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Ski Tuner Surfboard Shaper Mountain Bike Builder Fly-fishing Store Life Advice THE BEST SKI TUNER Jim Deines, PRECISION SKI, FRISCO AND KEYSTONE, COLORADO Precision Ski co-owner Deines and his 25-person crew have been putting out top-flight tunes since the early eighties, combining time-tested hand skills with machine techniques on the highest-quality Montana stone grinders. Their expertise is
$45 for a full-service tune-up; 970-668-3095 Back to the top THE BEST SURFBOARD SHAPER Rusty Preisendorfer, RUSTY SURFBOARDS, SAN DIEGO, CA Now known the world over by the letter R., Preisendorfer built his first surfboard factory in 1969 out of a high-school friend's converted chicken coop. His reputation grew steadily throughout the 1970s at other outfits, like San Diegobased Gordon and Smith, but Preisendorfer really hit it big in 1984 when Aussie surfing legend Mark Occhilupo dominated the world pro tour on a Rusty tri-fin thruster. Two years later, more than half of the world's top 16 surfers were riding Rusty's shapes. Today, his company makes custom boards for grommets and prosincluding those for C.J. Hobgood, the number oneranked surfer in the world at press timeand Rusty himself still comes into the shop on most weekends to shape boards for a few lucky friends. Starting at $430; 858-578-0414; www.rusty.com Back to the top THE BEST MOUNTAIN-BIKE BUILDER
MOOTS, STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLORADO Established in 1981 by mountain-biking pioneer and Hall-of-Famer Kent Eriksen (above), Moots is a small customizing outfit that pushes the envelope of design. The shop's 12 employees hand-build a modest 650 bikes per year. In 1986, they helped initiate full suspension with the YBB (Why Be Beat), the first all-suspension bike to win a NORBA cross-country championship, and in 1991, they made the revolutionary switch from steel to lightweight titanium. A Moots-built bike won't come cheap, but acquiring the latest design, the Smoothie, will leave you with the strongest, lightest, most durable cross-country mountain-bike frame on the planet. $5,175 for a Smoothie; 970-879-1676; www.moots.com Back to the top FLY-FISHING STORE Jack Dennis's Pro Tackle Shop A stupendous combination of five 20-year-veteran employees, some 700 fly patterns (many tied locally), and Jackson, Wyoming's most experienced stable of guides easily qualifies Jack Dennis's Pro Tackle Shop as the best in the country. Need more proof? Among a slew of other notables, regular customers in the shop have included four of the last six presidents (Ford, Carter, Bush Sr., and Clinton). 800-570-3270; www.jackdennis.com Back to the top The Best Advice "Do not burn yourself out. Be as I ama reluctant enthusiast...a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards." Edward Abbey (1927-1989), author of The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire, at a 1987 Earth First! rally at the Grand Canyon. Abbey was an Outside correspondent from 1980 until his death. Back to the top
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TODAY'S NEWS UPDATE!
Bike 1, Cop 0 This July, a New York City police officer and a cyclist had an altercation of some sort. The cop claimed the man had ... ![]()
Vuelta a Espana: Rest Day 1 Wrap
Vuelta riders take a break today, along with a 300-mile transfer from Toledo to Barbastro, in the ... ![]() advertisement
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