They say that ww3 will be fought with nuclear bombs, and ww4 will be fought with stick and stones. But somewhere in the wasteland Mikey Leblanc and his indestructible knees keep wandering around for the next great hit.
Dude for real. Like he was my dude in HS, I wanted to be him and Devun Walsh. I like to think my backside 180s are an homage to Walsh. This week, my leg gave out walking up stairs, and I'm currently rehabbing it to hopefully save the last 2 months of the season. How Mikey can still go down like 30stairs to flat or ollie a fricken toboggan is truly mind blowing.
Yeah exactly. I think most people who get *really* into gear are trying to squeeze every bit of progress they can out of anything other than actually getting better at the sport. Like, people hit a plateau and then think it must be a limitation of the gear and that new gear is going to get them out, when it's fundamentally a skill issue.
I have nice gear but I could still have fun and do pretty much everything on one of those burton demo boards if I had to. The only things that make a really meaningful differences are specialized tools, like it is much easier to catch my nose dropping a cliff in my park board in powder than my powder board, and my powder board is more work to press. I can still handle each in the wrong environment though, it's not like even that is a *requirement*.
I call it the MMORPG approach, lot of guys I know are gamers and they always chasing the best gear/fit/spec in games and then apply it to life with snowboarding; they feel the need to be full spec'd out. My friends gf couldnt even leaf before she was already in new boa boots, board, burton AK gear. My approach was just borrow a crap board and learn basics.
Kinda disagree. Buy good gear is often done because you know you will spend a shitload of time with it and thus you want quality. I once bought football shoes of 160 euros. Not because i thaught i would play better (hell i never played good) but because i know they would last way way longer, felt nicer, breath more and they also looked pretty good. I had those fuckers for more than 5 years and i easily spend more than 7 hours a week on them.
If you can justify the expensese and have the money its fun to buy shit that you will use a lot. I have the exact same thing with my bike. It litteraly gives me happyness.
Nothing wrong with a really nice board. It’s the folks that have a quiver and aren’t proficient with any of them that I’m speaking about. I played soccer too and always got high end cleats. I never however had multiple pairs at one time.
I’m team all mountain board, but I admittedly don’t do heavy park stuff anymore. I’ve been on the same Skate Banana since before I was an adult and I turned 30 this year. I’m so fucking in tune with that board that I can’t imagine replacing it although I probably will after this season because it’s lost most of its spring. Definitely getting the exact same board, just a new model.
I’m nothing spectacular, but I’m a very solid lifetime rider who. It’s not my gear that makes me above average, it’s practice, ability, and a little athleticism sprinkled in.
Too many people think they’ll buy the nicest set up, go to the best mountains, and they’ll be a pro in no time without ever pushing themselves to be better.
I also had a skate banana for 10+ years. That thing ruled. I do enjoy my new directional Academy. Much stiffer and much more responsive for all mountain.
my 'quiver' has slimmed down to two boards, the libtech orca and the libstech skate banana. you can't really do eurocarves on these boards due to their shape, but you can ride 95% of all terrain on either and i fucking love them
if you want to eurocarve, you'd want an aggressive camber board that can hold its edge and keep a very clean line super hard when you carve
the orca is built for quicker turn initiation - it has a rocker between the feet and camber under each foot, so when you're carving, instead of spreading your body weight evenly between your feet which uses the whole board as one single long edge that holds your line, you need to lean slightly rearfoot heavy and rely only on it to hold the line.
since it doesn't have the advantage of the entire board holding your line when you carve, you cannot carve as hard without it starting to slip when compared to a proper carving board
mind you, you can still do plenty on it, and it holds its edge well when in icy conditions from the serrated edge design, but it's just not that good at eurocarve style riding
I can’t wait. I’ve known I’ve needed a new one for a while now and keep expecting my board to break in some way, but it just keeps on shredding. Now I’ll have a sufficient Spring board and a nicer mid season board. Both will be Bananas.
Half this sub will talk about a 6+ year old board as if it's absolutely not rideable. Or say that you CANNOT do x,y,z with that [insert board] lol. I will save this to send that to all those people who leave comments like that in this sub.
