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The skier-snowboarder feud? It’s in large measure old hat, kept alive by the media template that “confrontation makes news.”

While it’s true that snowboarding and skiing have some fundamental differences, they have some similarities as well, which means that a snowboarder can gain insight from a skier and vice-versa.

The Ski Diva is a blog published by Wendy Clinch. As the name suggests, the Ski Diva is written by a woman skier, for women skiers. (There’s also a discussion forum associated with it, but it’s a “no boys allowed” club.) Yet the Ski Diva blog also has some things to say that men snowboarders, and indeed all snowboarders can profit from. Here are some of my favorite entries:

Skiing steep, which points to two resources that give you a better understanding of your favorite mountain;

O Say Can You See, or what to do when you can’t see well on the slopes;

Have you ever shared a pass?, about theft of service and child care, and a few resorts’ family-friendly ticketing practices;

Ski diva goes legit, about Wendy’s entry to an association of snowsports journalists (you go, girl!);

Getting back into skiing … after the kids arrive;

The Zen of Skiing, or reflections on skiing (or snowboarding) as a metaphor for life;

Skinny on Reviews, or how to read reviews about skis (or snowboards);

Core of your being, about core strength training, an overlooked part of snow sliding;

A conversation about fear, and its place on the mountain; and

Things I don’t get about skiing, a list of habits that imperil human health and well-being.

If you look at shopping as the thrill of the chase, you might take a look at the web site SteepAndCheap.com.

SAC, as it’s often abbreviated in Internet discussion forums, sells a lot of gear for the outdoors: clothing, helmets, altimeters, tents, sunglasses, camp stoves and the like.

It has a somewhat unusual business model. SAC doesn’t, like a traditional merchant, have a lot of “shelves” of stuff that you can look at. Instead, it sells one item at a time–and only one item at a time–until it’s gone. Then another item comes up on the auction block. Actually, there’s no auction and there’s no block, but that gives you an idea of how the goods are rolled out.

If you don’t want that Big Agnes sleeping bag that’s up for sale at the moment, a quick look at a sidebar widget gives you an idea of how long it will be before something else is for sale.

I have one beef with the site, but it’s a significant one: So fare, it doesn’t have anything I would like to buy. On the other hand, it often offers “Big Agnes” sleeping bags, something I don’t have much interest in.

So far, snowboarding gear has been rare, though some people report having purchased Flow bindings on the site. Me, I’m still waiting for a ski mask that I can squirrel away for those coldest days of next season.

Are small ski areas inconsequential? By no means.

Here’s what the Three Rivers Park District (Minneapolis, not Pittsburgh!) has to say about its Hyland Ski and Snowboard Area:

“Start at Hyland and you can truly go anywhere. Whether it’s becoming a 2006 Olympian in alpine [slalom] skiing like Edina’s Kaylin Richardson, a Winter X Golf [halfpipe] medalist like St. Louis Park snowboarder Steve Fisher or simply starting a lifetime of fun that takes you to larger hills and thrills, thousands of people have learned to slide on snow at Hyland.”

Granted, this is a self-serving statement from a marketing brochure. But it’s true. Lots of good things, whether it’s careers as “action sports” heroes or a life of enjoyment on the slopes, start on the smallest of hills.

I came across a new (to this season) blog called Snowboard Women. I’m not sure how old Erica (riding since 1999) and the rest of her Southern California-based gang are, so I’m not sure if they’d be comfortable identifying with the Grays on Trays demographic, but they do get “age points” for remembering vinyl records.

Also, I liked the post “Snowboarders Getting Older.” At least I plan to be snowboarding while getting older, as are the folks on the Grays on Trays discussion board.

The blog has a post on pre-season conditioning that comes with this twist: strengthen those triceps.

Say what?

“You heard me. Unless you have step-ins, you’re gonna spend a fair amount of time sitting at the top of the run strapping in. Once your gear’s all set, you gotta push yourself up off your seated position… over and over! Getting your arms prepped will prevent you from being too sore the next day.”

Not a bad idea to tone those arms, of course. But you could also get some Flow bindings and avoid that sitting on your bum.

At the start of this season I bought some new boots. They’re Salomon Maori.

Truth be told, I didn’t quite need to replace my old boots, a pair from Ride. But four things convinced me to make the plunge and buy some new boots. One, the old ones were showing some wear, externally. That’s inevitable, I suppose, but it struck me as a sign of things to come. After all, I had those boots for four seasons.

