[Gary]

I've said before, if you're on trails that allow motor vehicles go for it. It sounds like you're riding your e moped on some trails that aren't for motor vehicles though. Why do you think that it's ok to take your motor vehicle on trails for human powered recreation?

And as I'm getting tired of saying to you. You know fuck all about Scotland, Fuck all about Scottish outdoor access laws. And certainly fuck all about how the trails and areas I ride in evolved. FWIW all the downhill trails local to me were originally Enduro motorcycle uphill trails predominantly used by motorcycle guys. We started digging turns/bus stops and jumps/drops etc into them and racing them around 25 years back. Back then we had to watch out for them riding up while we descended. But we all respected each other and got along just fine. This probably sounds hard for you to believe.

Go easy on that Coffee now. I hear it's terrible for your blood pressure when combined with blind raging hate.

 

[rockofullr]

Go easy on that Coffee now. I hear it's terrible for your blood pressure when combined with blind raging hate.

OH NO!!! I'M SO ANGRY I'M TYPING IN ALL CAPS!!!!!!!

TIME TO RAGE

 

[kidwoo]

If an ebike makes kenny smith look that lame, what do you think it makes gary look like?

 

[Gary]

If an ebike makes kenny smith look that lame

I'd genuinely never even heard of Kenny Smith before this thread. Is he the US/Canadian Luke Cockburn or something?

 

[Udi]

Gary makes a very valid point, both about e-bikes and about cultural differences.
There are some very aggresive views in North America where certain things are made out to be huge issues when really they are very minor issues with unwarranted amounts political-padding and high-horsing. The usual process is that something is singled out as "issue" and then everything surrounding the "issue" becomes the subject of huge amounts of hatred, completely disproportional to the technical magnitude of the problem.

In the rest of the world, e-bikes have been functioning fine for many years, both offroad and onroad, and on common-use trails with various other users. No huge environmental destruction has ensued, the three-toed sloths and dolphins are still dying mostly from other causes.

I'm certainly not jumping on board with the hard compound rubber or semi slicks for mud riding, but in this particular case if people read what he wrote before blindly writing it off based on beliefs, the world might end up being a happier place for riders of all things.

 

[Bike078]

Hoy, to calm down everyone take a look at this picture I took while diving a few years ago.

 

[Bikael Molton]

What type of e-juice is everybody running?

 

[Nick]

A big breakfast and all this stored e-juice I carry around my waist.

 

[kidwoo]

Gary makes a very valid point, both about e-bikes and about cultural differences.
There are some very aggresive views in North America where certain things are made out to be huge issues when really they are very minor issues with unwarranted amounts political-padding and high-horsing. The usual process is that something is singled out as "issue" and then everything surrounding the "issue" becomes the subject of huge amounts of hatred, completely disproportional to the technical magnitude of the problem.

In the rest of the world, e-bikes have been functioning fine for many years, both offroad and onroad, and on common-use trails with various other users. No huge environmental destruction has ensued, the three-toed sloths and dolphins are still dying mostly from other causes.

You deliberately being that obtuse, or do you really not know?

The rest of the world doesn't have armies of retired, entitled pricks making second careers out of becoming tax exempt 'advocacy groups' that do nothing but get people kicked off of trails. I've been working my ass off the last two months trying to keep a bunch of self-righteous kooks from boise idaho from closing a bunch of areas they've never been to, to snowmobiles in tahoe 400 miles away. Being a smug asshole is industry here.

This is the land of cops with radar guns pointed at bike riders on dirt roads for crying out loud. It's not an issue in the rest of the world because the rest of the world isn't populated with americans.

#exceptionalism

 

[Bikael Molton]

Yep

This is the land of cops

 

[Gary]

The rest of the world doesn't have armies of retired, entitled pricks making second careers out of becoming tax exempt 'advocacy groups' that do nothing but get people kicked off of trails. I've been working my ass off the last two months trying to keep a bunch of self-righteous kooks from boise idaho from closing a bunch of areas they've never been to, to snowmobiles in tahoe 400 miles away. Being a smug asshole is industry here.

