Haters

I'm going to poach off RTMS for this

People are trying to rain on my parade. As I have been documenting, I've really been enjoying my introdution to mountain biking. Culminating in last weeks Soil Saloon informal race. As I was riding it, I had the feeling it was going to draw attention. The sheer turnout was bound to cause notice.

Unfortunately, San Francisco doesn't have much of a bike trail infrastructure. While there are groups like the SF Urban Riders working hard to change this, change is slow (How's the new bike lane plan coming along?)

So meanwhile, there are really nice parks, with some really nice trails, and some lesser than nice trails. Some allow bikes, some don't allow bikes, and some are ambiguous.

It reminds me of an Architecture axiom about building paths where the people are going to go, not where you want them to. Because that's what people will do. The harm done, if any, to the parks from this one day of riding would have to be considered minimal. Most likely a few people got disturbed from their process of not picking up after their unleashed dogs and have enough free time that they decided to start whining.

At the start and finish of the ride were careful to point out to be respectful of the land and the people encountered. In my experience, that's what I saw. People were also encouraged to volunteer for trail restoration. Something that I intend to do on December 6 at Mt Sutro.

Hopefully we can match the haters whining with our logic and we'll still be able to ride without fear of prosecution. (Do we really need more things distracting the SFPD from crime prevention?)