They were also rather stinky–literally. Athletic gear can get a certain odor about it, and my old boots qualified. And they stunk not just right after a snowboarding session, but the next day, and even some days afterward.

The old boots were also the lace variety, requiring exposing my bare fingers to the cold to tie them up. If I didn’t tie them up, I would drag them through the parking lot, through the mud, and so forth. They also had an unfortunate tendency to come loose.

Finally, I thought it was time to have a fresh start with a whole new kit: snowboard, bindings, boots.

I spent quite a while talking with a shop manager about the board, and went with a Salomon Special. There was a certain logic, then, in choosing a Salomon boot. On their web page for the boot, the company says “If we had to keep one single boot model to sell to all riders, it would be this one.”

Upon the recommendation of the manager, and after walking around in various sizes for a while, I went a full size smaller in this boot than I had in my ride. It took a while to get used to, and was rather painful for the first day or two. In fact, the pressure so great that it caused some bruising on my big toes. So I don’t recommend the one-size-smaller route!

The boot is a step up from the long, round floppy laces of my old Ride boots. There are two lacing systems, both of which use a line thin and some sort of hardware to keep them in place.

There is first a line for an inner layer, a sort of tongue that rests closest to your boot. The outer layer is secured by a separate line.

But after a not-too-frequent season of riding, some weaknesses have appeared. To start with, the heel cup is starting to flake away.

A shop employee blames my Flow bindings, and suggested that Salomon would do the same. I’m not sure what to make of that claim. The Ride boots never had that problem, and I was using Flows with them the whole time.

Then there’s the matter of the clip. The excess line from the inside lacing system tucks nicely inside the boot. The excess line from the outside system has to go somewhere. To tighten this line, you pull on a rather thick handle. The handle works well enough, but it is too bulky to fit inside the boot. Instead, it has a clip that attaches to the top of the boot.

During my trip to Aspen, the clip on one of the boots broke off, leaving me a relatively large handle that, absent the clip, had to be put somewhere. I ended up tying it to my leg with a spare lanyard from a discount card. That’s the bailing-wire-and-duct-tape approach to snowboarding gear.

Unfortunately, the shop did me wrong when I called about the problem. The person I spoke to said “Oh yes, we have those” when I explained the problem. But after I made the 30-minute drive, I found out that no, they don’t have those handles with the clip; they need to be ordered from Salomon. So it’s back to improvising for a while.

There’s another problem with the boots: they feel much too lose around my leg, especially towards the top of the boots. The slop in that part of the boot may be suitable for freestyle tricks, but it is looser than it should be for riding at fast or even moderate speeds.

The search for the perfect not-yet-stinky boot continues.

Here’s something from the world of hockey that might relate to snowboarding: Macho culture vs. bodily safety (Edmonton Journal, 2/15/08).

Richard Zednik, a player for the National Hockey League’s Florida Panthers, was severely cut during a recent game. A teammate’s skate blade came very close to severing his carotid artery, causing severe bleeding. The chinstrap of Zednik’s helmet may have made the difference between life and death.

Author John MacKinnon wonders whether neck guards will become part a player’s equipment list. His conclusion: not any time soon: “inexpensive, well-designed, easy-to-wear gear to protect the brain, the eyes and the throat have been and, in some cases, still are regarded as outrageous assaults on manhood and viewed with collective suspicion and disdain.”

Masks (for goalies) and helmets (for all players) took a long time to catch on, says MacKinnon. Only after a few hardy souls will willing to endure scorn for their supposed lack of courage did protective gear start to make inroads.

“Goalie masks were once thought an affectation fit only for out-and-out cowards. But Hall of Famer Jacques Plante, who famously insisted on wearing one after he suffered a facial injury, was no coward for donning a mask.

On the contrary, he showed extraordinary strength of character to ignore the attempts of his coach, Toe Blake, to bully him out of wearing a mask, not to mention taunts and abuse from players and fans alike. Often, it’s no picnic to ignore groupthink and act rationally. Particularly in a tough, team sport like hockey.

It will take a similarly self-possessed player to be the first to wear a neck guard. But, one by one, it is entirely possible NHLers will come around.

In my lifetime, the NHL has evolved from a league in which one man — Charlie Burns — wore a helmet, to one in which helmets are compulsory.”

So what does this have to do with snowboarding? Both riding and hockey occur in cold places, but other than that, what are the similarities?

