Anyone catch all the negative nellie articles in the CH Local that have been published over the past few weeks. A nice letter from PMBA may be a good idea. A LOT of angry stories are surfacing about bad rider bahavior, bad language, bad etiquitte overall...
Here's an example. There have been others as well but not all are posted on the CHlocal website.
Marauding mountain bikes
In several incidents on the upper trails of the Wissahickon, I have been threatened by cyclists. I have been bumped intentionally, and my life has been threatened. The exact words were, “get out of the way” and “I should kill you”.
In his recent letter [“Mountain Bikers have rights, too, Dec. 25] ,Tim Woods attempted to equate pedestrians and equestrians with mountain bike use of the upper trails. Horses are not bikes. Horses have hearts, and blood, a pulse and a brain.
Families go to the Wissahickon Park to be in a natural area. They come because of the trees, the river, horses, the majestic natural looking landscape, etc., and the lack of vehicles. The use of the mountain bikes on the upper trails diminishes this. Use of a vehicle on the upper trails is a privilege, not a right. A special use fee for the privilege to ride a vehicle on the upper trails of the Wissahickan is appropriate in this circumstance. The license fee would pay to enforce the rules governing bikes for the good of the Wissahickon.
If mountain bikers were not riding the upper trails in the ‘Wissy,’ would they care about the park, or for the Friends of the Wissahickon, or for storm water runoff or for trails maintenance, etc.? Every issue they get involved in from storm water runoff to trails maintenance is to secure leverage for the increased use of the upper trails for mountain bikes. Further, it is a beachhead for the Off Road Industry to access more natural areas, potentially at the expense of the greater remaining wild areas of the United States.
Next time you see a mountain biker marauding down a pedestrian trail in the Wissahickon, on which mountain bikes are forbidden, let him or her know that you know. And shame on them.
Erik Werner
Germantown
Crackpot 101: Twist everything to fit your argument and make wild, unsubstantiated claims.
In my 13 years of riding and hiking this park, I've seen a lot of things but I have never seen a mountain biker threaten another user. Hell, I've never seen ANYONE threaten another user (unless you include dogs), much less threaten someone's life. And this guy gets involved in "several incidents?"
The good thing about crackpots is that most rational people take what they have to say with a grain of salt.