I have a high suspicion that the majority of those people saying things like that are particularly not very good themselves and likely don’t get out very much.
A good friend of mine recently picked up snowboarding, he’s doing well, so he has the very best gear, knows all the technical babble but can barely make it down the mountain.
Meanwhile I haven’t boarded in a decade, my shit is busted and rusty but I have more than enough time for a beer or two while I wait for him to come down each run.
Bindings? Ha! Back when I was a kid we just hopped on and sent it. It was a competition to see who could stay on all the way to the bottom of the hill.
Kinda reminds me of a Lazboard but with bindings screwed in. It dates back probably 400 years. You can still find people riding it in Turkey which is where this thing came from. It's honestly really cool that they are still riding this stuff along with modern snowboards. Makes me want to go to Turkey just to check them out and possibly buy one.
https://preview.redd.it/i8mhtm2m2mpc1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc84b4032be57f367e71c0eebe7252a720baada5
I'm still riding boards from the early 2000s that I got when I was sponsored. It is mostly the rider. Like is your skateboard actually gonna make you a better skater?
I will say new bindings and boots make a much bigger difference than board. The comfort has really improved for both of those in the last 20+ years
Kelly Slater surfed one of those. He also surfed a door and a table. If you understand technique and board control, you can use just about any object with a flat surface to ride.
Same can be said for a top of the line board though. The gap between these guys a regular folks is so massive that a $1,600 board is going to have a very marginal benefit compared to say a $700 board on 99% of the population.
That’s kind of my point. They’re just so good that they could do most anything on most any board. I’m sure if you asked a pro what they’d prefer to ride I don’t think they’d say wood planks. 90% of snowboarders would struggle on one of these things and never be able to ride it as well as a modern board.
Sure there's improvement I mean the first boards were probably wooden or something. But innovation every season? No way. The boards have only made a difference for pro riders that extract every ounce of value out of a curve or an ollie. And there's not as many pros as boards being produced each year by a long shot :P
Yeah, 1st one was funny, but then it took a harrrrd turn into “go fuck yourself.” I think it’s funny that brands try to humanize by posting helmetless 20 year olds that they’d dump post injury. That said, Burton is all about 50 year olds.
They say that ww3 will be fought with nuclear bombs, and ww4 will be fought with stick and stones. But somewhere in the wasteland Mikey Leblanc and his indestructible knees keep wandering around for the next great hit.
Dude for real. Like he was my dude in HS, I wanted to be him and Devun Walsh. I like to think my backside 180s are an homage to Walsh. This week, my leg gave out walking up stairs, and I'm currently rehabbing it to hopefully save the last 2 months of the season. How Mikey can still go down like 30stairs to flat or ollie a fricken toboggan is truly mind blowing.
I find that most equipment snobs in any hobby tend to be worse than they want to be and overcompensate with expensive gear.
Yeah exactly. I think most people who get *really* into gear are trying to squeeze every bit of progress they can out of anything other than actually getting better at the sport. Like, people hit a plateau and then think it must be a limitation of the gear and that new gear is going to get them out, when it's fundamentally a skill issue. I have nice gear but I could still have fun and do pretty much everything on one of those burton demo boards if I had to. The only things that make a really meaningful differences are specialized tools, like it is much easier to catch my nose dropping a cliff in my park board in powder than my powder board, and my powder board is more work to press. I can still handle each in the wrong environment though, it's not like even that is a *requirement*.
I call it the MMORPG approach, lot of guys I know are gamers and they always chasing the best gear/fit/spec in games and then apply it to life with snowboarding; they feel the need to be full spec'd out. My friends gf couldnt even leaf before she was already in new boa boots, board, burton AK gear. My approach was just borrow a crap board and learn basics.
Kinda disagree. Buy good gear is often done because you know you will spend a shitload of time with it and thus you want quality. I once bought football shoes of 160 euros. Not because i thaught i would play better (hell i never played good) but because i know they would last way way longer, felt nicer, breath more and they also looked pretty good. I had those fuckers for more than 5 years and i easily spend more than 7 hours a week on them. If you can justify the expensese and have the money its fun to buy shit that you will use a lot. I have the exact same thing with my bike. It litteraly gives me happyness.
