Explore europe in a campervan

While at Les Prodains we’ve waxed our snowboards.  This needs doing periodically; actually most people would probably have it done before each week’s holiday on the mountains so we’re a bit late!  We had the boards fully serviced at Big Dreams snowboard shop in Wareham, Dorset, before we came away, so after 7 weeks of boarding it was well overdue.

Last year we borrowed an old iron from Gwyd, who was staying here in a van too but came prepared.  This year, rather than spending €50 on an electric iron specially for the job we found an old-fashioned non-electric iron, for heating in a fire, in the hardware shop in Morzine.  €10!

We heated the iron on the hob and used it to melt the wax and drip it onto the board.  When there was enough we used the hot iron to spread the wax out, covering the whole base as evenly as possible.  Then, using a car windscreen ice scraper we scraped the excess wax off.  Finally, using a kitchen scouring pad we smoothed the wax off and gave it a little bit of texture. Done!  This would have cost around €6 to have done in a board-hire shop so if we do it a couple more times we’ll have saved a little bit of money and done it at our convenience.

We had to take Simon’s board in to a snowboard/ski shop for a bit of attention.  It’s had a hard life, even though he bought it new and it’s a Burton Custom – supposedly one of the best boards you can get!  After a season and a half and several week-long holidays it’s really showing it’s age and the edge has started to crack.  The metal all around the edge is really important because that’s how the board gets some grip on the snow.  We took it to a branch of a well-known chain (Intersport!) in Avoriaz who quoted €150!  Then Changabang shop referred us to a good servicer in Morzine who fixed the edge in 2 days for €15.  Hopefully it’ll stay together until the end of the season now,  but a new board and bindings will definitely be in order if we make it out here next year.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 8:03 am and is filed under Diary, Snowboarding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.