Bikers - look at this

[Tim Ford]

I hike once or twice a month with guys from my hometown. I've known these guys for 60 years or so. We usually rack up 5 - 10 miles in a state park and there is some elevation involved. The park is also used by mountain and road bikers. I was very surprised to see this in a pretty random spot the other day. I mean, what are the odds that someone will use this thing, other than maybe the air pump once in awhile.

fixitStop.jpg

Still, I commend the effort of the state of Maryland's DNR, but one has to wonder about the utility of such a device.

Are these things fairly normal to see in local parks these days?

[kdh]

I’ve never seen one. We get a fair amount of bikers in the town woods behind our house judging by the ruts they leave in the few wet areas there.

Once or twice a month with the guys you grew up with? You’re a lucky guy. I get once or twice a year, one a sailing trip we’ve been doing since we were in our twenties.

[BeauV]

WOW! I'm amazed. Around here the mountain bike riders have been run off of most of the parks by the riders of "portable horse shit dispensers", (AKA Horses). Hey, I love to ride horses, but leaving mounds of steaming manure on a trail is disgusting. Nevertheless, the horse group has complained so loudly that mountain bikes are banned on the hills they were invented on. It would never occur to a CA State Parks person to help the mountain bikers, although there are tubs of water around the park for horses to drink from. (I'm obviously pissed off about this.)

There are currently about 5 times as many people in the Mountain Bike Association as there are in the Equestrian Association, and there are zero people cleaning up the manure on the trails. Except for we folks with mountain bikes trying to be good neighbors. grrrrr.....

[Tim Ford]

Hahhah, yep, I can see where that would be a nuisance.

There's a trail up near the Pennsylvania border that we hike 4-5 times a year. It's also a bridal path. But I don't think we've ever been inconvenienced by a steaming pile!

A friend of mine moved to Portland Maine about a year ago and bought a new bike (not easy during the pandemic). I stopped at his home on the way home from Brooklin, ME after the Eggemoggin Reach (good seeing you there, Keith!) He explained to me how well organized the bicycling folks are in Maine. And how they have dedicated trails all around the state. Meanwhile, back home, the folks with houses just off the trail near my house are incensed about the erosion the bikers have created.

Can't please everyone, I guess...

[Olaf Hart]

Hahhah, yep, I can see where that would be a nuisance.

There's a trail up near the Pennsylvania border that we hike 4-5 times a year. It's also a bridal path. But I don't think we've ever been inconvenienced by a steaming pile!

A friend of mine moved to Portland Maine about a year ago and bought a new bike (not easy during the pandemic). I stopped at his home on the way home from Brooklin, ME after the Eggemoggin Reach (good seeing you there, Keith!) He explained to me how well organized the bicycling folks are in Maine. And how they have dedicated trails all around the state. Meanwhile, back home, the folks with houses just off the trail near my house are incensed about the erosion the bikers have created.

Can't please everyone, I guess...

Must be difficult keeping the trains of the wedding dresses clean too, I guess they must have a lot of page boys over there…

[BeauV]

Hahhah, yep, I can see where that would be a nuisance.

There's a trail up near the Pennsylvania border that we hike 4-5 times a year. It's also a bridal path. But I don't think we've ever been inconvenienced by a steaming pile!

A friend of mine moved to Portland Maine about a year ago and bought a new bike (not easy during the pandemic). I stopped at his home on the way home from Brooklin, ME after the Eggemoggin Reach (good seeing you there, Keith!) He explained to me how well organized the bicycling folks are in Maine. And how they have dedicated trails all around the state. Meanwhile, back home, the folks with houses just off the trail near my house are incensed about the erosion the bikers have created.

Can't please everyone, I guess...

Tim -- I get it that we can't please everyone, but the horse folks are now showing up to sink mountain biker's proposals to build dedicated bike trails. In the State Parks, the last three Governors have over-ruled the St. Park Service and just told them to build trails based on the number of customers, not based on "tradition" (like horses). The Horse folks are pissed off, but there are so few of them it doesn't matter.

