respect on the trails.

An open letter

THIS is mostly addressed to ATV and motorcycle riders.

I am amazed at how little respect people in the SLV have for other people's
property. A old road/trail that runs through my property has been baracaded
by CHP at the other end rendering it useless. The neighborhood complained
because of the people abusing the trail. The biggest complaint was the NOISE.

If you're going to traverse the trails in the mountains around here, the least
you could do is have a little respect, and if yer riding a dirt bike, you don't
need that really LOUD exhaust pipe, or a 2-stroke race bike for that matter.
You folks know who you are (Mostly inconsiderate young punk ass kids
who won't give a crap even if they ever read this)... thanks for ruining a good
thing for the rest of us... If you are a parent of such kids, you NEED to
have a more active hand in their hobby. I ride, too, and I really dispise
the image your kids are portraying for the rest of we more responsible
people.

Keeping in mind that 99.99% of the property is private land and the
owners probably wouldn't give you permission to pass, even if you asked.
If you are going to tresspass, at LEAST have the decency of showing
SOME small fragment of respect for not only the land owner's property,
but other people you might encounter on the trail. Many of the people you
encounter on these trails are the landowners themselves, out to walk our
dogs, or go for a horseback ride, or even ride OUR ATV's and dirt bikes.
Be a good neighbor, and treat the rest of us with some respect!

Disrespectful things I have observed on the trails near home:

1. Safety:

Riding too fast - KIds, mostly, riding mountain bikes and dirt
bikes at speeds that are unsafe for the trail conditions, and
others on the trails. SLOW down! It's *NOT* your personal
race track, if you need speed, go to an OHV park.

There are no park rangers, EMT's and if you get hurt, or get
one of us hurt, an ambulance is not going be able to get in there.
SLOW DOWN!

2. Noise. It's not a race, and you don't need to eek that extra 1 horsepower
out of your motorcycle. Hell, you don't even need a 2-stroke engine
on the trails. It's loud as hell. Try riding something smaller, and
quieter, or I can garantuee you will find more chains, gates, and
barricades on trail entrances. Try out a stock muffler for a change,
they do work, you know, and often better than that noisy ass aftermarket
crap some magazine article convinced you to buy just because of it's
fancy polished aluminum, and loud noise. The biggest complaint I hear
from my neighbors is noise. And unfortunately, that noise comes
fromthe small percentage of you who feel you need to race a 400cc
2-stroke bike with aftermarket exhaust up and down teh trail making
a huge ammount of racket. Put that stock pipe back on, or get a small
trials bike, or xr100 or somethingfor the trails around here. you're
ruining it for everyone else.

3. Courtesy. Common courtesys are overlooked.

HORSES: If you see someone on
horseback, PULL OFF THE TRAIL, TURN YOUR MOTOR OFF.
racing past the horseback riders is not only rude, and inconsiderate, it's
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. Not just for the horseback rider and
horse, but for yourself.

Bikes, and pedestrians:
Slow down, or even turn it off till they pass. Your bike is larger,
and has more mass. They are not wearing armor and a helmet to
protect themselves (like you should be)

4. Terrain:

The trails are usually not maintained. It is not a park, there is no budget
for service work, conservation , park rangers, public safety, or anything.
NOR are there provisions. the preservation of the terrain is 100% on
yourself. If water bars are present, WATER BARS ARE NOT JUMPS!
If grass is planted, DO NOt TURF IT! Erotion control is the only thing
keeping mother nature from erasing the trail or road completely in a
few short years. If you break the surface, the resulting erotion will not
likely be repaired by anyone. Tread lightly.

Stay ON the trails! leaving the trails is about the worst thing you can do.

5. Signage:
If you see a "no tresspassing" sign, or land that is posted, do not pass!
Now that the main trail head is posted as such by CHP, this is a real problem.

Thanks a lot for ruining it for me, guys.

 

Hey Brian,

This is really the wrong group. Try rec.motorcycles.dirt. Hardly anybody
here makes reference to off road riding. BTW, when is SGI going to role over
and die? I don't understand how you guys keep the doors open. Bonds are due
soon. What's B. Bishop going to do?

 

One word: wire.


--Tim May

 

I dunno, but I saw what looked like a damn nice mainframe class 64bit
linux/irix cluster server from SGI at the ClusterWorld conference a few
weeks back. up to something like 128 processors, partitionable into
seperate logical machines, or all as one big server.

