Mountain Bike Ethics question

[MightyMitre]

What a frustrating and upsetting situation to be in! This kind of thing makes me mad - when a small group feel they have the right to spoil everyone elses fun. If this was a school playground they'd be known as bullies and they could be reported to the Head.

At the end of the day we're all cyclists - even the baddies from the LBS - and our passion is to ride bikes. Seems crazy that 2 groups of people who love to do the same thing have been driven apart by their passion rather than being united by it. If only this could be turned round.

Best of luck LBTC - keep us posted on the situation and to quote a great British phrase 'Don't let the b'strds grind you down!'

Liz

[LBTC]

Thank you all for your encouragement and support!

The latest in the woods up here is an invitation to the "grand opening" of a trail. This trail is a short downhill with quite a few obstacles, that begins in a residential neighbourhood. Most of the riders who use it, shuttle to the top. Several people who live in the neighbourhood have complained over the years about the terrible noise these riders make when they get ther, music blaring, their hooting and hollering, burning donuts, etc....

This trail is the one where the Ministry of Forests dismantled a number of stunts due to their poor construction, etc. That happened last year. So far, the newly formed "club" has only worked on rebuilding the stunts on this trail, with money they somehow got from the Ministry of Forests.

The invitation was emailed out yesterday, for the opening which will be next Wednesday night at 6:00.

Please note that the one group of riders who has had any opposition to the type of trail building that this club is endorsing (albeit all in theory, no-body is saying much about it), has been meeting to ride every Wednesday night at 6:00 for the past 11 years. The choice of time and date is either and attempt at getting the two groups to work together, or a slap in the face that the Wednesday ride isn't important, nothing is going on that night so it's a good night to do this.

Bear in mind that the Wed group almost never shuttles anywhere and wouldn't really consider riding to this trail. However, if they wanted to ride to it, it would take around a half hour to get there, so, if they choose to ride it next week, they'll miss the opening part of it, or have to change the time of the ride.

All that said, I let DH know about the invitation that arrived in my inbox, not realizing the effect it would have. We had intended to ride with the Wed group last night, but, once that arrived we really didn't want to be around while they talked about the whole thing as if it is good, or comlained about the club or what they are doing, without any intention of doing something about it.

It was rather demoralizing to think about. He's being sucked back into the vortex and currently I'm the one somehow feeling almost cheerful, for reasons I don't understand.

We ended up going on a nice road ride (about 45 km, almost 2 hours, we're guessing probably a total of 3000 ft of climbing, but can't wait to get the Garmin Forerunner 301 so we can find out for sure!). It was a very good ride! He felt better afterward, but has no interest at this point in riding any of the trails here - he only wants to ride trails if it's out of town!

Among the things that has started going through his head is moving away from here. We thought about it way back when when this was much uglier for us, but it was more complicated due to some family constraints that have since been removed. Now that he's mentioned it, we're starting to look at things seriously. The company I work for has a lot of plants in BC, and a friend and riding partner will start work for another plant in a nice area of the province on August 1st. We're going to use part of our vacation time to check out other areas and see what the options might be.

It would be difficult and a HUGE change! I've never lived anywhere else. We have some pretty big commitments (2 house with mortgages - fairly high debt), we have way too much stuff(!) and we both have well paying jobs that will be hard to find elsewhere. But we figure it's worth looking.

I like that the anger and discontent has turned into the possibility of action. But, dont' get me wrong, I'm scared ****less of moving!!

We both know that there are bigger and worse problems that people deal with in life. We haven't got it that bad, and hey, at least we have the option for change!

So that's the update. Thanks again for your support and encouragement!

Hugs all around,
Namaste,
~T~