I went to one of these planning meetings. Our local branch of the IMBA showed up 150 strong. There were 4 "equestrians". The St. Park Planners were more than a little intimidated. The Local IMBA President was quite polite. He had survey data on trail usage. Guys and girls with clipboards were hired to log the kine of users. Done by an independent survey firm that didn't know that the money was coming from an IMBA member. The data was wild. At Henry Cowell State Park, 62% of the trail users were hikers, 32% of the trail users were mountain bikers, 2% were horseback riders. The remaining 4% were "Declined to Answer". I've no idea how you can "decline", but I guess some folks were suspicious of high school kids with clipboards and told them not to write anything about them. (We have our paranoid prepper group around here.)

Needless to say, the mountain bike proposal was approved as it conformed to all the environmental stuff.

To twist the knife once it was in, the survey had also asked how far people had traveled and how they had traveled to get to the Park to do whatever it was they were doing. Obviously, this was stacking the deck against the horseback ridders. The folks on foot had driven their car an average of 8 miles to get to the park, lots of local use. The Mountain Bikers had 60% who had driven in a pickup or car with bike rack, their average distance was 12 miles; the other 40% had ridden their bikes to the park. The horseback riders had driven in something able to two a 2 horse trailer and had an average distance of 53 miles. (This is sort of a destination ride for horseback folks.) The IMBA representative presented the carbon footprint of the hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders. Needless to say, the absolute lowest carbon per day of use was the mountain biking group. Next were the hikers. The 2% of the people who were riding horses contributed about 64% of all the carbon from all users to the park. This survey has its "issues", and the use of carbon footprint against folks who trailer their horses around made me squirm as that guy who trailers his Moore-24 up and down the west coast to races, but it did result in the State Parks rep from Sacramento wondering aloud why the State allows any equestrian trails.

[Steele]

I have mountain biked in the PNW for decades and have never seen anything like Tim shows in his photo. Most bikers around here are pretty willing to help others with breakdowns, I have given more than one innertube away with a request to pay it forward in the future.

The horse vs bike issues has flared up from time to time. At one point the horse folks wanted us bikers to get off our bikes, take our helmets off, and talk quietly to the horse riders as they passed on a trail, so as to not stress equine sensibilities. I actually did this more than once, especially if the horse-people were kids. I fugured a seven hundred pound animal with limited cognitive function deserved respect. Despite my efforts I got nothing but grief from the adult equestrians. More recently the mountain bikers and horse riders seem to have staked out different territories and contact is pretty rare.

[avramd]

Hey Tim,

We have those randomly around Newport, there's an organization that promotes biking in this town. I've seen them in other towns too, there's a cool trail in Anchorage, AK that has those at regular intervals, but it's a paved trail that skirts the city, I've never seen one in the middle of the woods - it's kinda cool, but I agree that unless there are a number of them and they're on a map somewhere, they're not going to get much use.

One thing I wonder is how many people actually end up needing to fix something in the middle of an urban ride. Even the urban ones seem to me more like maybe they are there to make the cycling promotors feel good. I think maybe their idea is that they're going to get a 1000x increase in cycling to the point where the law of large numbers is what will get the frequency of on-street repair needs up to the point where having bike stations all around town is justified.

[Charlie]

This survey has its "issues", and the use of carbon footprint against folks who trailer their horses around made me squirm as that guy who trailers his Moore-24 up and down the west coast to races, but it did result in the State Parks rep from Sacramento wondering aloud why the State allows any equestrian trails.

Yeah, but you’re not asking the State to fund the creation and maintenance of the ocean you sail on. And I suspect you’re using private facilities to launch. (Can you ramp-launch a Moore 24?)

Charlie

[Slick470]

One thing I have noticed in the hiking and mountain biking world is the common practice of mountain bikers to work with parks to maintain, repair, and develop trails. Back when I rode regularly, the local groups would occasionally set up trail work days. I don't know if this is something that is common in the horseback riding world, but seeing what trails look like after several horses go through when it's muddy, I'm not sure that it is.

