Freeriding
March 16th, 2004
I hate the word ‘freeride’. I’ve read an article a while ago in a mountain bike magazine that reminded me of my dislike for it. The guy who wrote it was saying that he thinks that jumping off drops is freeriding, riding rocky and rooted sections is freeriding even kids making jumps in the street is freeriding. Hang on a minute, this is what everyone does on a mountain bike, this is mountain biking. My preference is for doing long rides in the hills on technical singletrack. Is this freeriding? Who cares?
Why it must be labelled like this is beyond me, why can’t you just call it mountain biking? Perhaps it’s all just been invented by companies for commercial gain. On the other hand, perhaps I’m thinking too much.
Freeriding seems to have crept into a lot of adventure sports, including kiting where you can buy so called ‘freeride kites’. What on earth defines a freeride kite? Perhaps if we ever get round to making the Wind Things kiteATB DVD we should have a slogan on the front like “The latest in modern-hardcore-progressive-freeride landboarding”. Hmmm.
Despite many different definitions of the word, one common theme is that you are “free from rules”. Bollocks. What rules are imposed on you when you go biking, snowbarding, kiting or anything like that? The only real rules I can think of, apart from having to get home for your tea, are found when you’re competing. Now for the bit that I’ll bet nobody can understand, a classic oxymoron – there are freeride competitions!
March 16th, 2004 at 10:30 PM
Dude you definately think too much. By the amount of work you were doin today i would think yes, mmm…..’too much time on his hands’ :-)
March 18th, 2004 at 04:08 PM
You’re right man, enough time to think of ways to take the piss out of you… (and Colin) ;-)