Is Free Speech Threatened on Trail Issues?

[tanya]

The trip to Utah was perfect: five days of canyon colors and dazzling trails to test my stamina and get me back on track. That isn

[Fuzzy TheBikeGuy]

:assault: YEAH!! KILL all them guys!! That'll fix 'em!!

WTF happened to all the debate geeks like me? Like you said- " the politics of personal attack we see far too often in politics at all levels" have replaced actually UNDERSTANDING those with whom you'd dissagree.

I LOVE a good debate- being a long-hair'd middle-aged mountainbiker, I'm often approached by Sierra-Club/SUWA/GreenPeace types and I usually enjoy the ensuing exchange. I usually suprise them with my "radical right-wing" Jeffersonian views, but the conversation is generally civil.

What I've found is the various "user groups" have been so segragated and pitted against each-other that they don't even know what the other said- They just go with the "everybody sucks but us" mentality. This leads to a reluctance to "police your own".

OHV riders have a real problem around here, because about 10-12% of them do 100% of the environmental damage, and get ALL of them labeled as a problem. The decent OHV riders refuse to discipline their own people in favor of blaming US MOUNTAINBIKERS for building the singletrack that their 10-12% vandalize. As more and more damage is done the OHV community takes less and less responsability for it. When the area finally gets closed to them all together they'll play the victims. ... Aaawwww... Anybody remember when Mountainbikers could ride freely throughout Marin County? ...the "birthplace" of Mountainbiking? We ALL got banned because of the actions of SOME mountainbikers, and to this day many refuse to blame those mountainbikers for ****ing us all.

Many of us older mountainbikers know all too well how a small minority can get a whole sub-culture labled as destructive or anti-social. SOME of us have occasionally enforced a "code" in our own ranks- stomp spokes out of a fellow's front wheel and he'll have time, while walking out, to think about the problems he causes for others.

Unfortunately, individual responsability has become an oppressive concept, and all issues are just "us against them". Nobody wants to come-down on their own people, so they attack the messenger. And since the messenger has his own group on HIS "side"- nobody can hear each other over all the shouting...

Maybe we need the draft, or even a civil war, to thin-out the gene-pool. Stupid people have become the majority. :frustrated:

[Sombeech]

You could think of anything, any subject, sport, activity, or even a flavor of gatorade-- there will be somebody against it.

Tunnel Trail -- where is this?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tR9axUo92w

[tanya]

I LOVE to read posts by debate geeks!!!! That is the best part of the internet. I too just dislike it when they start attacking! That is the worst part of the net.

Tunnel Trail - Is it the one in Santa Barbara, California?

[MY T PIMP]

You could think of anything, any subject, sport, activity, or even a flavor of gatorade-- there will be somebody against it.

AMEN to that! There is a lot of barking and little biting go on. I can see how the unwillingness to share trails even with a sport as eco-friendly as Mountain Biking can spark a lot of barking. As areas and trails continue to be closed, riders become more threatened. Many in the biking community probably feel as if their getting backed in to a corner. Naturally in that circumstance barks will turn to bites. :nono: