More Trails, Please/Ya Basta!
Fully Rigid, 4/15/21
Mountain biking is the new golf, is what some people have been saying for years. Since I’ve never played golf, I don’t know exactly what that means. What I do know is that in high school I went to the mall to buy stuff, mostly cassettes and CDs, my collection between the two up somewhere around a 1000 “albums.” Perhaps I was a collector (?)
Or, perhaps … consumerism?
That’s a thought road that is sometimes necessary to go down: Am I consuming too much _____ ? Fill in the blank with trails.
We have our local trails out the back door. We have our local trails within, let’s say, an hour’s drive. We have our weekend getaway trails. We have our road trip trails. We have our destination trails.
Still, we don’t have enough trails, or something like that, isn’t it? More trails, please, right?
It seems that we cannot ever have enough trails. We are unsatisfied with the number of miles of single track available to us. So, people build illegal trails. People work to get permission to have new trails. People work to build and maintain those trails. Then when that’s done, we work to get more trails.
Again, more trails, please.
Then word gets out about all the trail miles we have and people show up to ride the trails. Trails see more traffic. Our parking spots aren’t available to us anymore since “they” started showing up. Too many “outsiders” on the trails slow us down. It’s crowded.
I wish it was like it used to be when we had the trails to ourselves, is what we say, don’t we?
Balance.
How much is enough? In the spirit of people who ask such questions south of the border: Ya Basta! / Enough already! Enough is enough!
What I’m getting at here, to pinpoint it, is this: when we are thinking that we need more trails, do we ask ourselves how much “more” do we need?
Note: I didn’t use the word “want.”
The important thing is to understand who “we” are and how many of us need trails. Sure, considerations related to growth of our mountain biking community need to be considered, as well, which likely takes us down another thought road: how much growth do we need?
e-bikes/mopeds on the trails?
Mall shoppers/golfers turned bike riders on trails due to the pandemic?
Youth clubs and high school teams?
Industry influence on making mountain biking more mainstream?
Influencers on the social media sites?
Me doing what I do here and in magazines?
Yep, we are seeing more people on the trails. Yep, we’d love to have the trails to ourselves (get up earlier!). Yep, it’s rare for things to revert, go backwards, for the genie to be put back in the bottle.
It seems to me that we’ll continue to see more riders on the trails we ride. It’s not going to ever be what it was “back in the day.” Sure, we’ll have our hours/days when we do have those experiences, but mostly, it’ll be more in line with the reality of more people on the trail, more people showing up at our old road trip spots, more people wanting to ride the destinations.
More people consuming trails?
You decide.
Final thoughts: let’s build trails on golf courses! I mean, especially where there is snow and ice, where we could fat bike all winter when the golf balls aren’t flying! And if you’re going to ride those golf courses with your Walkman and headphones listening to the Eagles or Pink Floyd or Cyndi Lauper or Madonna or Kix, or whatever, that’s better than me having to listen to your music blasting from your portable speaker as you go down the trail consuming your trail riding/mountain biking experience.
Get me?
Fully Rigid is a monthly column by James Murren about Mountain Biking Issues within the Mountain Biking Community.