This is the land of cops with radar guns pointed at bike riders on dirt roads for crying out loud. It's not an issue in the rest of the world because the rest of the world isn't populated with americans.

#exceptionalism

Can't speak for Udi but I'm pretty sure we both knew that. Point is a few of your boys here don't seem to be able to grasp there's any other way outside of the U S A's.
This doesn't surprise me.

The UK has it's fair share of self-righteous twats too... Not only the retired and a lot of them are even cyclists

 

[Gary]

Skip to 3:59...

Chris goes on to say how Pivot actively played down their Emtb launch in the US.

still think it's a coincidence they used Aaron Chase in their "shuttle" promotional video rather than Bernard?
Hmmm...

I think Commencal is the the only company I've seen showing even vaguely rowdy/stylish riding in their emtb promo videos... nothing crazy but they have actually shown how the bike can be ridden playfully by a decent rider.

They then blew it by putting Remi on the fucking 29 version.

 

[kidwoo]

Can't speak for Udi but I'm pretty sure we both knew that. Point is a few of your boys here don't seem to be able to grasp there's any other way outside of the U S A's.
This doesn't surprise me.

This is what I quoted

There are some very aggresive views in North America where certain things are made out to be huge issues when really they are very minor issues with unwarranted amounts political-padding and high-horsing.

I guess it depends what your definition of minor is. But closed trails isn't something I'd think counts as minor to people near population centers who only have a handful of trails to ride on.

And no, unless you live here you really don't know how bad it can be losing trails for stupid reasons. We don't need a lecture from you dirty foreigners.

I said foreigner



That said, I do remember some wannabe journalist type going off on people riding e-bikes on amasa back in moab. Which is a network of moto and jeep trails that mountainbikers discovered in the 90s.

 

[Udi]

You deliberately being that obtuse, or do you really not know?

Can't speak for Udi but I'm pretty sure we both knew that. Point is a few of your boys here don't seem to be able to grasp there's any other way outside of the U S A's. This doesn't surprise me.

What Gary said.
It's a pretty common theme to say "yeah there's a lot of dumb Americans, you wouldn't understand the problem". Many of you (or your boys, as Gary puts it) imagine yourself to be special, superior exceptions to everyone around you, while spewing the same horse shit out of your respective mouths.

I don't own an e-bike and don't have strong views on the topic, but I've noticed plenty of (otherwise) quite intelligent people from your continent on this forum make statements on this topic that are completely disconnected from physical reality. I understand politics make it hard to change that stuff at a local level (believe me I know, I live in an overly-conservative, "all fun = illegal" city myself), but there's no excuse for pushing that stuff as fact on an international forum.

 

[Gary]

This is what I quoted

There are some very aggresive views in North America where certain things are made out to be huge issues when really they are very minor issues with unwarranted amounts political-padding and high-horsing.

I guess it depends what your definition of minor is. But closed trails isn't something I'd think counts as minor to people near population centers who only have a handful of trails to ride on.

And no, unless you live here you really don't know how bad it can be losing trails for stupid reasons. We don't need a lecture from you dirty foreigners.

I said foreigner

Yeah. I understand exactly where you're coming from Woo and I do sympathise. I've not always been so lucky to live in Scotland with our quite frankly outstandingly liberal access laws. I think they still state "Go where you want but don't be a dick or damage anyone elses shit" But even then I have witnessed trails/DH tracks access being lost due to land ownership issues and the odd bunch of moaning twats who were never directly affected by push bikes being ridden in the woods.

Being old AF I still think of all your white settlers as immigrants anyway

 

[kidwoo]

What Gary said.
It's a pretty common theme to say "yeah there's a lot of dumb Americans, you wouldn't understand the problem". Many of you (or your boys, as Gary puts it) imagine yourself to be special, superior exceptions to everyone around you, while spewing the same horse shit out of your respective mouths.

What a weird coincidence that I put "#exceptionalism" in my first comment.

man what what are the chances?

Look, here are some facts, regardless of your own high horse view about americans and their right to bitch.

