route 80. I don't know the ski shop in Walnutport... but its right down the hill from Blue. So my local shop in Jim Thorpe stocks only "the best" stuff. My problem there is they want to sell me a $600 snowboard with skulls and dead shit on it. Thats why I go to the Army Navy store in Whitehall... and its an easy bus ride for me. I've spent thousands in my local shop over the last 15 years. 2 kayaks,paddles, life vests..... 2 mountain bikes, Burton boards, boots, bindings ,snow pants, snow jackets, dozens of capilene bases layers leggings and shirts , a dozen rock climbing harnesses, 3 dozen beeners, a dozen figure eights, ATCs,hundreds of feet of 1/2 inch static line for rapeling, cross country skis. You name it.... I bought it there for me and my wife and 3 kids for more than a decade. No one can ever accuse me of not supporting my local businesses. But I just draw the line on snowboards at $600 when the board I like to ride costs me $170 mail ordered from THE-HOUSE.com

The lockers ARE hard to come by if you wait until ski season to get one. I couldn't get a locker at the end of the ski season last year because they were all taken so they put me on a waiting list and said they would call me next season. I was real surprised getting the call now so early before the season started. That says to me that Blue is really on the ball and looking to get us hooked up right this year.

heh heh heh heh.... yep, and what a shit show it was back then... a lot of laughs came out of that thread. But that doesn't change the same message.... last year I stumbled on cheaper boards that I thought would benefit our forum readers. Same sale happening this year and the pile of boards to choose from is more than ALL the boards in stock at my local board shop in Jim Thorpe that won't sell me anything for less than the price I paid for a used car in 1995.

Just do it. Park as close to the upper lodge as possible and bring an arctic sleeping bag. If anyone says you have to leave just say YOU ARE TOO DRUNK TO DRIVE HOME and nobody, employee or cop will ever give you shit for sleeping off a drinking binge instead of driving home. Stay away from Appalachian Trail parking lots. Kids party there at night and cops do raid the lots. There are some advantages to this activity. Free beers. The A.T trailhead parking lot on route 248 at the 145 248 split has one highway entrance on 248. When a cop pulls into the parking lot he has to come up this one entrance road. Everyone sees the cop car and DUMPS THEIR CASES OF BEER over the steep grassy hill next to the parking lot. Everyone bails out real fast and then WE GO PICK UP THOSE CASES OF BEER on Saturday mornings. Been that way for years. You can find all sorts of things on that hill at dawn.... beer, bowls, hookas, bongs, lots of weed.