skiing on dry surface

Hi everyone,
I live in Australia where as you may know we have rather short snow seasons lasting at best three months and pretty poor quality snow. For the past few years I have been thinking how we could enjoy something that at least remotely resembles skiing and finally came up with a relatively simple design of skiing device that can carve on dry surface. I had earlier tried rolling tread based ski and researched many other products such as roller ski, Herb carvers etc. and they do not seem to be anywhere near carving ski in terms of turning and speed control. I spent a few bucks on patent applications and building prototypes but I am not sure if I should risk more funding to make a few more pairs (short series manufacturing is quite expensive). This brief video taken on the day my gear was made shows how it works. The front and rear wheels turn in sync on rolling knees. The turning radius can be as short as 1.5m. They are about 1m long. I am sourcing larger wheels and will try them on grass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eiSip6J03Q

I would appreciate your feedback which would help me make my mind whether I should try taking it further or just stop here and enjoy riding my prototype in preparation for the skiing season. Please let me know if you think that this is something suitable for learning, training, preparing for the snow or just enjoying in summer.

You will have to post a clip of how your invention works on a steeper gradient to gauge whether your idea is worth persuing.

twofish wrote:You will have to post a clip of how your invention works on a steeper gradient to gauge whether your idea is worth persuing.

That's the plan. I am ordering larger wheels suitable for grass. I'll be more comfortable trying steeper slopes on a more forgiving surface. I'll post the video as soon as I have it.

Thats ridiculous... THIS is how we do it in Morzine!!...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3vE7GBnyx9g

can we have a pic of you in one of those costumes..!

yours looks ok to me for smooth tarmac but you might need some heavy padding as stone is not really forgiving.but as to grass there were some tracked jobbies around years ago as I seem to remember

scapula wrote:Thats ridiculous... THIS is how we do it in Morzine!!...

Wow. I'll think about making the wheels retractable like landing gear. Imagine how it would work if you could pull the wheels up in full flight and switch from my mode of operation to yours. We have to combine our efforts :)

Well now we know what Icey & Snapzzz do at weekends -)

here you are

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJUQshR-DPA

and in detail

http://www.grasski.com/application/home.php?lang=en