New Arbor Draft board rocks!!

Last weekend I was able to ride my new Arbor Draft board for the first time. I had planned to go to Ishiuchi Maruyama on Friday afternoon, but I got held up at work and decided to go to the smaller but closer Matsudai Family Ski. I set up my board an bindings to the default settings and did some test runs to see how it felt. I made adjustments after every run and pretty soon the board felt perfect.

It really surprised me how different it felt from my old board. The new board feels more stable at speed and on corners and also a lot more forgiving. If I made a mistake and lost my balance, it felt like the board would try it's best to stay on my feet. I don't know if it's because the new board is shorter so it can turn quicker or if the build helps it respond more quickly, but to know that small mistakes will be forgiven is a great confidence boost. I also did a couple of runs straight down the slope as fast as I could and it felt great.

On Saturday I went to Ikenotaira, partially because I can get half-price birthday tickets all through January, but mainly because it has great powder runs and I wanted to see how my board responded to that. And it does really well. Again, it felt more responsive and turned more quickly (essential to avoid those trees!). My main worry was that a smaller board would sink more into the powder, especially with my weight on top, but that wasn't the case. The new board glided (glid?) on top of the snow with no risk of sinking.

On Sunday I went to Cupid Valley with Keiko and Fedor. They're both learning how to snowboard this season so I've offered to be their snowboard instructor! It did mean that I didn't get chance to rip up Cupid like I normally would, but I did find myself riding fakie (backwards) most of the day so that was goo practise. It also gave me timeto think more about my set up and I've concluded that my board is superb, the bindings are great but maybe my old boot are a bit too big. My feet are moving too much inside the boots so maybe a size smaller would be better.

So, I can't wait for the weekend now for more sessions in the snow. Erik and I have birthday's this weekend so our plan is to go to Hakuba in Nagano to play on the slopes and then go to Reggae Snow Splash. Should be fun!!