Right now there's a bill in congress that would give leeway to land managers to consider the appropriateness of bikes in FUTURE wilderness designations. Not existing, but future ones. Lots of these are wilderness study areas, and lots of them have existing trail networks.

The wilderness society, sierra club and some other goofy ones like wildearth guardians have already put out statements that this bill is a trojan horse because ebikes look just like mountainbikes, and once motorized vehicles are allowed in wilderness, the next gigantic strip mine and forest clearcut are just around the corner. Seriously. That is actually happening. And they employ lobbyists to defeat bills like this. Ebikes are also now given as a reason for banning bikes from these wilderness study areas. Our sport dies here without public land and every jackass with enough money thinks they need to dictate how that land is used. I don't know about australia or NZ but Canada and Europe are not this bad.

You can't simultaneously claim we can't bitch about stupidity while also chastising us for our stupidity. We are this stupid. And we get results. Ebikes really are a problem when comes to keeping trails on public land open. Sorry, not sorry.

 

[kidwoo]

Yeah. I understand exactly where you're coming from Woo and I do sympathise. I've not always been so lucky to live in Scotland with our quite frankly outstandingly liberal access laws. I think they still state "Go where you want but don't be a dick or damage anyone elses shit" But even then I have witnessed trails/DH tracks access being lost due to land ownership issues and the odd bunch of moaning twats who were never directly affected by push bikes being ridden in the woods.

Being old AF I still think of all your white settlers as immigrants anyway

Yeah there are still a (shrinking) number of places that off the radar of the fun police here. But it's going quick. Canada is like america's scotland. More and more people just getting fed up here go there to get away from the bullshit for their vacations. That's money that could be spent domestically. The only thing different about their mountains is the people that manage them. I'd take an alberta tar sands if it meant crown land mentality to bike trails. They have a fraction of our population and exponentially more places to ride.

Honestly, england seems kind of crappy to me. I don't want that 'trail centers' model to be what happens here if you want to go bike riding. Public land is awesome. It's just getting harder and harder to keep it that way.

 

[Udi]

Ebikes are also now given as a reason

Ebikes really are a problem

This sums up the problem.

There's a lot of hatred for e-bikes and the people who ride them, when the actual problem is almost purely political. E-bikes are barely more intrusive or destructive to land / wildlife than a regular pushbike, in the case you describe they're clearly just being used as an excuse to do something that was going to happen sooner or later anyway. I appreciate the desire to delay the destruction, but in my experience all that happens is like-minded people end up fighting / hating each other instead of joining forces, and the money-driven destruction happens regardless.

I think you might have missed my point though - which is that this is an international forum, and hating on e-bikes (and owners) because of a localised political issue isn't correct or fair.

You probably wouldn't believe it but where I live there is no DH (hasn't been for years), the trails are all footpaths, and I have to buy an international flight + lift ticket every year to get decent riding in. If I do ride locally it's 100% illegal. Tracks get shut down by various "conservation" groups regularly (occasionally with violent traps set), large council fines are involved (if caught), and the actual legal trails are complete rubbish which you nor I would ever want to ride anyway. Basically, I live in the aftermath of what you're going through, and have for a long time. When I meet resistance, depending on the variety, I either try to politely talk some sense into them, or run.

Would people on e-bikes make the access issues even worse here? 100% they would, it's basically just putting another tool in the arsenal of every party who wants us gone . Does that mean I hate e-bikes and people who ride them? No - because:
a) live and let live
b) the more people out there on bikes (any kind) the higher chance that things will change in future
c) anything that gets closed "thanks to e-bikes" would have been closed not much later anyway

The opposing forces rely on fear of breaking rules while generating internal conflict to get what they want. You guys are scared of breaking the rules by riding stuff you shouldn't ride, and fight the people closest to your cause (other riders) thus slimming your numbers anyway.

Anyway - do what you want. I gave up on doing things the "legal" or "right" way an eternity ago, because that's just an elaborate scam that keeps you trapped and waiting for a reward which you'll never get.

