I think the girl in the photo there is just trying to work on her switch.
Many years ago, when I was working in the French resort of Les Arcs for a few winters, there was a restobar up the hill that would build a pond skim outside towards the end of the season, and it was a common sight to see a few hundred people hanging out there in the afternoon on sunny days. It was a pretty short length of water, and me and my friends got quite good at going over it straight, with no funny business. Boarding friends started popping 180s or whatever on their attempts, sometimes with a splash and sometimes with success. Good times were had by all.
One day, after a few demi-peches, I decided to have a go at it switch (I had never skied switch before, it wasn't something I'd ever been inclined to try), but because I was skiing on a pair of Salomon Pocket Rockets (the blue ones) with the bindings mounted about a foot behind the centre line, I knew that my weight would be too far forward on the ski (when facing the wrong way) and I'd just arse-over-tit backwards straight into the deep end. So I wandered off to the side, got out my multitool, raised the toepiece on the binding far enough to accept my heel, and voila! Amphibious freeride-mounted skis. Now, my weight would naturally be on the back of the ski when I hit the pond, my tips would sail clear of the water, and I'd skim straight across, switch, with a chorus of whoops and cheers ringing heavily in my ears, to a long line of smokin' bitches all fighting for the first go at my considerable genitalia. I would be a king.
I wasn't sure what happened then, and if I think about it too much now, I still can't work out why this didn't work. The physics were sound (to my mind), but regardless of my calculations, I still got thrown backwards (forwards... towards the front... which way am I facing again?) into the pond as soon as my skis left snow and hit water. My shins took such a beating that I could barely get home, and I didn't ski for about three days after that. Anyway, there were no cheers, there was a lot of whooping (but most of it derisory), and there was no long line of smokin' bitches all waiting for their turn to hop on.
Perhaps the good people of TGR could dissect my experiment and explain to me in words of very few syllables exactly what went wrong?
Thanks guys, you're the best.