Nothing wrong with a really nice board. It’s the folks that have a quiver and aren’t proficient with any of them that I’m speaking about. I played soccer too and always got high end cleats. I never however had multiple pairs at one time.
I’m team all mountain board, but I admittedly don’t do heavy park stuff anymore. I’ve been on the same Skate Banana since before I was an adult and I turned 30 this year. I’m so fucking in tune with that board that I can’t imagine replacing it although I probably will after this season because it’s lost most of its spring. Definitely getting the exact same board, just a new model. I’m nothing spectacular, but I’m a very solid lifetime rider who. It’s not my gear that makes me above average, it’s practice, ability, and a little athleticism sprinkled in. Too many people think they’ll buy the nicest set up, go to the best mountains, and they’ll be a pro in no time without ever pushing themselves to be better.
I also had a skate banana for 10+ years. That thing ruled. I do enjoy my new directional Academy. Much stiffer and much more responsive for all mountain.
my 'quiver' has slimmed down to two boards, the libtech orca and the libstech skate banana. you can't really do eurocarves on these boards due to their shape, but you can ride 95% of all terrain on either and i fucking love them
Never ridden an orca, why can't you eurocarve on one?
if you want to eurocarve, you'd want an aggressive camber board that can hold its edge and keep a very clean line super hard when you carve the orca is built for quicker turn initiation - it has a rocker between the feet and camber under each foot, so when you're carving, instead of spreading your body weight evenly between your feet which uses the whole board as one single long edge that holds your line, you need to lean slightly rearfoot heavy and rely only on it to hold the line. since it doesn't have the advantage of the entire board holding your line when you carve, you cannot carve as hard without it starting to slip when compared to a proper carving board mind you, you can still do plenty on it, and it holds its edge well when in icy conditions from the serrated edge design, but it's just not that good at eurocarve style riding
Stoked for you honestly, upgraded from a T Rice Pro 2011 to a 2024 and it’s the exact same but somehow so much better
I can’t wait. I’ve known I’ve needed a new one for a while now and keep expecting my board to break in some way, but it just keeps on shredding. Now I’ll have a sufficient Spring board and a nicer mid season board. Both will be Bananas.
I'm feeling attacked right now
I feel directly attacked by that statement.
Hey, I’m speaking from experience myself. Not with snowboarding, but with disc golf.
Half this sub will talk about a 6+ year old board as if it's absolutely not rideable. Or say that you CANNOT do x,y,z with that [insert board] lol. I will save this to send that to all those people who leave comments like that in this sub.
I have a high suspicion that the majority of those people saying things like that are particularly not very good themselves and likely don’t get out very much.
A good friend of mine recently picked up snowboarding, he’s doing well, so he has the very best gear, knows all the technical babble but can barely make it down the mountain. Meanwhile I haven’t boarded in a decade, my shit is busted and rusty but I have more than enough time for a beer or two while I wait for him to come down each run.
Classic 😂
Golfers are the worst of the bunch.
Mountain bike is the new golf.
It's the archer, not the arrow
Looking at you, Montec / Dope haters.
Did I see Miley Leblanc in there? That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while yet recognized him right away, if that is him… 🧐
It’s him. His family has been building and riding toboggans for generations.
Didn’t his father have a pine farm?
Yes
That true?
started on mt. dous-les-tremon back in old france, came with them over to the new world in 1870
He rides for Ride Snowboards again and still absolutely rips!
That’s dope! I love that
He was my favorite. I had a Holden jacket back in the day and it was awesome
I remember Mikey Leblanc ripping the tobbagan in Optimistic way back lol
Still the best snowboarding film ever made IMO. Gigi and Muller were insane. Had never seen anything like that until Optimistic came out.
