fred@varian.UUCP (Fred Klink) (10/18/84)
> If the trail is muddy, a bike could do some damage, but only as long > as the biker insists on riding it. We found that riding through mud is > about as much fun as hiking through mud, and a lot more work. Any > mountain biker who rides through every mud hole he finds is simply not > going to get very far. More likely, he will get off the bike, as necessary, > and walk it around. When was the last time you saw a horse do this? It would be nice to think that all mountain bike users had this attitude but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. In the mountain bike affecianado literature, going *around* anything seems to be a cardinal sin. The only worse sin is (gasp) walking the bike. The mountain-bike macho myth that the magazines and the industry are promoting preaches that these machines can cover any terrain and overcome any obstacle. A recent issue of "Bicycling" devoted two whole pages to the "riding" technique for going over a log across a trail. The log in question was over 5 feet in diameter! Just looking at the ads and action photos in the magazines-- the target market is clearly the same as that for dirt bikes and four-wheel drive vehicles. (Now, there's nothing inherently wrong in that, so please no flames from the off-road set.) However, it is worrisome to those of us who expect a particular type of quiet wilderness experience in federal and state parklands that we may end up sharing the trail with (even a few) users who demonstrate the envionmental conscience promoted by this marketing strategy.