Public parks also stipulate who can do what where and under

what conditions. All kinds of rules and regulations govern public


parks.

Indeed. And the rules and regulations, quite correctly,
permit mountainbiking in most locations.

This is where I came in a hundred posts ago with my complaint
against the stupidity of what the managers were incorrectly
permitting.

Indeed you did. And in all that blather you've done precisely nothing to explain WHY the managers were doing so incorrectly.

You complain that you don't like bikes on trails and then assert that all serious hikers feel the same way. However, you've done nothing to prove that and, as I am a hiker too and know a fair few hikers, I am not going to believe your blank assertion without backup. I think it's just you and a few extremists who have a bee in your bonnets about bikes.

You conveniently forget that Parks' core objectives are to provide recreation, preserve wildlife and protect the resource. Against those objectives, of course they're going to allow mountainbiking if that's what a significant percentage of the population, who pay for the parks, want to do. They are not going to pander to extremists like you who won't share one iota.

You then come up with the most laughable concept of all ... "Best Use" ... but your best use is simply what you want to do.

I will respond in any way I think fit to your posts. If
you

don't like it I think you can think of a suitable epithet to
apply.



I will compare what you have posted in response to my

preceding post and you had better not be pulling single sentences out
of my

paragraphs.

I reiterate, I reserve the right to respond in any way I deem
fit.

If you pull single sentences out of my paragraphs to respond
to, then we will be off on a tangential issue which you will lose because such
posting is universally recognized as the behavior of a scoundrel and a cad. Your
deviltry will be pitted against My Saintliness. Think you can win an argument
when it is going to be all about the correct manner of posting on a
newsgroup?

Ed, the standard for newsgroups is that, when challenged to support a position, you are able to justify it with facts and logic. When challenged you simply assert 'I KNOW it's true'. So don't start whinging when I point out the massive fallacies you commit.

When I am recreating (hiking) I am usually a traveler far from

home. And I do it alone for the same reason that people who write
travel books

also do their traveling alone. Having to travel or hike or bike with
others is a

distraction from my purpose for doing what I am doing. If I want
social

intercourse, there are other venues for that.



What is your point ? The fact that you like solitude is
entirely immaterial as regards to what other people want to do !



Listen up you confounded jackass! You remarked previously that
since I hike alone I possibly can't get along with others - so I am telling you
why I prefer to hike alone. Jeez, you can't follow anything! Go back a few posts
and look it up! I am way too lazy to ever do anything like that
myself.

Unlike you, I DO refer back to what was previously said. And the original question was WHY you think you are able to represent what other hikers think, particularly when you tend to hike alone as you report.

So, yet again, you have attempted to obfuscate and deviate from the topic to avoid the obvious conclusion that you can't justify what you asserted.

What you like to do, or avoid, is ENTIRELY IMMATERIAL to the question of what the majority of trail users wish to do. You're dancing around the question because you can't answer it ... as usual.

Please, do tell me, WHY you think you are entitled to tell
other

people how to enjoy themselves ? I'm not telling you what to do,
but you

seem determined to dictate to everyone else how they use their public
parks and

land.



Trails are there for walkers, not for bikers. Most developed

parks will have plenty of roads and bike paths for cycling. There is
never any

reason why a bike should be on a hiking trail. If the park managers
and

administrators had the brains they were born with, they would see to


it.



You didn't answer the question. WHY are you entitled to
dictate how people should enjoy a public resource ?



The resource itself dictates that. I can clearly see what the
resource is and you can't.

The resource dictates nothing ... clearly I CAN ride on trails shared with hikers since I do so every week.

I reiterate ... WHY do you think you are entitled to dictate to others as to how they use a public resource. And don't say it's 'Best Use' because, as we both know, that's just what you want to do ... and is in no way a justification. I could just as easily state that "Trails must be managed to optimise user satisfaction" ... with every bit as much validity if it's just opinion.

There is vast literature authored by men far wiser than you

and I who have devoted their lives to the preservation of wild places.
Many of

these men were responsible for the original setting aside of these
wild places.

