Riding Journal

Loveland 11/19/09: Demo Day

Despite a late night in Summit County, day 2 of demos meant getting back on snow bright and early for more boards and bindings to try out.   The weather remained beautiful all day long and offered up the perfect opportunity to take laps with friends while trying new gear.

The K2 guys making sure a rider is dialed into the gear

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Our crew:  Doug, Philip and myself

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I took out a couple more setups to try out, today was the Lib Tech Banana Magic, Arbor Push, Rome Agent, K2 Slayblade, K2 Auto Agogo’s, Nitro Rook, Burton Feelgood V-rocker and Burton Lipstick.  All will be coming soon in reviews on how each one rode.

Philip testing the flex and buttering of a board

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Doug testing out one of the boards on the flat box

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Towards the end of the day we got goofy on the slopes and those crazy Mervin kids took out the biggest boards for some downhill extreme eurocarving runs.  Dan led the pack with his backwards snowboarding movement…it might catch on.

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Carving on big boards

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That’s it for the last day of the shop demos and now it’s back to normal routine.  All of those reviews will be coming shortly on the blog!

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  • jkm
    November 19, 2009 at 8:36 pm

    shay, i hope you find some way to make a living off this blog — you are the only person in this industry where your readers can say “hey, could you review ______” and you actually go do it, not influenced by how much burton spends on advertising or how your readers respond to x vs y. i really want to thank you — seeing that you demoed so many things i and others have asked about in the chat box, in blog comments, etc. is amazing.

  • Matze
    November 20, 2009 at 12:40 am

    Hi Shay,

    I am really interested on your opinion about the Lipstick. My girlfriend rode it last season and was not really satisfied. Now she has an Evo and is very happy 🙂

  • Shay
    November 20, 2009 at 6:56 am

    JKM, Thanks for the props. Everytime I put out the readers input, I take that list and write in my notepad that stays in my pocket. Then when I walk up to a demo tent I go through and find the boards that you guys want reviews on. I definitely try to do that so everyone has input on what I ride versus just me picking what to review, more fair that way and makes everyone happy hopefully. So thank you!

    Matze, First thoughts were it was fun for park but outside of park, had to slow down and didn’t ride as well. FUN in the park and very playful, easy ride but also nothing more outside of that. Softer flex than the Evo definitely.

  • JP
    November 20, 2009 at 7:11 am

    looking forward to the Slayblade review for sure.

  • C- chillin
    November 20, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    Hey shay, I have been reading your reviews for a long time as one source in my many faceted board search. If you get the chance to demo anything again in the near future i would really like to see what you think on burton’s flying V stuff, it appears to be more of a double camber like nitro as opposed to the rocker+ micro camber spring tail style of mervin C2 and never summer RC.

  • Zach
    November 23, 2009 at 10:25 am

    Hi Shay,

    So how was the Banana Magic?

  • Shay
    November 23, 2009 at 6:48 pm

    JP, it’s coming 🙂

    C-chillen, definitely I will try to get on that for you! There will be more Burton demos at the end of this month that I should be able to make.

    Zach, Banana Magic I really liked. It’s more freeride orientated so it’s stable and you can charge with it while still having a good time in the park. Sidecut was exceptional.