"Blackblade" wrote in message ...
[...]

Edward Dolan wrote:

One Vandeman is worth a thousand like you. I have already told
you that the land managers are idiots and cowards and will do whatever they can
to avoid conflict from pressure groups. All serious hikers agree with me.

Ed, you've never provided one iota of proof for this supposition. All serious hikers DON'T agree with you ... because I know several that don't and that therefore invalidates your statement.

I have never known a serious hiker who thinks it is a good idea to share trails with bikers. What casual hikers think doesn't matter of course.
[...]

And then I told you WHY I prefer to hike alone ... to which
you had no response. You are a genius at always missing my explanations of why I
do what I do and why I think like I think. In any event I do not see what social
hiking has to do with what trails are about.

Ed, I don't care a jot why you prefer to hike alone ... which is why I have not responded on it. The core issue was your proposition that you represent a large group of hikers ... which I nullified by providing evidence, from your own testimony, that you don't interact with large numbers of other hikers and therefore cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, know what the majority of other hikers think.

I do not have to interact with large numbers of hikers because I see them hiking alone on trails just like me. They are doing exactly the same thing I am doing. I then told you why I prefer to hike alone by relating it to the writers of travel books. It was you who thought it strange that I should like to hike alone. You will remain ignorant all of your life if you don’t take seriously the explanations of why others do things the way they do.

I am not a social butterfly like you and I would never want to be either. I do most things alone because I can best experience them that way. Otherwise, it is nothing but social interaction. If that is what I want, I can go to a bar ... or join a club. But, like Somerset Maugham, I am not a clubbable man.

Mountain bikers are barbarians and have no right to be on any trail used by hikers – unless they want to get off their god damn ****ing bikes and walk like everyone else. When they crash and injure themselves, I rejoice! If and when they manage to kill themselves, I say good riddance to bad rubbish! Death to mountain biking!

“Tread softly! All the earth is holy ground.”
~ Christina Rossetti (Psalm 24),
from "A Later Life: A Double Sonnet of Sonnets"

Mountain bikes have wheels. Wheels are for roads.

Trails are for walking. What’s the matter? Can’t walk?

Ed Dolan the Great
aka
Saint Edward the Great