{"id":1202,"date":"2010-06-09T16:37:09","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T22:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/?p=1202"},"modified":"2010-06-09T11:38:20","modified_gmt":"2010-06-09T17:38:20","slug":"the-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/the-line\/","title":{"rendered":"The Line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been catching a little bit of flack from my friends lately, wondering why I&#8217;m still skiing and not on my bike yet.  The truth is that right now, riding a bike doesn&#8217;t seem that interesting to me.  I&#8217;ve been trying to figure out why getting up at 3am to ski dirty sticky snow is somehow more appealing than riding a bike in the sunshine, and I think I&#8217;ve got it figured out.  It&#8217;s all about The Line.<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully some of you took the time to read and watch Brittany&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/reinhold-messner-on-mental-strength\/\">recent post about Reinhold Messner.<\/a>  In the video, Reinhold talks about seeing a line on a mountain, and then being able to make it a reality.  What only exists in his imagination will be made into reality once he climbs the route.  This works in the same way for skiing, whether it&#8217;s a gnarly route with rappels from one snow patch connecting to another or a big mellow bowl.  A skier can look back and admire the tracks they&#8217;ve laid- big turns, little turns, a slash on a wind lip, a slarve turn on a spine- a skier&#8217;s tracks are their personal signature, their artwork.<\/p>\n<p>Compare that to mountain biking, where the goal is simply to follow the trail.  To be sure, there are always slight variations between riders&#8217; lines on singletrack, but we&#8217;re talking about a difference of inches.  The only person who invents a trail in their head and then makes it a reality is the trailbuilder- every subsequent rider is simply following someone else&#8217;s dream.  Not only that, but most trails aren&#8217;t the result of just one person&#8217;s vision, but are more likely the result of a few people building a trail within the confines of land managers and all the other hoops one must go through to make a trail.  In fact, most trails were probably just a deer or cow trail at one time, all us bikers are just following some dumb cow&#8217;s vision.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;ll probably love the bike again in a couple of weeks.  Thanks to The Line, though, I&#8217;ll always prefer skiing.  Maybe I just need some new gear:  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avantlink.com\/click.php?tt=ml&amp;ti=17645&amp;pw=29053\">Spring 2010 Gear Guide &#8211; The Best And Burliest New Mountain Bikes, Apparel &amp; Accessories At HucknRoll.com.  Valid While Supplies Last. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.avantlink.com\/tpv\/10477\/17645\/23393\/29053\/-\/ml\/image.png\" width=\"0\" height=\"0\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been catching a little bit of flack from my friends lately, wondering why I&#8217;m still skiing and not on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-backcountry-skiing","category-biking","category-random-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1203,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}