They are the experts, not necessarily the administrators of such
places. Of

course some administrators are better than others, but as a group they
cannot be

relied upon to do what is best, either for the present or for future


generations. Even National Park administrators often want to develop
the park

entrusted to their temporary care, never seeming to realize that their
first

duty is simply preservation of what is already there. Most development
is an

abomination. It is possible for man to even ruin something like the
Grand Canyon

NP, impossible as that might seem. All you have to do is just keep
chipping away

at it, like permitting mountain bikes on hiking trails.



Ed, again you are not addressing the point. The impartial
managers who ARE managing the resources are simply not giving you exactly what
you want. On that basis, and that basis alone, you think they should be
replaced with others who you believe would agree with your position. The
reality is that the reasonably objective managers currently in place are doing
their best to share a limited resource fairly.

The park mangers are not doing their jobs correctly. I blame
them more than I do those who like you are simply taking advantage of their
dereliction of duty.

WHY are they not doing their jobs correctly Ed ? If their remit is as I stated above, which is it, then they're doing what they should ... trying to fairly apportion a scarce resource to satisfy as many as possible.

For your world to make any sense one would have to accept that your pronouncements on what is the 'best' and 'right' use of a trail have the status of fact. It doesn't, it's simply your opinion and you've not even shown that a significant percentage of the hiking population share it.
Nope, but your ability to read has certainly gone. I am not

going to ever spell out everything for you. Either learn how to read
or get

lost!

No, Ed, you DON'T get to redefine the English language to suit
yourself. If you write something, I suggest you ensure that it's
consistent with your position - it frequently isn't !

You're more than happy to throw out ridiculous assertions and,
only when challenged, do you then say that wasn't what you meant. You
wrote that mountainbikers would inevitably come to a bad end ... you then
conceded that this wasn't the case and it was unlikely that they would
die.

You want to take every world literally and then give them all
equal importance, and that can never be the case when you are reading anything
that borders on being literature. You simply don't know how to read me and I
suspect not anyone else either. You pounce on words which are not even germane
to what I am saying. Less statistics and more poetry would teach you how to
read.

Good grief. Maybe you should try the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Defence ... get a qualified poet to certify that beauty = truth and then assert that life is guilty for failing to be either !

You are not writing literature Ed ... you're debating in a forum. You intentionally want to generalise simply because, deep down, you know that everything you're saying just comes down to 'because that's what I want'.

And, lastly, if you are trying to write poetry I suggest you desist ... it's awful !

Deaths from mountain biking are rare but not unheard of.
Serious injuries from mountain biking are common as mud. I put "death and
injuries" together because they go together, but not because they are equal in
numbers. If you knew how to read, that is how you would have read it without
making an issue of deaths. You sir are an idiot!

Your problem is that, when it comes to injuries and fatalities,
that your fundamental premise ... that mountainbiking is extremely dangerous ...
is provably false. It is safer than driving, rugby, skiing and many other
activities. You can throw all the blather you wish at it but you can't
change that fundamental truth.

Riding a bike on a trail is indeed a sport, but such an
activity has no business being on a trail used by hikers. That is not what
trails are for. Mountain biking compared to hiking, which is not a sport, is
extremely dangerous. It is even dangerous compared to other sports. It is not
the same thing as driving a car, but it is similar to alpine skiing, another
outdoor sport that is dangerous.

Racing a bike is a sport, simply riding it is not. Just as running to win a race is a sport whilst going for a walk is not. However, they are all recreations and there is no objective rationale to ban them. Your 'best use' is nonsense.

And, no, mountainbiking is much safer than alpine skiing ... it's much more akin to cross country skiing.

All activities have some deleterious effect on nature.

But minimal for hikers compared to bikers. But you are stupid

enough to even permit motorcycles on some trails. Stupid is as stupid


does.

Hikers and bikers are roughly equivalent in terms of trail erosion
impact ... happy to refer you to all the research and literature if you
wish. Motorbikes have a much higher impact of course. However, I do
not believe that a blanket ban on motorbikes will work ... there must be some
place for them too ... albeit more restricted than others.

Bikers need to be restricted from trails for the same reason
that motorcyclists need to be restricted from trails. No difference whatsoever.
I have seen trails ruined by biker traffic and have never seen the same from
hiker traffic. The erosion, even if not quantitatively different (highly
doubtful), is qualitatively different because feet and wheels are different from
one another.

If you're never seen hiker trails ruined by erosion I take it that Snowdon wasted their £1.5million on reinforcing the trails to repair them after hiker damage ?