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I had to come out of posting retirement for this one time stoke.? You all may be a step ahead of me on this subject, but for those for whom that might not be the case, I felt it was worth mentioning.
First of all, just want to say hi to all.
What a complement to have been confused with the consummate gentleman Jim Ratliff.
Got a kick out of the fun ski caddy idea by Gary!
Thanks to Ron for his support with some of the Epic folk still in denial.
Thanks to Michael Barrett for remembering and passing the pipe.
But this leads me back to the subject at hand and to the big thanks owed to John Botti for the tremendous help he gave me on the whole boot subject.? I realized that my knowledge and experience in recent years with skis (and technique) had far surpassed my awareness of the even greater influence of better boots.? A poorly fitted and/or lower performance boot on the best ski will be a worse combination than a boot possessing great performance and proper fit attached to a mediocre ski.? Whatever help I had the pleasure of providing him on the subject of progressive reverse camber/reverse sidecut powder skis, he has helped me with something I believe far more important in introducing me to the esoteric ?little? world of plugs.
The initial credit for the real impetus for this emerging awakening has to go to the amazing Harald Harb who once again broke through layers of long held but nevertheless mistaken principals based on endless mass marketing propaganda (innocently flawed or otherwise), and shattered mainstream misconceptions in his second post in the Essential of the Day thread about the widely applicable goodness of what lesser or non-experts would consider overly stiff boots.? Peter Keelty has also written much on the subject in his plug series, but, not only am I sure that much of this was also inspired by HH, but in the above mentioned post, Harald connected boot stiffness in an imminently understandable way directly to our skiing and the foundations of proper technique.? ?After reading that post I wrote to JB saying that I suspected the time had come for me to stop being lazy about my boot situation and asked him what he thought about my present set up etc.?
John wrote many very informative emails to me giving me a complete education on plug boots as the logical performance fit extension to the stiffness factor (anyway, the boots with the stiffness to make your skiing easier, are anyway basically all plugs).?
Without entering into the details here (repeating what can be read at length in the mentioned sources), John made it clear that my Salomon XWave 10s, besides being too soft, were not at all small enough ? despite my need to grind and punch the shells and do surgery on their custom foam aftermarket liners again and again last year.? Harald?s post and JB?s explanations lead me to be totally convinced to try a pair of plugs.? ?After being spoon fed by him everything I need to know about the process, I will be buying a pair this winter (most likely Nordica Dobermann 130 Pros, pending being shelled etc.).? ?
Wishing everyone a wonderful season,
Regards,
David
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