20/02: Additional aerials/Flying five-year-olds
Category: Skiing/Boarding
Posted by: ajmilne
Followup to previous: I’ve been working more on landing simple aerials.
I eventually spent several more hours on the kickers at Fortune, working on those, making sure the first two I landed weren’t just some fluke. And they apparently weren’t—I was landing some three out of four by the end of that, with the falls generally nothing terrible—usually, I seem to teeter too far toeward, if anything, and sometimes I can salvage it just with a quick push off from a hand, thus avoiding greater drama. There’s still a lot to tune, there, tho’, obviously—how much speed I want, thus how much air I’ll get, these are all things I haven’t yet quite got the feel of as reliably as I’d like.
And that’s all important. Among the reasons: it’s actually the short landings that are hardest on the body. Hit a high kicker like that too slowly, and you’re likely to land in the flat right behind it instead of on the downslope beyond—which is hard on the legs. I’ve some minor pull of some kind in and around the inside of my left hip socket, now—nothing stopping me from riding, but it is still a bit raw a good day and change after I did it. Happened on one of those hard, flat landings. The only injury I’ve sustained yet doing this.
Meanwhile, today, I was up at Mont Ste-Marie with my lovely wife and the little guy. And in my non-child-escorting periods, I got into the park, there, too.
Ste-Marie’s aerial features are a lot less lethal than are Fortune’s—these sorta tiny kickers mounted into the tops of huge hip jumps—so you do get some serious height if you want it, but then the landing is pretty much right under you. They look impressive—adding it all up, the first set of ramps is better than six feet in height—but they’re incredibly more forgiving than the kickers I’ve been working on until now.
So it was a good ego boost—you go flying up these crazy-looking curved ramps, but then the landing is an absolute cinch. By the end of the day, I was landing them consistently.
As for the little guy, he’s doing great. His mother took him on his first double black today—Ste Marie’s Toronade—and he handled this gracefully, apparently. He’s been doing blacks pretty regularly, now—a subject of some amusement for and admiration from others on the hill. I happened to be riding up over Carole Anne—a black that goes under the lift—while he was coming down with this mother, and the comments from those riding with me were generally of the ‘Man—that little guy’s amazing’ variety—and yes, that was unprompted—I hadn’t yet told them they were riding up next to his father.
Impressive. He and his sister, both, for that matter.
I eventually spent several more hours on the kickers at Fortune, working on those, making sure the first two I landed weren’t just some fluke. And they apparently weren’t—I was landing some three out of four by the end of that, with the falls generally nothing terrible—usually, I seem to teeter too far toeward, if anything, and sometimes I can salvage it just with a quick push off from a hand, thus avoiding greater drama. There’s still a lot to tune, there, tho’, obviously—how much speed I want, thus how much air I’ll get, these are all things I haven’t yet quite got the feel of as reliably as I’d like.
And that’s all important. Among the reasons: it’s actually the short landings that are hardest on the body. Hit a high kicker like that too slowly, and you’re likely to land in the flat right behind it instead of on the downslope beyond—which is hard on the legs. I’ve some minor pull of some kind in and around the inside of my left hip socket, now—nothing stopping me from riding, but it is still a bit raw a good day and change after I did it. Happened on one of those hard, flat landings. The only injury I’ve sustained yet doing this.
Meanwhile, today, I was up at Mont Ste-Marie with my lovely wife and the little guy. And in my non-child-escorting periods, I got into the park, there, too.
Ste-Marie’s aerial features are a lot less lethal than are Fortune’s—these sorta tiny kickers mounted into the tops of huge hip jumps—so you do get some serious height if you want it, but then the landing is pretty much right under you. They look impressive—adding it all up, the first set of ramps is better than six feet in height—but they’re incredibly more forgiving than the kickers I’ve been working on until now.
So it was a good ego boost—you go flying up these crazy-looking curved ramps, but then the landing is an absolute cinch. By the end of the day, I was landing them consistently.
As for the little guy, he’s doing great. His mother took him on his first double black today—Ste Marie’s Toronade—and he handled this gracefully, apparently. He’s been doing blacks pretty regularly, now—a subject of some amusement for and admiration from others on the hill. I happened to be riding up over Carole Anne—a black that goes under the lift—while he was coming down with this mother, and the comments from those riding with me were generally of the ‘Man—that little guy’s amazing’ variety—and yes, that was unprompted—I hadn’t yet told them they were riding up next to his father.
Impressive. He and his sister, both, for that matter.
Scott Garten wrote: