Scuz Magazine

Scuz mountain boarding magazine rocked.

 

From wikipedia:

"Scuz Mountainboarding Zine was at one time the only mountainboarding publication in the world for the sport of mountainboarding. It was first published in July 2004 as a paid-for magazine, however subsequent issues were published and distributed for free both as a printed hardcopy version and on the internet as a downloadable PDF.

It was announced in October 2006 that issue twelve would be the final issue and in 2007, the magazine would be rebranded as Mountainboard Magazine with a cover charge."

Mountainboard magazine unfortunately folded after 1 issue but if you're feeling nostalgic, Scuz can be downloaded from the following link. Well, issues one to eight anyway.

Starting out as a regular zine with questionable articles - Issue 3(?) 'The Joys of Shoplifting' it was a good entertaining read which by the latter issues became really quite professional. Still worth a read with articles on cleaning your bearings, tyre pressure choice and build your own balance board.

Downhill

'Tis true that while we do indeed live in a country with mountains, they're not always close at hand, hence the woods, the park and the centres. But people do ride the mountains, and occasionally they film their efforts too leading to some excellent sense of speed and scale and personally speaking of the most exciting especially some of the helmet cameras.

Trouble being that a search of youtube (other video sites available) leads to much freestyle, loads of people falling down slopes on wobbly boards, and the occasional boarder-x, but not much big mountain, and then the footage that is available is either bumpy, grainy or just generally unwatchable.

Fortunately some people do like to film this sort of thing, so I've done the hard work below and provided a few links. (I'd inbed videos but that's beyond me to be honest).

Master of the Hill, (2008 footage?)

Evil C's Courchevel 2008 footage hmm, doesn't seem to be working right now...

Pete Tathams (nosno) 'Morzine The Movie'

Or check out Phil Milovanovs sections in either of the Russian Videos Hard Times, or Still Friends.

Feel free to suggest more of the same below.

OMG How fast was that?! Part 2 aka GPS on the cheap

Right, lets keep things simple, cut out the wires, magnets, sensors and all the rest and lets embrace technology. GPS in theory should be able to measure everything we want it to do, contained within a unit flexible to display and record the information we want to know.

Dedicated GPS units have been around for a while now and are popularly used by walkers and mountain bikers alike. Like most things in this world, you can spend as little or as much as you like depending on make, model and functions.

More recently though, GPS units are being integrated more and more into mobile phones, and are being offered free as part of phone contract packages. This is where my current set-up comes in and is merely one way to do things.

Part 1) Acquire the phone!
I've been with Vodaphone for around 8 years now on a package costing me approximately £13 a month with the option of a new phone every year on the proviso that I sign up for a further 18 months. For an extra £1.50 I get an itemised phone bill which ensures that most of my calls which are for business use are claimed back through expenses. This year I opted for the Blackberry 8900 with integrated GPS.

Part 2) Get protected!As we all know, using protection prevents life's little mishaps and given my history with mobiles, is a must! There may be better protection available but plenty of people on the forums rate the Otterbox. Made up from three layers - a transparent layer that covers the screen, a hard plastic shell that clips over the top, and a soft rubber outer covering, its pretty robust and should give the phone a bit more of a change to survive a stacking. On that point, as I do like to ride alone, carrying a mobile is a very, very good idea, again, just in case worst comes to the worst.

The Otterbox does bulk up the phone as a whole, but it is still east to use the keypad and trackball. Maybe not whilst using Hillbilly gloves, but hey! Got mine £25 off ebay from some chap in the UK and as of 3 months riding, is still intact.

Part 3) Get Software!

Commercial software is available for example ViewRanger that has been tested and rated highly by Mountainboard Magazine. Viewranger doesn't support the blackberry unfortunately so the search goes on.

Fortunately, there is some fantastic free software (donation ware) that I primarily use called GPSLogger:

GPSLogger

GPSLogger does everything without being flashy logging your location and height every set interval time. It can then display various pages on screen as shown below, or can export the data in GPX, KML or CSV format for use in MemoryMap, Google Earth or Microsoft Excel.

Simply setup the options such as metric or imperial units and the sample interval in seconds. I tend to use 1 second for downhill mountain boarding, and 15 seconds for hiking. Select 'Start Logging' to begin, and 'Stop Logging' when done (obviously!).

The following screens are an example of me riding down KMC earlier this year. If you think it looks a bit odd then you're right - I fell over near the top and decided to climb back up rather than stop and then start the logging over again. Note that you can use the tracker ball to select individual points on the line trace to get specific information for each particular point.

Speed:
Path:

Elevation:
Updated versions of GPSLogger are released every so often through the webpage so its worth visiting.

Other available packages include TrekBuddy which contains very handy functions, but is currently work-in-progress for me to get to grips with.

OMG How fast was that?! Part 1

My Dad used to say to me - if I want to buy a car that feels fast, don't buy an expensive sports car, buy a low car - one where you are mere inches off the tarmac. And it's true that whist we are all used to speeding along at 70miles an hour on the motorway (legally at least) we don't have to approach anything like that sort of speed to feel fast on our boards.

But just how fast are we going? Does it really matter?

It shouldn't matter, but for curiosities sake, lets explore how we can measure our efforts.

The first device I considered was a digital bike speedometer, the type that can be picked up for around a tenner and use a magnet on the wheel as a trigger. According to the technical documentation available on line, most models allow you to reduce the wheel diameter, or distance travelled per wheel revolution right down to very small units. Remember that this variable is used to calculate the speed and so is important to get right for meaningful results. Some of the very cheap models don't record max speed so check the specifications - it's only usually a couple of quid extra to add this function.

Next job would be the custom fit of the magnet and sensor. Most of the models looked at come with fittings to what would be the bike front fork and to the spoke for the sensor and magnet, and to the handlebars for the digital readout. All of these will need a bit of work to fit in place considering the closeness of the trucks to the ground and the potential to damage/misalign the sensors.

I suppose that the digital readout could either be fixed to the board somewhere, or run up your leg and into a pocket. Always the danger there of getting the wire snagged on a passing tree or possible ripping the wire off. Wireless devices do exist but that results in extra £££s and extra batteries.

This is of course all hyperthetical as I've not tried the above, nor do I know of anyone else who has tried it. I guess the upshot is that its a relatively cheap thing to try out though a fit of work will be required to fix and that the data received will only be as good as the device will manage.

Part 2 - GPS!