At 05:26 AM 5/16/2008, andrew edmiston <powered_by_p
...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>Dear sir,
>after reading some articles on your webpage, I feel that I must make my opinion clear. I am fairly disgruntled that I have been immediately bracketed as a 'wheeled locust', just because I own and ride a mountain bike, as a form of both exercise and enjoyment.
What you are essentially saying is that any form of cycling, bar
riding on paved roads (which, in both the U.K and U.S.A contributes to
around 30% of road accidents a year due to careless or D.U.I drivers)
should be outright banned.
Yes, of course! In natural areas it destroys wildlife habitat, which
is PRICELESS. You have no right to do that to innocent animals and
plants.
> But then, we face another problem. MOUNTAIN biking is called so because the bikes are designed to be ridden in MOUNTAINS. take the mountain out of mountain biking, and you're left with road biking. Which is not as fun as you may think.
Nonsense. I've been doing it for 60 years, and it IS fun. So do
millions of other people.
>Mountain biking is another way to express a person's passion, just as your passion seems to be to blaspheme the riders and the bikes. Without this passion, we would be at a lost cause. People would resort to other high-octane sports to get that 'natural high' - i.e. motorsports - which, I'm sure you will agree, would just aggravate the nature lover such as yourself, as it is a far more dangerous and toxic sport than mountain biking.
One of our responsibilities is to express our passions in ways that
don't harm wildlife or other people. You harm BOTH wildlife and people
while you express your "passion". What if my passion is shooting guns?
Riding a dirt bike? A snowmobile? An ATV? Abusing woen or children?
Shouldn't people be allowed to practice their passions, whatever they
are? Of course not!
>Our mountain bikes are not designed to be or look aggressive, or intimidating. They are designed to withstand and tolerate the type of riding that we do. There is no point in spending a lot of money on something if it's design is one that would break as soon as we went riding on it.
By Newton't Third Law of Motion, the force that you subject the bike
to is IDENTICAL to the force that you apply to the ground -- an
anything else in your path!
>To say that it will be impossible to understand your web page if you own a car or mountain bike is very narrow minded of you. I own both. Yet I understand the problem with the wildlife and the planet's climate.
I don't think so. If you understood the seriousness of what you are
doing, you wouldn't do it. People who trylu CARE about nature don't
mountain bike! PERIOD!
> There are many like me who share the same views.
I know. They are pretty ignorant.
>Yet whilst your views are good points, you win no friends by blaming one of the most natural and eco-friendly forms of transportation.
You aren't being honest. Mountain biking is not "transportation".
Transportation is for the purpose of travelling from one place to
another. Mountain biking is recreation. And it's NOT "eco-friendly".
On the other hand, riding a bike for the purpose of transportation
(i.e., in place of driving a car) IS eco-friendly. Replacing hiking
with mountain biking is taking a big step BACKWARDS. But VERY few if
any mountain bikers are honest enough to admit it.
>May I ask what your ph.D is in? I could not find it on your website.
Psychology.
>Yours sincerely
>A mountain biker. Who has respect for the environment around him.
--
I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"). Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)
Please don't put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!
http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande
