i love the way that our community is tight knit. whenever i see a fellow twin-tipper on the hill, i immediately go over to him/her and start chattin wit em. for the most part, they're all real nice people but i've noticed that this is starting to change. compared to last, i've noticed a huge increase in the number of twin-tippers i see. everyone, including older folks (i see a guy with mavericks yesterday, a guy with scratch FS's a week ago, and an older woman with mad_trix the same day as the other guy) seem to be riding or talking about freeskiing in general.
although i love so see the popularity of our sport grow, i can't help but feel a bit uncertain about our future. sure, there will always be the small core of twin-tippers who are hardcore but i do believe that if our sport keeps growing, we will something bad happen, something like what has happened to snowboarding. i'm finding that i'm losing my little niche in society. until this past year, the only skiiers i've known were racers. this year, i've met up with a couple local jibbers. this is cool and all cause now we can ride together but at the same time, i feel like the sport I represent isn't as cool as it used to be. You see, from my early years of skiing right up to grade 8, i was known as the one skiier in all of school that didn't race. i was the cool skiier, the one everyone wanted to be. i was looked at by others as a figure because i was doing something that very few others were doing as well. now, when i say i have twin-tips, there is no special reaction. there's just a quick 'cool' and then the conversation moves onto something else.
I don't want to be known as someone who is not encouraging the development of freeskiing. i want to be known as someone who is/who trying/tried to preserve the small knit community of freeskiers that exist today.
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RodeoKId