 

[Gary]

Honestly, england seems kind of crappy to me.

It's a long time since I lived in England and I think it's getting better with locals building much more non-official trails even on the same hills used the trailcentres use. I helped build lots of unofficial (fairly well hidden) stuff in England and continued to ride everywhere I wanted to and explaining how the deal works where I'm from if I was ever confronted. And rarely ever really had a problem with landowners once we got talking, must be my Scottish charisma, eh?
I was riding with a Welsh guy one evening the other week and from what he was saying it definitley seems like more money is currently going into trail building in Wales than Scotland. But yeah. it's probably all more trail centre model or PAYG bike parky places rather than natural trails out in the wild.
I think here we have a pretty good balance between trail centres and natural riding. The trail centre model sort of follows the ski idea of coloured graded trails and is great for families/beginners right up to more experienced riders but if you want to ride anything actually challenging that's not really where to go. It's sometimes an absolute godsend to be able ride a nice armoured well draining trail centre surface flat out when your local trails have become an absolute shitty bog fest though.

 

[Jm_]

Do you yield to an E-bike that is going uphill?

 

[Nick]

Do you yield to an E-bike that is going uphill?

If toshi is on it?

Hell fucking no.

Elbows out!

 

[StiHacka]

All you need to know about bike access in Murica:
http://www.marinij.com/article/NO/20180409/NEWS/180409800

People like this have the ear of the authorities (and the money for their campaigns)

 

[sethimus]

sucks to be in the us obviously

 

[kidwoo]

b) the more people out there on bikes (any kind) the higher chance that things will change in future

speaking personally, this is really my biggest issue. Because I disagree the changes we're seeing around are a good thing. Local trail networks getting fucked up by goons who just have to try this hawt new endurpo thing. Promoters that just look for the next big 'experience' to sell to affluent white people.

Bike riding here legal and otherwise was better before this gigantic push to involve more people to sell shit to. Any new trail is built worse and the public trails I like are overrun with shitbags with fanny packs bunny hopping their back wheel at 5mph everywhere.

My biggest problem is just that I hate mountainbikers. Last thing I want is more of them.







See ya at the pub Gary. Leaving soon.

 

[Bikael Molton]

Marin has sucked for a long ass time.

Beautiful place though.

 

[kidwoo]

Marin has sucked for a long ass time.

Beautiful place though.

What makes you think I'm talking about marin? I'm talking places where people actually ride.


In the daylight I mean.

 

[Bikael Molton]

Sorry I was too lazy to quote Sti, who I was replying to about his Marin post.

(I like to hike in Marin haha. Gave up attempting to ride there 25 years ago.)

I agree with you that more people is generally bad for one’s local trails. Riding is following surfing in that way, though its still a long way from being as fucked as surfing is. “Getting more people riding” is mostly only good for the people selling gear, and the wave pool, I mean bike park owners.

People want to live in pretty places with nice weather. And it seems to be generally the more obnoxious, wealthy entitled ones who move in these days. Marin just happens to have had those types of people for a long time.

What makes you think I'm talking about marin? I'm talking places where people actually ride.


In the daylight I mean.

 

[slimshady]

Wow. I honestly love the way this thread has evolved. I learned a lot about how you guys face trail access issues up (and down) there. I have been reading about the lobbying by the Sierra Club and other MoFos who'd like to keep all the existing and future trails for themselves in the US, and I have to admit I feel your pain guys. I still don't get how throwing money so blatantly into politics to get something done is legal up there...

Down here we basically are given a kind "if u don't break anything we won't tell you've been here" deal when riding on national/provincial reservation areas -the local law forbids any kind of mechanical assistance when traveling through them- and/or using ancestral hiking/mule paths to go uphill. The downhill ones are mostly inaccessible for the land owners or the forest service, so as long as you don't start a forest fire or get so many broken bones they have to take you down to the hospital, they won't say anything.

I yet have to cross paths with an ebike while in a big mountain trail (the ones I saw were in my local patch of land, flat as an European model's chest), but my scarce experience has taught me most of their riders are basically douchebags who'd race you to brag about their motor assistance.

