Heh, this is how your son and I met. We were at A-Basin a few years back and both of us had the following year Bonafides and both were mounted with vintage 997 Equipes. Both looed at each others skis, our eyes met and just gave each other "the nod". Later in the day we crossed tracks again and started chatting, we put two and two together and your name came up along with Epicski.
Yep. To be factually correct, 916's or 920's on his. He was an Elan athlete, many years ago, and they were hooked up with the athlete's choice of Salomon or Marker. All in on Solomon, with VIST plates. Now, in the much different world back then, 12 or so years ago, they just threw a lot of stuff his way. He had a lot of red/silver bindings {embarassed to say how many!}, including spares. Then, before most had been skied, he gets a shipment of a full duplicate supply of black and silver bindings. For his tech skis, speed skis, etc. Matched the graphics better! No red on the topsheets.
Mount all of those. What do I do with the others? Just keep them. Might need them. The next summer and fall? All new bindings arrive for each pair of new skis. And they were doing a lot of development on speed skis. For a while each new pair came with bindings, I think until my son said it was just not needed! Yeah....those days ended about then! But we had a ton of Solly metal bindings in the house. Wish we kept them all. I used a number of them, and we just kept a lot in the closet. When his race days were over, he started mounting them.
And it was nice, as although he was with Blizz as a coach, they were fine with his binding choice. He's been a big fan of Blizz/Nordica and their lineup. When he first skied a Bonafide in 2011, out at Hood, he called me and said "you really need to try these!" Had a mix of Solly, Head and a pair of P-18's on a lot of Blizz skis.
Those Solly's are hard to kill. His roommate has on Dynastar through college, and I think there were some P-18 9I6 trades after graduation. I know that his college ski buddies, away from the industry are always looking for his castoff stuff these days.
Are you still skiing any of your older Solly's?
I have had ZERO regrets, other than nostalgia with the STH2 16's. Wife LOVES the 13.
A lot of good bindings out there, too!
But we need the P-15 to return!
, however, I have found that in the higher end bindings (PX15 in my case) I can actually turn down the DIN as they seem to be more flexible and offer better retention at lower settings, than the similar lower general use binding set in the middle while offering similar release characteristics (subjective comparison).
