I enjoy mounting bindings on skis myself. Although it’s a far cry from actually having built the ski myself, I get a certain satisfaction from drilling, screwing and gluing the binding on. The whole process is also pretty foolproof so even a space cadet such as myself can’t really mess up too badly. When NIS bindings came around last year I was actually disappointed because mounting bindings are the few times that I get to play with power tools.

Backtrack to the “can’t really mess up too badly” claim. This week I found out that I can (and did). Fortunately, I didn’t ruin a good pair of skis; it was only a little oversight on a pair of rollerskis that I uncovered. As I was enjoying the smooth pavement of OB Riley a couple days ago (skating, of course), I could tell there was something funky going on with my left rollerski. I managed to ignore all the warning signs though – cracking sounds, a slight wobble every time I pushed off – and skied along. The following sequence of events, from hearing a loud breaking noise to hitting the pavement to watching a yellow Marwe skip across the road into the other lane, left me utterly confused. Fortunately, there is little traffic on OB Riley. It took me a couple minutes of checking what equipment/body parts were attached to me to figure out what went on.

Leg to foot attachment: check

foot to boot: check

boot to binding: check

binding to ski: obviously not

If you have ever looked down and seen the binding still attached to your boot sans ski, you will understand. It was almost as surreal as seeing my leg without a foot. (I guess I can’t claim that but it seemed that bad.) After I had figured out what had happened, I picked myself off the ground, no injuries, and scootered over to retrive my ski out of the ditch on the other side of the road. The screws were all still in my binding so I improvised a screwdriver out of my key which I had in my waterbelt and successfully reattached the binding. I had a laugh at myself and skied on, although the key is now so mangled it is no longer usable.

How did this happen? I recalled that when I switched my rollerski bindings from Salomon to Rottefella a couple years ago I was in kind of a rush and declined to redrill. I was probably just being lazy. So I just screwed the new binding into the old holes, which works but throws the balance point kind of off. Also, the hole in the middle of the footbed is spaced differently so I skipped that one, meaning that there were a total of 3 screws holding my binding on. I’ve since gotten used to those things/managed to forget them. The only problem was that I didn’t have any wood glue on hand, which I always considered just an extra precaution anyways. Apparently a couple years of rattling around on chipsealed roads can loosen those 3 screws. So glue is important.

The story doesn’t end there. For some reason I tend to ignore problems until that hit me in the head repeatedly. So I took the same Marwes, bindings screwed in but still with no wood glue, out for an easy recovery roll this afternoon. Well, it’s not unexpected that the same thing happened. This time the fall wasn’t as comical… my ski didn’t dramatically fly across the road, it only came to a stop next to my face on the ground like an angry ‘I told you so’. I also had pretty solid ’sternum to asphalt’ contact so I wasn’t laughing that hard. I wasn’t in the least bit confused; I knew exactly what had happened this time so I was slightly mad with only myself to blame. And I managed to break another pole tip (that would the third this summer/fall). There was some unintended specific strength (legs only) for the rest of my workout.

I’m thinking about remounting those bindings properly before my OD skate roll tomorrow but what I am hoping for is a lot of snow tonight.