 

Well, my guess is Brian wants to ride on those trails as well, and
people want to walk and ride their horses.

 

People do. That's just it. There are a few people who abuse it, and
it pisses everyone off in the neighborhood. The thing that stinks
is that usually it's people who ride in from other areas who
don't even live in the neighborhood.

A simple sign saying "locals only" would have been a good place to start.
Not complaining to CHP to have the whole damn road closed.

And yesm indeed, the "trail" in question is actuall a county road that can be
seen on the maps,a nd USGS quads. It actually went someplace until some
woman decided to block her end of the variance off. You used to
be able to drive your cart throughit to get back out to the main
highway, but not anymroe!

This same road has a variance through MY property, and a whole mess
of people use it toget to and from their homes. I am at theopposite end
fromthis woman. I wonder how my neighbors would feel if I blocked
my end of the road off. My guess is that legally, I cannot, and therefore,
neither could SHE!

 

Block yours off. If they make a legal challenge, then she has to unblock
hers as well. Fair's fair. (At least block it off one day a year to
maintain your right to. I think that's how it works.)

 

If the trail is not an official easement across your land (as shown on the
deed), block it once a year. All you have to do is stop people, tell them
it's private property, then grant them permission to cross. That perserves
your right to close the trail whenever you want. If you don't protect that
right, it goes away after n years.

All together now: I Am Not A Lawyer.

z!

 

Oh, that's just great. What does it do to people who are engaged in a
lawful, registered, peaceful, permitted, insured protest that the police
don't like anyway?

 

Like I said, it scatters 'em like chickens in a barnyard.
The lead pellets can't read permits.

What, the police don't *already* have the capability of
messing up people they don't like, with the use of
truncheons, tear gas, and their service automatics?
And they already have access to shotguns, whether they
choose to aim them at the ground or not. Would you
rather they aim them at soft leftist flesh? (Well,
*I* would, but that admittedly wasn't the question.)

Aside: I saw a picture in _Soldier Of Fortune_ of a
riot control shotgun known as the Street Sweeper.
A semiautomatic 12-gauge, it has a "Tommy Gun"-style
Cylindrical drum magazine below the barrel. And I
have to admit that I rather like the allusion to
cleaning up garbage in the weapon's name.

I hear that the SFPD, angry over the dismissal of the
cases of the miscreants who were arrested in connection
with the recent juvenile leftist temper tantrums up in
the City, are putting the finishing touches on a con-
tingency plan known internally as "TOT." The acronym
stands for "Taste Our Truncheons."

The rationale, as I understand it, is that if enough
of these hippie hairbags[*] suffer permanent and
debilitating brain damage in the course of lawful
maintenance of the public order by the police force,
any subsequent legal dismissal of their cases will
be somewhat less relevant. Besides, they're already
registered as Democrats and Greens for the most
part, so the brain damage shouldn't result in a
mass repeat of Mr. Brady's switching from Republican
to Democrat after having half his brains shot out.


[*] Remember that scruffy undercover cop
in "Hill Street Blues," the intense,
unshaven guy with the fingerless gloves
who was always referring to criminals
as "hairbags" and "dirtbags?" Ghod,
I miss that show.


Geoff

 

Geoff,

What planet are you from? Maybe the question is what lineage. Surely reading
Soldier of fortune throws you back to Cro-Magnon or maybe earlier to
australopithecine. The branch the went to extinction.

Jesus thinks your a jerk!

 

I doubt Jesus has been thinking about much for the past couple of
thousand years, do you?

Don't tell me you're one of those Jesus freaks who believes in the
Easter Bunny and the Holy Ghost and all that superstitious twaddle?

I've _bought_ more alleged "souls" than that Jew vagabond ever "saved."

As with JFK, it was _good_ he got offed.


--Tim May

 

Oh Tim,

You and I are perfect in alignment! It is that too frequently the Nazi types
invoke the power of God. Jesus freak, no. More upset that man has failed to
grasp the power that Jesus (allegedly) had given us. Instead it is the
institutions that have usurped the power of the God. Damn, look at the
Vatican scrambling to hide behind subterfuge. The right response would be;
we fucked up--because we are human and feel the need the to inseminate
something like us.

