After a day of travel, a quick afternoon visit to Swix HQ, I spent Tuesday at the Fischer warehouse setting up the flex tester I brought with me and getting to work picking all of our ski orders for specific clients and filling out our inventory as well. 

Flying these days is kind of a bummer and rather expensive, so trying to get a custom-made industrial machine like a flex tester across the country was no small challenge.  I spent a day disassembling everything and packing it into a giant, styrofoam-padded box.  Due to weight and size restrictions, I had to put the table part of the flex tester in a separate box, with the solid steel tower that holds the actuator in my luggage.  That did not leave a lot of room or weight available for stuff like clothes, shoes, etc, so I'm running a little lean on this trip.  After paying my $100 fee for a second, oversized bag, I made it through to the plane wondering if the flex tester would make it on the plane, given that any non-comatose TSA personnel might consider an eight-foot aluminum tube crammed full of electronics, hardware and funny-looking devices somewhat suspicious.

Upon arrival in Boston, however, all was fine and the box and my bag were spit out onto the baggage claim unceremoniously and nobody ran out of the shadows to cuff me when I picked it up.  When I unpacked it Tuesday morning at Fischer, copious amounts of "inspected by TSA tape" made it obvious that they had taken the entire rig apart and put it back together.  I was impressed because it took me a day to pack that thing, and TSA had done it in less than twenty minutes so my bag could still get on my flight.

The skis look great.  After spending a day looking through the inventory, everything looks pretty strong with lots to choose from, and the highest quality and consistency we've seen yet.  Fischer's Computer Matching System (CFC) appears to be getting better and raising the bar for consistency in skis.  It is great for us because it allows us to focus on picking the cream of the crop, instead of rejecting countless pairs when each ski is individually good, but the pairs do not match well.

Zach learned some new tricks for selecting skis when he visited Fischer Austria to pick race stock last month, and the combination of CFC tightening up the production quality and these new methods, I was able to look at about 400 pairs of skis today and pick a good number to examine further on the flex bench Wednesday.

Give us a call today if you want us to grab a hand-selected ski for you.  We'll be making another trip in September, but the inventory is fantastic right now and it looks like this may be the best time of the year to pick Fischers.