 

[Bikael Molton]

Ebikes are poaching bike/hike trails on federal land here daily, and we even had a local eBike shop actively promoting that poaching on Facebook and YouTube.

Due to Republican budgets, there is zero enforcement of rules on our trails, which is a good thing in the short term. If rangers had to deal on a daily basis with inspections of MTB vs Levo, we’d be on a short path to bicycles being banned, I’d bet. The flip side to tight budgets is that there is very little upkeep, and certainly no upgrades in either facilities or new recreation opportunities. They can’t even empty the trash cans at picnic areas.

This week I actually saw moto tracks on a non-motorized trail for the first time in 3 years. Moto poaching here is close to nonexistent, imho. We do have probably thousands of miles of moto trails and some pretty famous tracks within a 3 hour drive, however.

 

[Bike078]

Wow. I honestly love the way this thread has evolved. I learned a lot about how you guys face trail access issues up (and down) there. I have been reading about the lobbying by the Sierra Club and other MoFos who'd like to keep all the existing and future trails for themselves in the US, and I have to admit I feel your pain guys. I still don't get how throwing money so blatantly into politics to get something done is legal up there...

Down here we basically are given a kind "if u don't break anything we won't tell you've been here" deal when riding on national/provincial reservation areas -the local law forbids any kind of mechanical assistance when traveling through them- and/or using ancestral hiking/mule mule paths to go uphill. The downhill ones are mostly inaccessible for the land owners or the forest service, so as long as you don't start a forest fire or get so many broken bones they have to take you down to the hospital, they won't say anything.

I yet have to cross paths with an ebike while in a big mountain trail (the ones I saw were in my local patch of land, flat as an European model's chest), but my scarce experience has taught me most of their riders are basically douchebags who'd race you to brag about their motor assistance.

Thanks for sharing. Where I live, mountain bikers usually ride footpaths. One trail that we have which has lots of berms and jumps of various sizes is planted mostly with coconut and we don't know if it is owned by one or many. Within that land there was a guy who lived in a small bamboo hut who didn't like bikers because his corn plants would sometimes get knocked down. But it's all good now I think. Outside of that, footpaths get closed off when owners start fencing their plots with wire prior to building houses. More than one biker has run into them because they're not that visible when you're going full tilt. I think there's not much conflict overall because most people ride Saturday morning when the locals are at home and the kids don't have school.

I have only seen one e-bike that resembled an mtb in my city and it was a fatbike with the motor in the front triangle. It was ridden by a rather large caucasian male sweating it out under the burning tropical sun.

 

[kidwoo]

It was ridden by a rather large caucasian male sweating it out .

hellooooo new sig

 

[Bike078]

hellooooo new sig

Hahaha. Have at it Kevin.

 

[Bikael Molton]

Large Caucasian males are definitely the emtb demographic.

 

[Jm_]

And as I'm getting tired of saying to you. You know fuck all about Scotland, Fuck all about Scottish outdoor access laws. And certainly fuck all about how the trails and areas I ride in evolved. FWIW all the downhill trails local to me were originally Enduro motorcycle uphill trails predominantly used by motorcycle guys. We started digging turns/bus stops and jumps/drops etc into them and racing them around 25 years back. Back then we had to watch out for them riding up while we descended. But we all respected each other and got along just fine. This probably sounds hard for you to believe.

Go easy on that Coffee now. I hear it's terrible for your blood pressure when combined with blind raging hate.

I know Ardbeg and Lagavulin and it rains all the time.

 

[Udi]

I disagree the changes we're seeing around are a good thing. Local trail networks getting fucked up by goons who just have to try this hawt new endurpo thing.

Bike riding here legal and otherwise was better before this gigantic push to involve more people to sell shit to. Any new trail is built worse

Yeah agree with you on all counts.
Punter "enduro" riders galore where I live, riding fancy 6" travel bikes on footpaths.
Trails all sanitised and completely boring, anything remotely difficult has been flattened.
Pretty often serious environmental destruction happens to build these stupid "enduro" trails in place of previous natural, self-sustaining trails, which makes it almost amusing.

