I'm a woman

I'm a woman
Photos copyright Laurence Gouault
No reproduction on other media without the photographer's permission.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

My new ride , maaan, by Stevie Speed Haston


So when the snow was high and joy was soaring, I realized what I needed to hit warp factor 5 was an old fashioned board the kind that aren’t made anymore cos everybody is too lazy. Lots of good designs in gear are shelved only too be replaced by shite that sells, no matter that it only does a reasonable job and not an excellent one, that’s why you get salopettes with 15 zips but you can’t actually walk in. In deep snow you need a long board, don’t let the makers tell you anything else. And it goes by weight, so if you are a big bloke you need a board with a lot of floatation. I ride 162 if there isn’t much snow, I go 175 for a lot of my riding, and I used to in the old days go bigger. People say you can’t ride boards that long but I do and what’s more I like too which is the point for me. I like being in the turn but love long curves rather than turns, and I don’t mind if I only enjoy the good snow at the top of the mountain. Anyway to cut a long story short I have a size problem! And I have a stiffness problem, if a board is too soft it bends to much in the turn and dumps speed. So what to do, I moaned and winged, couldn’t get what I wanted and then remembered I’d seen a display model, a bit of eye candy in a friends shop. So after appropriate Italian negotiations we liberated the board and I went surfing, and verily it was good, no scratch that it was great. So the board is 188, an old Regis Roland model swallow tail, never been ridden and is generally thought of as a difficult board.