At the age of 34, Peter Line has accomplished more in snowboarding as a rider, company owner and media guru than most could hope to in any of those arenas by retirement. Aside from co-founding Forum, Four Square and Electric, he was the driving force behind the original "Forum 8" team, and as a rider he put the Four Square and Electric brands on the proverbial snowboard map. He can also be credited with significantly progressing snowboarding, especially when he broke through with his first Mack Dawg and Transworld video parts in the mid ‘90s, and literally showed the riding world there was a new way to spin.

After selling off his shred brands and starting a town car service in Seattle called Crown Black Car, which uses blacked-out Crown Vic's driven by rocker types, many thought it was the last we'd see of him. But fast-forward four years and Peter Line is once again blowing minds and proving people wrong. After a month or so of e-mail and Facebook correspondence, I finally managed to get Mr. Line on the phone while I was in transit at the Toronto Pearson Airport. Here's our conversation.

This year you seemed very much re-energized on snowboarding as a whole. What do you think brought that around?
I took a pretty good break. It was like, four or five years where I wasn't filming, but was still snowboarding. I did a couple regional contests here and there, the West Coast Invitational, and then there was the token Super Park appearance and stuff as well. Just kind of riding my home mountain... I started to get bored, you know? After riding the small stuff for long enough, I started to miss the big jumping and the feel that you get when you land a big, tough trick. I stuck it out for five years to kind of recover from my burn-out fee, and I think a lot of people move on and start their career or whatever, but I had the fortunate opportunity to jump back into my snowboard career. Plus, I just thought of a bunch of tricks that I want to try, too. There are some variations and creative stuff that I still want to do and put out in the video. I don't want to have me just repeating my old stuff either.

Did you have a plan of attack going into this season or did you just kind of roll with it?
I definitely wanted a strong new video part. There were some new tricks I wanted to pull. I wasn't looking for the whole Travis Rice kind of progression, with bigger and bigger jumps. I just wanted more corks and wanted to go in a different direction with fun variations and ramp-to-ramp transfers and stuff. With all the tricks I wanted to try, I didn't really get ‘em all, but I was still pretty stoked.

From the outside looking in there is no doubt that you had an incredible year, but on a personal level were you happy with your winter?
I was pretty stoked. I definitely had a hard time with the backcountry and a lot of bad-luck sessions, where we would build a jump and then just sit there in the clouds waiting for the weather. We made a lot of backcountry jumps that got made but were never actually hit. So there were a few tricks that I wanted to get into my video part that didn't make it in there... but on the whole, yeah, I'm pretty stoked, especially at my age I guess. [laughing]

Well, for what it's worth I am only a year older than you and I am thoroughly impressed... but you have been doing that your entire life, impressing people, I mean.
That's because I'm short.

You ran into some tough luck with an injury at the end of this year. What were the details on that?
For this year I kind of wanted to concentrate a little bit on the urban stuff that was new to me. So some variations and stuff I was trying was a little bit different, you know? I was in the mid-west [of America] for a little while, and then in Oslo, Norway, for a little while. I had some good trips and some bad trips, but then after the urban stuff and I started to get back into the parks and back country stuff. I was at a Transworld shoot and they had a quarterpipe with a jib on top of it, and I kind of messed up on that and landed on my head and broke my back. So that was pretty much a season-ender after that...

How has the rehab been? Where are you at now?
I'm at home... my rehab started on the couch eating Percocets and watching lots of TV, and then after going to the doctor and being able to go to the real rehab. I started stretching and stuff like that. I still had to take a Percocet just to go out and have drinks with friends, though... I then just fully progressed from there. I probably should have done a lot more rehab, but, you know, I'm lazy. [laughing] I think I am supposed to snowboard in, like, 20 days. so I got to get on it real fast. Right now I think my back is all good; I just have to get on some stretching to make sure my whole body is alright and ready for it.

Peter Line, Switch Backside 540. Oli Gagnon sequence.

So what now? What's next besides riding in 20 days?
I'll be coaching at High Cascade in July. So that's going to be my first day back from breaking my back, so that'll be kind of interesting. I am going to try and go down there a few days early just to make sure I can still snowboard better than the kids I'm supposed to be coaching. [laughs]

And what's on the agenda for next year?
I think next year I am going to try and do the same thing, well, minus the broken back part. I will be a little more conscious about quarterpipes with stuff on top of ‘em. I want to get another part going again. There are some tricks that I still want to do and get done this year.

Well I think I speak for the entire snowboard community when I say, good luck and I look forward to see what else you've got in your bag, buddy.
Thanks. And I think next year is when my documentary is coming out from Mack Dawg. I also heard about a Forum 8 documentary, so that could be cool.

I noticed you have embraced Twitter in the last few months...What's your name on there?
Peetard. Twitter pretty much kind of kept me in high spirits when I was sitting on my couch watching TV. It kind of kept me in touch with the world. So I was pretty hyped on Twitter. It definitely provided a couple jokes during the day. I don't like the boring people that just say boring stuff about what they are doing. I just follow the funny people that don't make any sense.

The delve deep into the mind of Peter Line, visit peetard.com.

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Related:
Peter Line vs. Sarah Morrison
Double Decade Trailer (video)
Forum Forever Trailer (video)