First ride on a SIMS Burner 188

To all those who may not have ridden a SIMS burner I offer the following.

For perspective I have been riding carving boards since about 92 and ride pretty aggressively and even when I don't I can give a board a workout at about 6-3 275 Lbs. I only get about 15 days on snow a year and would put myself in the mid range of general carvers in regards to ability.

On 2-20-11, I had my first true ride on the seemingly mythical, love it or hate it, SIMS Burner. This was a 188 model in great shape and I was to ride fresh early AM corduroy at Mammoth. Now I say my first "true" ride as I had about 30 minutes on it last year but was chomping at the bit to ride a brand spankin new Donek custom FC I had ordered. So I only had it out for a short couple of runs. On the first run I biffed it after a mere 50 yards ha ha, and I was immediately humbled thinking to myself this is going to be a really long day.

So that was then and this is now, back to this February.

I took it up and came down slow getting the feel for it. Everything slow and methodical. It was very smooth, without chatter and as others have stated, just rock solid…"like a closet door" ha, I think is what I had read once. By the third run I opened it up a bit and laid over a couple toe-side turns. The burner exuded confidence and I tried a few heel-side turns. Both felt great and I found that with the swallow tail it does seem to ride a bit shorter than it's 188 length. It does need some room though and for me I found I really had to be pushing it all the time to get it to turn sharply. It was not a board to just cruise on and by the end of day two I was ready for something a bit more user friendly. Bottom line, after figuring it out to the best of my 15 days a season ability would allow, I said to myself, I will never sell this thing! In summary I feel that when I am fresh and on my game, this thing is a blast to ride and the whole time I felt like it was saying, "Come on dad, let me off the leash, I want to run." If you are a big guy and ride hard with a solid ability you will probably love the burner. For me it is a better board than I am a rider as I told the two dozen or so people who asked questions about it in the lift line, but after this past week, I feel I had tamed it enough to really start enjoying it and found myself thinking hmmm I wonder what the 197 would be like…