The Board

It was beyond silent that morning. Knee-deep fresh powder swallows every sound. Freezing cold, and not another soul in sight. Jeans, work boots, wool mittens, and a snowboard I had ordered off a skateboard distributor's price list. I had never seen another snowboard. I had never seen anyone ride one, not even on video.

At the top of the sledding hill at the golf course, with more balls than brains, I turned left toward the slope nobody in their right mind would sled down. Strapped in, I scooted hard to get moving in the deep snow and ripped big powder carves all the way to the bottom. Looking back up at the smooth arcs I had left, I whispered "this is my thing." Then I hiked back up and did laps until I couldn't feel my fingers and toes.

My first day on a groomed run was a different story.

I was the worst rider among my friends, the one everybody waited for at the bottom and made fun of on the lift. I wanted to be the best, but that takes time on snow...a lot of time.

We were poor. There was no money for snowboards or lift tickets, so I worked a minimum wage job and skipped lunch at school to scrape the money together. Weekends and nights under the lights at the small local hills. Watched videos of the pros, over and over, trying to copy what they did.

I was putting in the work and I was getting better, but something was still holding me back.

The top pros rode their own pro-model boards. Those boards had to be what helped them ride better, so I needed one. It took a summer of working to scrape together the money for one. Then I rode it, and nothing changed. Why would the best riders in the world ride a board that doesn't help?!

Then it clicked!

Each pro-model was built for that pro's body. Not my body.

So I started chasing the board that fit my body. Width made the biggest difference: maximizing leverage while minimizing toe and heel drag for my specific riding style.

Everything changed when I got the perfect width board for me.

My riding improved fast. Soon I was one of the best riders in my group, and my friends wanted to know how. I told them the truth: it's my board. They went out and bought the same board. It didn't do for them what it did for me, because it wasn't built for their bodies and riding style.

I designed and built my first custom board in 1995 and have never gone back to riding a board made for someone else. By 1997 enough riders were asking that I had to start building for them too, and that taught me the second thing.

Not everyone wants to ride like me.

Riders with different riding styles need a different body-to-board fit.

That is what Custom Cult is. The riders you meet on this site designed their own boards here and opened up the math behind them as a guide for everyone. Pick the rider whose riding style you want, tell us about your body, and we calculate your board from there. Then it gets built, one at a time, the way I build my board.

Marty Bonacci