To me, the thing with my Donek & crud is you have to stay pretty
committed; on crud-filled runouts and such where I might relax a bit
more on another board, I have to stick with my carve on my Incline.

At least that's how it seems through the haze of a summer without
riding.


You could substitute a bunch of other conditions for "crud" here and the
result would be the same: Things go better if you stay committed to the
carve. The boards are stable enough so that you *can* stay committed;
however if you try to skid the tornsional stiffness can punish you.

This is IMHO how and why a number of Donek riders claim that "the board made
me a better rider". It rewards the behavior of staying on edge where you
might not otherwise.

This is whyI am so enamored with my Wide. It gave me the confidence to
stay on edge. And now that I spend a great deal of time in hardboots, I
don't have to make the mental adjustment when I do a day in softies. The
same bag of tricks works - really well. Yes, I have tooled around on other
boards (e.g., Supermodel 168) and I *did* have top make the mental
adjustment.

It's a tradeoff - something with more torsional flex behaves IMHO behaves
better when you butter the muffin, boardslide, or do any number of flatland
tricks - or when you screw up your landing in the pipe, something I'm all
too familiar with. (Not that I get any real air in the pipe - I just wind
up pushing myself towards the center of the pipe and not landing on the wall
:|)

Mike T