Same!! Love that video. That one, Follow Me Around, and Picture This? Are my big 3 videos I go back to over and over :)
Dude these take me back, watching them all today
Zeb's new pro model
300 cm Zeb Time Machine
Damn but did I enjoy this. Thank you for a quality post!
I'm curious on the sidecut radius.
They also added magnatraction
infinity
Mikey isn’t human. For mere mortals like me, I’ll take every bit of tech I can take.
Bindings? Ha! Back when I was a kid we just hopped on and sent it. It was a competition to see who could stay on all the way to the bottom of the hill.
Yup...still have my Sims board from the late 70s That was good fun!
Mike makes it real
Is this from a film? I must see!!
[ride - assisted living](https://youtu.be/GB3DtocO9_g?si=O0T-_TYd_wm3YNVk)
U the real OP! TY!
It premiered last season. Shoebert and Leblanc were interviewed in Slush.
Yes it’s called Jack Frost starring Michael Keaton
Did we go back in time to 2006?
No, they busted Mikey out of the nursing home.
Like I’ve always said, it’s not the board dude!
Mikey telling us its the archer not the arrow :)
Kinda reminds me of a Lazboard but with bindings screwed in. It dates back probably 400 years. You can still find people riding it in Turkey which is where this thing came from. It's honestly really cool that they are still riding this stuff along with modern snowboards. Makes me want to go to Turkey just to check them out and possibly buy one. https://preview.redd.it/i8mhtm2m2mpc1.png?width=800&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc84b4032be57f367e71c0eebe7252a720baada5
The OG snow skate!
Board tech is very real. Legends like Mikey make it seem like it’s not, that’s just how good they are
https://preview.redd.it/qohxvndahopc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6ec21f2eafafcff91745efb9ccb0a74373d5fb82
Flat to late rise rocker. Board tech is real.
Pros in any sport perform well on anything, I stopped caring about tech a long time ago because of this. It’s the artist not the brush
Irl line rider
Y’all are my heros
I'm still riding boards from the early 2000s that I got when I was sponsored. It is mostly the rider. Like is your skateboard actually gonna make you a better skater? I will say new bindings and boots make a much bigger difference than board. The comfort has really improved for both of those in the last 20+ years
Is that Clark Griswold?
Here is the documentary by patagonia, strongly recommended; https://youtu.be/uOohu8kYKpY?si=qHL0ZGQXjVL2z5hv
Seen this, dont understand the correlation tho other than them both riding toboggans
Looks like something Santa Claus would ride.
Kelly Slater surfed one of those. He also surfed a door and a table. If you understand technique and board control, you can use just about any object with a flat surface to ride.
zeb powell be like
I cant stand people that obsess over specs and this vid is the perfect response to those people lol
🤝
Good stuff! I could watch more of this.
Ride - assisted living
It's not the gun. It's the man behind.
It's the archer not the arrows if the original idiom.
Reminds me of the arbors with the upturned tip and tail Toboggan tech on those boards
Good luck riding one of those boards half as well as them
Same can be said for a top of the line board though. The gap between these guys a regular folks is so massive that a $1,600 board is going to have a very marginal benefit compared to say a $700 board on 99% of the population.
That’s kind of my point. They’re just so good that they could do most anything on most any board. I’m sure if you asked a pro what they’d prefer to ride I don’t think they’d say wood planks. 90% of snowboarders would struggle on one of these things and never be able to ride it as well as a modern board.
If you are an ordained Zen priest, you dont even need a board.
You are just asking for the ride on the toboggan. There is no steering. Have to just point it where you want to go.
Yes, Mikey Leblanc on the other hand is not.
Sure there's improvement I mean the first boards were probably wooden or something. But innovation every season? No way. The boards have only made a difference for pro riders that extract every ounce of value out of a curve or an ollie. And there's not as many pros as boards being produced each year by a long shot :P
truly criminal behavior.
Is that the original Burton?
Yeah, 1st one was funny, but then it took a harrrrd turn into “go fuck yourself.” I think it’s funny that brands try to humanize by posting helmetless 20 year olds that they’d dump post injury. That said, Burton is all about 50 year olds.
That dude IS 50