But there's specific hate being directed at e-bikes / e-bike riders from (only) the NA residents here, whereas outside of NA, most e-bike owners I know were already normal MTBers and it's just another steed in their stable.

At the end of the day, money drives these things and the industry doesn't care about you (or me), and there will always be another "enduro" or "e-bike" that draws a bunch of punters in to flatten trails for / causes access issues / forces us (or me at least) to go elsewhere to ride. I just thought a little global perspective might make this place a bit more chill, because we literally just watched an argument "over e-bikes" which had nothing to do with e-bikes and everything to do with local political climates.

 

[profro]

My biggest problem is just that I hate mountainbikers. Last thing I want is more of them.

We have to related.

 

[jonKranked]

Gary makes a very valid point, both about e-bikes and about cultural differences.
There are some very aggresive views in North America where certain things are made out to be huge issues when really they are very minor issues with unwarranted amounts political-padding and high-horsing. The usual process is that something is singled out as "issue" and then everything surrounding the "issue" becomes the subject of huge amounts of hatred, completely disproportional to the technical magnitude of the problem.

In the rest of the world, e-bikes have been functioning fine for many years, both offroad and onroad, and on common-use trails with various other users. No huge environmental destruction has ensued, the three-toed sloths and dolphins are still dying mostly from other causes.

I'm certainly not jumping on board with the hard compound rubber or semi slicks for mud riding, but in this particular case if people read what he wrote before blindly writing it off based on beliefs, the world might end up being a happier place for riders of all things.

You're neglecting the fact that we like getting Gary riled up.

 

[Tantrum Cycles]

i suspect one of the reasons even mid to small size bike companies are starting to pump out e-bikes is that they don't want to be late to the game so to speak i find myself wondering if this will result in supply outpacing demand, and these mid to small size bike companies will stop producing them.

here is the reason. ALL of the industry EXPERTS and ANALysts will tell you that E-bikes

1) are the saviour of the bike industry
2) will increase regular bike sales and use
3) is the answer to future (mobility (I fuckin hate that term) solutions)) along with self driving e cars.

I am NOT AGAINST e-bikes as another sport/catagory/toy. But the focus by the press/etc is insane. I'm kinda dreading Eurobike this year. Last year, I said they should just call it E-bike and spent the time dodging idiots test riding e-bikes inside.

That's when I was introduced to the term "bio-bikes", because, you know, we can't just call a bike a bike, we have to define its power source.

I have been told that I have no chance in the bike industry if I don't have an E bike in my lineup. And actually, i'd love to have one just for fun. Maybe an E trials bike.

but i'm too busy making real bikes and riding them.

So I'm just gonna go out on a limb and blame the entire industry for losing its way. You want an e-bike fine, but stop acting like it's gonna save your lame ass job or product or the world.

 

[jonKranked]

here is the reason. ALL of the industry EXPERTS and ANALysts will tell you that E-bikes

1) are the saviour of the bike industry
2) will increase regular bike sales and use
3) is the answer to future (mobility (I fuckin hate that term) solutions)) along with self driving e cars.

I am NOT AGAINST e-bikes as another sport/catagory/toy. But the focus by the press/etc is insane. I'm kinda dreading Eurobike this year. Last year, I said they should just call it E-bike and spent the time dodging idiots test riding e-bikes inside.

That's when I was introduced to the term "bio-bikes", because, you know, we can't just call a bike a bike, we have to define its power source.

I have been told that I have no chance in the bike industry if I don't have an E bike in my lineup. And actually, i'd love to have one just for fun. Maybe an E trials bike.

but i'm too busy making real bikes and riding them.

So I'm just gonna go out on a limb and blame the entire industry for losing its way. You want an e-bike fine, but stop acting like it's gonna save your lame ass job or product or the world.

So the problem with the bike industry is capitalism?

 

[jstuhlman]

So the problem with the bike industry is capitalism?

it’s the problem with a whole hell of a lot more than the bike industry...