Biological imperative, yes. Against religion, yes--realistic expectations
from the church absolutely! To me it is amazing that human and sheep have
not started a new species.

+++++

 

And yet, here I am.

Wanting to see the public order preserved and the streets cleared
of human vermin makes me some sort of evolutionary primitive?
The liberal mind is a strange and wondrous thing. Especially
when it's splattered all over a hot summer sidewalk and the
air is redolent of CS gas. The whole world, as they say, is
watching. Hey hey, ho ho, leftist vermin's got to go.

If you'd ever actually picked up a copy instead of resorting to
the sort of stereotyping that people like you pay lip service
to denouncing, you'd know that SOF is interesting and intel-
ligently written. And I daresay it'd do you a world of good
to expose yourself (heh) to a worldview different from your
own every now and again, Sammy Smug.

"Jesus loves you -- but not enough to swallow."




Geoff

 

Earlier I wrote:

: Wanting to see the public order preserved and the streets cleared
: of human vermin makes me some sort of evolutionary primitive?

If there's already public disruption in progress, then violence
applied in the course of stopping the disruption is obviously
part of the solution, not part of the problem. Like Uncle Joe
said, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, right?

Or were you under the impression that such people would clear out
if simply asked to do so in a pleasant manner? Such a belief on
your part wouldn't surprise me. After all, it was people like
you who believed, back during the Cold War, that if America
disarmed unilaterally the Soviet Union would be *so ashamed*
of itself that it would have no choice but to follow suit.

Liberals don't "injure" me, at least not personally; I do think
they're a pox on the nation, and I find their aggregate point
of view addlepated in the extreme even if they mean well.

Why? Are you one of those people who believe that someone, or
something, would have to have a direct and immediate effect on
me personally in order for me tobe justified in speaking out
againts them/it?


: If you'd ever actually picked up a copy instead of resorting to
: the sort of stereotyping that people like you pay lip service
: to denouncing,

Absolutely. It's liberals who characteristically rail against
the evils of stereotyping. As a conservative Republican, I
get to stereotype to my heart's content, and with no fear of
being accused of hypocrisy, at that.

Why are you defending Waxxer, by the way? Isn't he capable of
dealing with me on his own? Does he, like, waxx your choad or
something?


: [...] you'd know that SOF is interesting and intelligently
: written. And I daresay it'd do you a world of good to
: expose yourself (heh) to a worldview different from your
: own every now and again, Sammy Smug.

That's unlikely to happen in the course of reading a magazine,
I'd think.



Geoff

 

ba.moto folks, if you don't read ba.mountainfolk you aren't familiar w/
Geoff. Really, his writing abilities are quite marvelous, he can spin a
great yarn, but as a human being, he's only useful as an example of why
computer geeks have trouble pro-creating.

Happily, he is willing to accept any violence that may occur to his person
or his Mercedes since violence "is obviously part of the solution" to any
sort of "public disruption" (trolling perhaps?). So, feel free to flame
away but really, it just encourages him.

~Alex

 

If you get some of the spam that I get, you'll realize that it isn't
for lack of trying.

About the closest they get to this newsgroup though is seatcovers.

R, UB

 

What we used to find most anoying was people camping right at the base
of our hill climbs and in areas we used to slide the turns... theyd
have all these kids and pets and tent ropes around...when youd go
though thier camps that crap would get wound around your axel and
screw up your power slide... no way in hell could you do a wheelie
with all those rope overhead... then you'd run into thier damn camp
fire...rocks and hot coals would roost up all over the place...and
these people would yell and scream and come after you waiving thier
fist.

Thats what amazes me. You would think people would respect a biker
hard pressed to get a good slide going .... with all that stuff in the
way almost impossible.


Phil Scott

 

[ _Soldier Of Fortune_ ]

Just like a puling leftistasshole to regard anyone with an
interest in military matters as stupid. (And no, I don't
believe for a moment that you were alluding to poor eyesight.)

To think that you came from the same country as the guy who
wrote this:

"While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy,
fall be'ind,"

"But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's
trouble in the wind,

"There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble
in the wind,

"O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's
trouble in the wind."


ObTim: Nitwit.



Geoff

 

[ _Soldier Of Fortune_ ]

Oh, well that's another matter entirely!



Geoff