With the purchase of my Connelly Carbon Course, I felt motivated to document and share the progression of water skis that have gotten me to this point:


From left to right:
1) O'Brien Imperial Combo 170mm- this is the combo that I learned to ski on and progress to slalom. These skis have been in my family for as long as I can remember and have taught countless people how to ski. I spent eleven years riding this single ski, granted it was usually one weekend out of the year, but it is where most of my fundamentals were developed. You have to fight to put it on edge and you wobble forward, back, left, and right the entire time. Note the flimsy overstretched zero support binding.

2) The Big Monster. This is Dad's ski of choice. It's wood, it's heavy, skinny, and old. I never got the hang of it -- to me, it was more of a "hang on" point-and-go type of ride. I preferred the cheap O'Brien 90% of the time.

3) HO Charger 69" (2004 model) -- This was my first shaped ski and the first modern ski that I ever rode. I purchased this one as a means to get off of the O'brien. It took me to a whole new level of skiing. It's surface area is considerable, and while it allowed me to raise my performance, it also put a cap on it. Managing slack was the name of the game on this ski. The best contribution: a REAL binding and RTP!!!

4) Kidder Graphite Supreme 66" -- After realizing that the HO was causing me to develop some bad habits, I picked up this Kidder at Play-It-Again for $45. That's the best $45 I ever spent on equipment. As the first "competition" ski that I had the chance to ride, it taught me a lot about the art of slalom. There was no going back to the HO after getting a taste of the acceleration of this ski. Note that the HO bindings quickly made their way onto the Kidder!

5) Connelly Carbon Course Millennium 67" -- "Holy crap" were my words after my first outing on this stick. Take everything that I learned from each of the previous progressions above and multiply them by ten -- that was the experience on this ski. Finally, everything that I had been reading about was making sense to me. No longer do I have to work on telling the ski want to do: this thing is already designed to do it! This bad boy wants to be on edge and when you let it go there, it's like flipping on a switch that none of my previous skis were equipped with. My form and motions are now simply an extension of this ski's natural built in capabilities. Granted, if I hadn't worked so hard on the HO and Kidder to this point, I would have no clue of what I was doing on the Connelly. I assume this holds true with any high end tournament ski. I now have a lot more to learn and a long way to go!

Feel free to expand this and share your own ski evolution here.[/img]