[BeauV]

Here in Santa Cruz, we've seen a massive increase in commuters on bikes, most are electric-assist bikes. These bikes aren't going to ride on a mountain bike trail ever. But, they are flooding the streets. Many of them are the pick-up truck version of a bike with kid seats on the back and big bins for groceries. All this is certainly raising the awareness of riding bikes and even my hard core friends are riding mountain bikes with battery assist, something I refuse to do.

As one would expect, a bit of friction is showing up between the bike commuters and those driving cars while stuck in traffic. I can cross town in 10 minutes by bike at 5 pm, it takes over an hour in a car. (No one has been allowed to build bigger roads in Santa Cruz in decades.) Bike lanes are becoming the new battleground. Funding for divided roads (to keep cars out of bike lanes physically) has been allocated and is being aggressively applied. Car-on-Bike fatalities are up faster than the rate of increase in bike ridership.

[BeauV]

One thing I have noticed in the hiking and mountain biking world is the common practice of mountain bikers to work with parks to maintain, repair, and develop trails. Back when I rode regularly, the local groups would occasionally set up trail work days. I don't know if this is something that is common in the horseback riding world, but seeing what trails look like after several horses go through when it's muddy, I'm not sure that it is.

Yes, there are trail repair and building groups in both camps around here. The worst problem is the use of trails when they are extremely wet, the next worse problem is too many folks using the trails. If one pedals up the coast to a park that is about 8 miles outside of town, there are very very few people using the trails of any kind. In the parks that are within a mile of the city or surrounded by it, the trails are worn out.

[kdh]

The horse vs bike issues has flared up from time to time. At one point the horse folks wanted us bikers to get off our bikes, take our helmets off, and talk quietly to the horse riders as they passed on a trail, so as to not stress equine sensibilities. I actually did this more than once, especially if the horse-people were kids. I fugured a seven hundred pound animal with limited cognitive function deserved respect. Despite my efforts I got nothing but grief from the adult equestrians. More recently the mountain bikers and horse riders seem to have staked out different territories and contact is pretty rare.

As my girls both ride I'll stick up for them a bit.

Horse manure is basically grass. "Steaming pile" is somewhat accurate, but it's nothing like dog shit, for example.

We abut our town-owned bridal trails and put a lot of time into maintaining them. Being sensitive to mud is the best way to keep things reasonable. One frequent biker has those really fat tires. That helps.

Thank you, Steele, for recognizing that horses are living, large, prey animals that spook easily creating danger for the rider. A little respect is all it takes. Also, many people don't know not to sneak up on a horse quietly. It's better to make your presence known early.

There is still a 15mph speed limit while passing a horse in a car most states. This is for good reason.

For the most part we all get along in our woods. Uncontrolled dogs are the worst problem. Not many people use the trails, which goes a long way.

[BeauV]

Keith, as a retired horseman, I completely agree with not sneaking up on a horse. Horses know they are prey and strange humans might be preditors. I also agree that a pile of horse maure is nowhere near as bad as a dog or some other meat eater, but as a retired trail runner, it's amazing how deep a horse dump can be . Lighter use on trails is probably the real key, and awfully difficult if you live near a big city.

[Tim Ford]

I rode for three years at summer camp, then worked on horseback for six months as shepherd, then taught riding at an independent school for a year to two.

My words to the kids were, "horses are big, not very bright and incredibly sensitive, so just act 'naturally'." Never had to define "naturally" but the kids seem to get it, smooth motions, smooth voices, smooth approach. One time, outside a stall, I was explaining how we'd tack up, resting an arm on the stall, a horse bit me on the arm and raised a big gnarly blood blister. That pretty much destroyed any faith the kids had in my horse-sense. Teachable moment I guess....

I've seen them in other towns too, there's a cool trail in Anchorage, AK that has those at regular intervals, but it's a paved trail that skirts the city, I've never seen one in the middle of the woods - it's kinda cool, but I agree that unless there are a number of them and they're on a map somewhere, they're not going to get much use.

To be perfectly honest, this was just off a paved road, now closed to automobile traffic and in ill repair. It gets a sizable amount of foot and bicycle traffic, especially in warmer months. But as far as I know, it's the only one in the park. I'll check to see if there are any more on the park map.