The story of the raises some interesting questions about risk, safety gear, and attitudes–all of which are involved in any sport, including snowboarding. A coach quoted in the story says, in effect, “Hey, what do you expect us to do, skate with mattresses attached to our bodies?” The point is well made: risk is inherent in life. You risk injury getting out of bed, stepping into and out of the shower, and driving to the ski area. And yet no sane person suggests staying in bed, not showering, and never driving as means of avoiding injury.

The key to risk is to manage it and take reasonable precautions. For snowboarders, that means, above all, knowing your limits. To learn, you’ll have to go beyond your limits, but do so at a sensible pace. If you’ve spent all your time on the green slopes, you’ll be taking a risk by going on a blue slopes for the first time. But that’s an entirely different matter from leaving the green slope and heading straight for the double diamond slopes with bumps and trees. As they say in the freestyle world, “easy does it.” Don’t attempt to master everything in one afternoon.

Besides using their heads, snowboarders should protect them. Helmets are great for offering protection from low-speed incidents, though they are not so useful in high-speed collisions. In addition to helmets, you might add, as I do, wrist guards, knee pads, and padded shorts.

Each item provides a level of safety and comfort. But the most important piece of safety equipment is your brain. Use it well.

Do a Google search for the words “progressive” and “snowboarding,” and you’ll find over 250,000 hits.

You may be wondering “What in the world does this mean?”

I’ve recently created a new page at GraysonTrays.com to answer that question.

Be sure to check out the related topic of riding levels, which is more related to taking lessons than anything else.

Today I’m adding a new feature to the sidebar, a list of some worthy destinations related to snowboarding. (It’s called “Other destinations.”)

The first one to go up, today, is “The World of Snowboarding Through Fembot Eyes,” or more simply, Shayboarder.

Shayboarder, or more formally, Shannon, is a young (in her 20s) Internet professional with a passion for riding and an ability for writing that surpasses that of many snowboarding enthusiasts. Rather than simply dreaming of trips to the mountains, Shay can easily reach the slopes; she lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Not a bad place to start a career, wouldn’t you say? I’ve known of her from other online forums, and eventually stumbled across her blog. We have exchanged a few pleasant and informative e-mails.

Currently, Shay’s blog has lots of photos from SIA 2008, a big tradeshow of the folks who bring us snowboards, skis, and the like. If you ever wondered what a “splitboard” looks like, you’ll find a photo of one on her blog.

Shay’s blog deserves some recognition here because it has some great photos, insightful comments, and well, she links to this blog. Her blog has an RSS feed, of course, so you don’t have to actively go out and find new content; it will come to you. In the coming days, I’ll comment about something she said that could, not to be too dramatic about it, could save your life.

Welcome, Shay!

Mind if I celebrate a bit?

In her book Outdoors Online: An Internet Guide to Everything Wild & Green (Mountaineer Books, 2007), Erika Dillmam had some favorable things to say about Grays on Trays:

“You don’t have to miss out on the fun just because you don’t like loud, jargon-filled snowboarding sites produced by twenty-year-olds. Leave the logos and beer bongs behind, and pull up a seat at the adult table. Grays on Trays is one of the best introductions to snowboarding on the web–regardless of your age. Created by “a middle-aged guy from the Midwest,” it’s humorous, well-written, and inspiring (not in a corny way, but in a “get off your bum and try something new” sort of way). You’ll need to learn a few basic terms so you can communicate with other boarders, but many, such as “face plant,” “butt plant,” and “boot” are fairly self-explanatory.”

Thanks!

I started this site a few years ago precisely because there didn’t seem to be any place for a grown-up discussion of snowboarding. It’s not that snowboarding is serious stuff (like the complexities of family life, death, the mysteries of faith, or whatnot). Still, adult readers deserve an introduction to snowboarding that doesn’t require them to feel like they’re sitting in their kid’s high school classroom. It’s gratifying to know that my work has been recognized as useful, not only by participants on the discussion board, but in a guide to online resources.

By the way, Grays on Trays has three components: This blog, the discussion board, and the main site itself.

You’re in an airport, waiting a connecting flight to your final destination, which is an airport near a major ski and snowboard destination. It could be Aspen. It could be Jackson Hole. It could be Reno. Wherever it is, you’d like to know if flights are getting into and out of that last airport. What do you do?

If you’ve got a web-enabled device such as a laptop computer with you, head to the flight-tracking web site FlightAware. This site has several features, including one that lets you see recent traffic into and out of any airport.

For example, check out the most recent record for Aspen or Reno.

If you’re a private pilot (or just an aviation geek), you can also get other information such as a Google Earth image, information about FBOs, and a weather history for the last several hours.