bobPA wrote:
I think it is mostly do to the fact people don't want to dig, and a lot of trail "bosses" are fucking douche bags. I went to ...more
bobPA wrote:
I think it is mostly do to the fact people don't want to dig, and a lot of trail "bosses" are fucking douche bags. I went to some local trails years ago and they wanted you to dig for 2 days before you could ride...and then if you clipped a lip or pissed in the wrong spot the dudes would flip the fuck out. If I'm riding my little kids bike I wanna go out, relax and have a good time. I don't need some butthole, who does not even own the property, to be policing my every move.
Think of it from their side, you came to their place, their sanctuary if you will. They want you to PROVE YOURSELF to ride it. Why? I'm sure you understand good trails take a TON of work. We built some here, spent countless hours digging to get them up and running, and within a few weeks the spot was BLOWN UP by a ton of randoms showing up and telling their friends about it. NONE of them helped out. They would blow up landings and trash lips and do nothing to repair them, THEN they would complain when we stopped working on them. It got to the point where these kids were stealing beer from their parents, getting trashed (they were like 13-17) and bringing old couches and trash in there and burning stuff. We even found needles out there.
That's an extreme case, BUT the point is valid. If you spent days and weeks building a line, you wouldn't want some random showing up, trashing the lips/landings etc and leaving without helping fix it. Just like if you built a box or a rail, and some kid came and put a peg through the side of the box or dented the rail doing an over ice. You'd be pissed.
While those dudes were extreme with how they ran their trails, it is in NO WAY bad to expect new folks to dig and help out to earn their session on all that hard work those dudes put in. I would (and did) expect the same exact thing with my trails. I expected some help with them when people came to my place to "earn a session"-either dig then ride, OR dig at the end of the session to get them back to how they were before they were ridden that day, because I spent hours building my own at my parents place, and everyone just expected me to put in the insane amount of hours so they could just show up, do whatever and leave. It's a crap position to be in as the trail builders because you want people to come enjoy them, but you also want them to pitch in and help out-especially when or if they wreck something.
If you don't want to dig, then go to publicly maintained trails, or the skatepark.
"Hey anybody ever make that mistake like right when you wake up in the morning and you believe in yourself?" -Kyle Kinane
"BIKES!" -Tom Segura