I'm copy and pasting directly from his email that has many excellent points in it. Our Worst Enemy I've said it many times before and I'll say it again. We (dirt bike riders) are our own worst enemy when it comes to keeping our trails open. We damage the trails (wrong bike, wrong tires, wrong gearing, go off the trail, short-cut the trail, ride trails beyond our skill level), we do stupid shit (cut doughnuts at the trailhead parking lot, ride county & USFS roads at 90 mph), are inconsiderate to other trail users (speed past them, scare them, their family, their dog or horse) and we think loud pipes are cool (NOT COOL) or that we need a loud pipe to get more horsepower when we don't have enough talent to ride a stocker. We are all a bunch of goons at one time or another, me included. Don't get your undies in a bunch by my comments. OWN your actions! Man up, put your big boy pants on and become an ambassador for our sport. Why am I so hard on my fellow dirt bike riders? Many years ago I did my fair share of stupid shit on trails. Unknowingly at the time, I was a trail goon. I don't like to admit it but I believe in owning my actions, good or bad. My ways changed when a good friend, Big Doug, got in my face and chewed my ass for short-cutting a switchback. I'll never forget it and I'll never do it again. That was the beginning of my evolution of becoming a trail ambassador. Now I've turned in to Big Doug. I chew ass or do whatever it takes to preserve my right to ride. I talk to whoever will listen about trail issues, I organize trail clearing/maintenance rides, I stop guys on the trail that are being goons and explain correct trail etiquette, I donate tires and chain saws to guys that do trail clearing, I go to boring meetings and I donate and donate and donate my hard earned dollars to trail advocacy organizations and legal defense groups around the nation. Do I like giving away the equivalent of a new KTM every year? Not only no, but hell no, but I choose to be a 2 percenter to help keep our trails open. What is a 2 percenter? Less than 2 percent of the dirt bike community (including dealers, online retailers and manufacturers) ever do anything to help with our trails. Yes, 98% of us do nothing, absolutely nothing to keep our trails open. Am I patting myself on my back for being a 2 percenter? No! Am I proud to be a 2 percenter? No! Actually I'm embarrassed that less than 2% of us defend our trails when 100% of us moan, whine and bitch about trail closures. We have many foes. The government, some (not all) USFS managers, tree huggers, companies like REI that donate to the tree huggers, etc. but, we are the biggest problem. Every day we give ammunition to the tree huggers. We are the enemy, period! What can you do to help? Get involved! Work on the trails, go to meetings, join your local trail organizations, join national trail organizations, talk to other riders doing stupid things on the trail and donate to the organizations that do your dirty work while you are out riding. Colorado Trails Preservation Alliance, Colorado Off Highway Vehicle Coalition, American Motorcycle Association, Blue Ribbon. The letter below, from Allen Christy, gives insight to what we are up against. Please read it and please consider becoming a trail ambassador. Happy trails, Jeff Slavens Boost or Roost? Your Next Trail Ride! The two biggest things that other Forest Users complain most about motorcycles is Noise and Speed; something all of us should keep in mind if we want continued access to FS Trails. On a recent trail ride with some friends, I suggested that the ride should not be a "race" ride. To my dismay my words apparently did not register, as late in the ride my friends, though well ahead of me on the trail, "blew past" a small family hiking a remote trail. My friends even made comment of how fast they went by these hikers causing them to step quickly off the trail. Can you imagine their impression of motorcyclists on the trail that day and what they will have to tell their friends when they get back home about their encounter with motorcycles on the trail? Instead of slowing down, stopping to say hi, offering to have a short discussion about how nice it was out that day and something about the overall trail conditions and how we also enjoyed the trails, it was just a "blow-by" at high speed and a miss of a great opportunity to build ambassadorship for motorcyclists as joint trail users. I used to have a very good friend at the local Forest Service named Lloyd McNeal. He rode his horse up and down the many trails that I also rode. Often I would meet him on the trail while he was riding horseback with some others. I always stopped and chatted with him and his other riders and enjoyed many years of his support for motorized recreation, in part I believe because of a generally positive relationship with me and others who always respected him on the trail while he was out there on horseback. The only time he ever had anything negative to say to me about motorcycles was about the time a motorcyclist "blew by him" on one of our favorite trails and didn't even stop to talk to him. It made a lasting negative impression on him I am sorry to say. Lloyd has since passed on and I will always miss him and his interactions with many of us on the trails while he traveled on horseback around his District. The other issue that we continue to deal with is the excess noise we may contribute as we recreate if we do not comply with the FS 96dba sound rule (silencer and spark arrestor). Everyone should know this by now and all future San Juan Trail Rider events will discourage participation by those two just will not comply with this rule. I ask today that all our membership "step-up" to make sure that we think carefully about our trail riding that we so enjoy each year and consider riding the trails with "practical interactive consideration for other users" for speed, and in full compliance with sound and spark arrestor rules to minimize the impacts of our engine noise. Let's BOOST our ambassadorship on the trail and save racing and high speed ROOSTING for other venues'. It will benefit us all. Sincerely, Allen Christy - Senior Director, San Juan Trail Riders
Very well written and acurate depiction of the trail blazers we have all been out with. Stop and think about the big picture, here in uk out trails and rights of access are being closed or removed temporarily then permanently. Mainly because people dont support the local groups that take these issues to the courts and spend their free time fighting for us. We have to help ourselves where ever we are located.
