Brandon Nelson
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Bellingham Weather
These Hellions Must be Stopped!!!!!
Let’s play a game. I’ll paste some direct excerpts from an article I read in the August 15th Bellingham Herald Journal, and you tell me the type of criminal I’m describing.
Ready?
- “It’s a national problem…”
- “…appears more pronounced in the west…”
- “…something that occurs… close to urban areas or communities…”
- “…four men were arrested…”
- “It’s hard to catch these folks because they’re out in remote areas…”
Meth labs? Satanic cult gatherings and sacrificial virgins? Brainwashing and kool-aid?
Not hardly.
The article, found here (not yet on the Herald site), is about ….brace yourself…. mountain bikers making trails in the national forest and other public lands. Bike riders. People out getting exercise. And by the powers of Big Brother, it MUST BE STOPPED!!! I mean, what are these pesky bicyclists thinking?
Yes, mountain bikers known as “free riders” (damn them for using the word “free” — who do they think they are, Americans or something?) have been… gasp…. building more challenging sections of single track including…. gulp…. jumps, drops off rocks, and ….. my GOD…. sections to attain “higher speeds.”
THE NERVE!!!
Officials say “… a rider was hospitalized this summer with head and spinal injuries after crashing on a jump on an unauthorized Tahoe trail.”
Let me ask those same Officials this: How many people were hospitalized with severe obesity, clinical depression, alcohol-related incidents, highway accidents, and a myriad other non-bicycle-related Americana inflictions and addictions, many of which could be prevented if people got out and charged life on a bike once in a while? Or went trail running? Or… gasp… trail BUILDING?
Let me be clear: I don’t mean to suggest that illegal, bad-practice trail building that causes erosion damage or senseless harm to the forest ecosystem is RIGHT or should be allowed to run amok. I support the notion of riders and trail-builders working WITH “officials” who understand how a trail should be properly designed and built to minimize impact.
But this article is over-the-top in its vilification and criminalization of “freeriders” and outdoor adventure athletes in general. It’s written such that the average couch-potato layperson goes away with a “new breed of criminal” in their mind — PEDALLY BIKERS!!!
And that’s wrong.
If we as a society begin down the road of seeing bike riders and trail builders — whether or not they’re getting it exactly right regarding permits and such — as villains and criminals, America’s future as Planet Earth’s most out-of-shape, obese and un-outdoorsy culture is even more inevitable.
