Sorry if this is a double post, my first try apparently got lost in transit.
Thanks so much for the quick responses, I really appreciate it. I'm definitely sold on Alpine Base & Edge. I love to give my business to the small locally owned places over chains. Great tip on the free tuning clinics, I'll definitely have to check those out. It pretty much sounds like this is exactly the kind of shop I was looking for when I started this thread. Great job.

I went with K2 Apache Raiders. I wanted to step up the the Recons but I was caught with a window of time where I had money to spend on skis and it was what I could afford. I figured it'd be a good first pair of skis since I'm in kind of a tweener stage in my ability level (skiing blues and easier black diamonds).