I hear you Once a year I do a extream dual sport ride and every year I say it is a ride. Yet some want to try and go fast and be the first to finish. This year some guy did 160 miles of hard trails in 7 hours that is a 22 mph average. Which might seen slow but it really is fast Then the guy even posted a picture of his highest speed of 68 mph. As I was cruising along and as I came up on camp grounds I would slow down. But the look on some people faces as I went by told me that they were not happy with the people who had already been by. So I hear you Back in 2006 when Husky then followed by KTM started to make Street Legal dual Sport bikes and anyone could now go ride I said to my self this is going to hurt the sport because so many new people are now out on these trails. Now with a plated bike some feel they can ride any where they want. Now enter the new wave of side by sides and high performance razors and you how have some new trail racers not all but there are a new group of people who before could not ride a bike but sure can race around in a new high performance side by side so I hear you
It takes money and knowledge to keep trails open. I agree that being friendly is a plus and helps from trail users getting into range wars and trying to get the other groups banned but there is much more to know and do. Giving money to organizations does help but educating riders of their legal rights is rarely talked about. Many USFS trails weave in and out of private property and the trial is open because the public used it for 18+ years and has established a prescriptive easement. CO for example is an adverse possession state so once something like a fence, road or trail has been used openly and notoriously for 18 years a prescriptive easement has been established. On the flip side, if the private land owner can prevent the use of the trail for 18 years the easement is extinguished. If you ask permission and it is granted and then later revoked the easement is extinguished immediately. So now you see that being polite and asking permission to cross private property on an historic trail can later cause you to lose your right to the trail. This is a big problem in some Colorado trial systems because it causes trails to dead end at private property boundaries which prevents them from being used and they are quietly closed down without objection. Sometimes it takes groups of riders/hikers to challenge the private owner to keep a trail open just like the tree huggers are constantly challenging to close trails. I'm not trying to give anyone legal advise here but I am saying that local groups that want to keep local trails open to the public should seek legal advise to specific situations and act as a group to challenge trail closures (this obviously takes money). It might take action like protest rides resembling the hippie days where demonstrators dared to challenge issues even if it took getting arrested and challenging their case in court. I believe in following the rules however I make no apologies when someone trying to take away what belongs to me including public land which belongs to all citizens equally.
The real question is why aren't new riders/side by side owners being properly educated on trail etiquette? Dealers have a certain responsibility to make sure they're safe, by educating them about gear. Of course that's a sales driven lesson. Don't they realize that if there's no place for their products they sell to be used, they'll go out of business? I almost got run over yesterday by some dick in his Razor while I was doing some signal check work well off the side of a wide wide road. The punk decided he needed to damn near take my door off to "impress" me with his two digit IQ. Guys n gals on bikes do their fair share of stupid stuff, but it seems that since no real skill is needed for a quad or side by side, the jerk rating is just higher. I guess it's because most of us had to learn to ride with someone who's been doing it much longer than us, so we get taught skills and some basic etiquette. I think dealers need to step up here and do the same for ALL of their customers. The job isn't done the second the papers are signed and the vehicle is ready to go home.
That will never catch on, dealers have no time to teach/ inform every buyer to the ways of trail etiquette.
We need to lead by example so the younger group of riders get a good foundation. I've tried to do this with my two teenage boys. They know that donuts in the parking lot will result in the bikes being loaded up and a trip back to the house. Blasting by hikers and horseback riders in not allowed. It's pretty simple but we make it hard on ourselves. Lets 'Treat others like you would like to be treated'.
I remember these long-hair young men coming to America ... Always liked this gesture they made here ....Sort of respectful .... Days gone by ... Let The Good times Roll!
