Dear Ass that sits on Mr. Ed...

Just got back from a sweet mountain bike ride this afternoon. It was cold, real cold---37 degrees at 9AM. I was into spending some quality time with Jake today seeing as I have been really busy last week (travelling to Denver/Cheyenne and working late)—so a later afternoon ride was in order.

I lubed up the singlespeed, layered up and headed out to Skyline. It was a beautiful day, really clear and the crisp air helped keep me moving. The trails were in less than perfect shape-a lot of mud, and where sun had not hit lots of ice and frost---even at 3:00PM! I was focused on spinning my 32x16 as best I could and was happy to reach the lake in 20 minutes (from the base of the hill). The trip down Lower Skyline was great, a little slower than normal given the trail conditions and my choice of tire, but awesome none-the-less.

Now normally my thoughts are pretty out there, looming from new ideas, to my personal life, to where a mountian lion might be waiting for me...But today I could not shake the thoughts, the drama, my friend Steve has been encountering in Redding with "horse people". One person in particular, a privilaged, upper middle class, stay at home house wife (my guess) went on and on about multiple use trails and how terrible they are--read this sweet excerpt before I lay into her:

"...The IMBA keeps telling everyone that the mountain bikes create so much revenue (more than $6 billion in 2005). Per the American Horse Council, the equestrians create $102 billion a year, and 70 percent of the horse owners are trail riders. We spend much more on our horses than a mountain bike. A good trail horse costs $2,500 to $5,000. We also need a truck and trailer to get to the trailheads -- used, about $25,000. Also there are horseshoeing costs, veterinarians, feed, tack, etc.

So you can see we keep a lot of people employed. If the trails are all made multiple use, you will lose most of the equestrian trail riders and put a lot of people out of work.

Joyce Pickering lives in Red Bluff...

Her whining had me like a race car at a red light and still does.

You see, I had the privilage to work at Chris King, helping organize a wildly successful Traildaze program that regularly drew over 100 people per event (4 a year) to do trail maintenance. This was in Santa Barbara and SLO, areas of much greater wealth than Redding and our crews did indeed have a pretty good mix of hikers, horse riders and predominantly mountain bikers. We all worked together to make trails usable for all and understanding was based on the rules of the trail (Bikes yield to everyone-hikers and horses). Now understand, SoCal is a hot bed of trail use issues. I knew it was only a matter of time that the situation reared it's ugly head in the "wild-west" of Redding. Since so much of the area is open space, there are so many trails and a lot smaller, less concentrated population than SoCal and the Bay Area—it has taken a bit longer for this type of confrontation to appear. But, as with everything, it has. The thing that bugs me the most is this woman's elitist attitude—that being, because she (horse people) spends so much money, they should have full rights to the outdoors, to hell with the rest of us. Real nice.

Her breakdown kept running though my mind:
..$2500-$5000 for a horse; pretty much what I have into each of my five bikes (Steve and Kirby you know you do too!)
...$25,000 for a truck to get to the trailhead; I won't even start on the 12-16 mpg her dually gets, the impact on the environment, etc. Besides being able to ride to most every trailhead in Redding sans a car,plenty of us have $25K (at least) into much more fuel efficient vehicles (25-40 mpg) when we do need to travel
...$xxx dollars for all the other BS that comes along with riding or the sport...

Lady-YOU made the choice, to ride horses, nobody made you. It is your PRIVILAGE not your RIGHT to do so. Just as I made the decision to drop a large portion of my income on cycling (Kirby can vouch for this). I embrace this privilage and know that in order to preserve it, I must be RESPONSIBLE. That responsibility comes in many forms; proper and safe trail use, doing trail maintenance (I, like many others am woefully behind in this), and helping promote these ideals with other riders.

Are there dipshit cyclists? You bet. A nice contingent of weekend DH warriors were regulary destroying our work in Santa Barabara all in the name of cutting a line straight down a hill. We workied with the BLM and Park Service, keep repairing the trails and tried to educate the DH'rs on why a trail can not go straight down-regardless of what they saw on Kranked IV.

The world is full of idiots, whether hiking, on a horse or riding. I for one choose to believe, and regularly see, a larger majority of non-idiots. In my 18+ years of riding, I have been involved with ONE (1) incident where I spooked a horse-my fault, I learned from it and have yet, to this day had it happen again.

I ride in a lot of places with a lot of people and have not had any negative encounter with horse lovers. Maybe a scowl or two from people like Mrs. Elite as myself or my riding group wait on the side of the trail for horse to pass, but more often than not, both parties say hello, we cyclists wait patiently for the horses to pass and everyone enjoys their day in the outdoors (again pretty much destroying Mrs. Elite's attitude that billions of dollars will be lost when horse trail riders stop riding and spending money---god she pisses me off).

Making trails single user is NOT the answer. Working together IS. There are so many things different groups can do to work it out, that they FAR outweight this woman's reactionary dribble. Establish trail maintenance days, clinics, etc. Open real,intelligent dialog amoung users. Hell, maybe it has to go so far as establishing times that trails are predominantly used by a specific group (this will need to be FAIR, embraced by all groups and enforced). Whatever it is, it CAN NOT be what Mrs. Pickering is alluding to or requesting.

Whew! That's the tip of the ice berg, but I had to get it off my chest. (I won't even start with the amount of horse crap I rode through today, the 6 inch deep hoof shaped post holes from riding on wet trails, and the crap...)

Go to my happy place, go to my happy place...here's some pics of that place...

Ice, Ice baby. It was all over the place, even up to 1/2 inch thick in small puddles and on the trail...


My faithful mascot. Picked this guy up off the trail in Redding like 6 years ago and it's been on my SS ever since. Grady calls it Umchookooroocharoo. He's a Bitch. I don't call it anything.


Tire choice was like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Maybe it's time to upgrade the hardpack tires I've had on here for 4 years to something new?


Lovely self portrait of my fat ass. I love this part of the trail though, really inspirational...


Mud condition tires? Nope. Had to watch the descent, especially corners. I was successful in staying upright though!