The Acceptable and Unacceptable Faces Of......

Unfortunately for regular readers who are bored with the subject, there's a lot of unfinished commenting to deal with on the mountain bike issue. Doubly unfortunate because it may only confirm the MTBers in their self-absorption (pointed out by Mark).

Last night's RAG was, not surprisingly, attended by six bikers most of whom had never been before. This meant a disproportionate attendance out of a total of sixteen (I think). Of the others three were SWT people, three others SWT members one from DVS and two FoBM and another 'local resident'. I've raised this before and will again but that's a subject for another post.

The bikers were, I guess, keen to show they are responsible and law-abiding although for my taste and delicate constitution some of the interruptions were a bit loud. I also don't enjoy meetings when people don't speak 'through the chair' but conduct a kind of conversation directed at the last person to speak. The things that struck me most about the bikers were: first that they were there at all and in those numbers ( I've already mentioned a tendency to 'hunt in packs'); second that individually they were likeable enough - as a group I'm still making my mind up; third that they seem to want to promote the sport yet express (presumably with sincerity) disapproval of certain other MTBers who let the side down by going off bridleways.

It's the last of these that puzzles me most. At least two have a financial or professional interest in the sport as bike shop owner or 'bike officer' for a transport organisation. It's no secret that when your living or your job is dependent on something you have to market the product or accessories. And you can see some of the ways that MTBing is marketed on newstands and magazine websites. There's a high premium on excitement and gear and an ever changing range of products. I would say a lot is designed to appeal to young males who, common sense suggests, will often be just the sort who won't like being told where they can and can't ride. So no surprise that we get the problems we do. And when the Single Track movement campaigns for access for bikers to narrow paths that are, by their nature, not bridleways we begin to see that the message of responsibility these bikers seemed to want to put across is dubious. Does it really matter to them that paths are being cut up in the way they are? I suspect they don't give a damn. So why didn't they say what they really thought ? Well perhaps it was as well they didn't going on some of the comments today on their message board: there you see them for what they really are - with a few exceptions, scoring points according to the level of immaturity shown. Pity, and I had thought I could have liked some of them, but as with other adolescents they probably wouldn't want to be approved of by old *****s like me.

So where does that leave us? I had started by believing that there could be an accommodation. But now I think they're only interested in listening to each other. A pity really because it makes MTBing all round bad news. I would like to be wrong on this but at the moment it looks depressing.