Covid-19 in general has been a terrible, horrible, no good, strange, weird situation to live through. We all know it, we all have our opinions about it, and the Global Pandemic continues to get covered without rest. What doesn’t seem to get much coverage is the positive effects it has had on industries like Outdoor Recreation.
Bicycling, in particular, saw an unbelievable explosion during the height of the Pandemic. Everything from high-end local bike shops to big box stores had empty bike racks for weeks upon weeks and in some respects, months upon months. Bike manufacturers have backorder logs that extend into 2021 on some models - and this was back in early summer. People I never imagined I’d see buying a bicycle were popping up on Strava and posting their rides on social media.
I don’t really follow the roadie side of cycling, but it seemed from my perspective that mountain biking was taking off like mad. This put a lot of attention on bike trails and got a lot of new folks out into previously unknown territory. Normally this would be the turning point in a post like this, where I veer off into why this is bad for mountain biking in some way or another. And I’ll touch on that a bit, as some recent growing pains have shown up at the local trails and inspired this post to begin with. But once I got to typing this post I realized that such historic growth and attention needs to be celebrated, not criticized.
We can all agree that having a crowd on the trails can kind of hurt your groove, or even be downright frustrating. We can all poke fun at the obvious newb, unwilling to acknowledge that we likely acted exactly the same way not that long ago. We’re quick to jump to the conclusion that when something negative happens out on the trails it was probably because of an inexperienced rider or inconsiderate masses. But that’s not always the case. Shit happens and we enthusiasts need to pick our battles.
Our local bike club added some features on the trails over the summer that recently caught some negative attention. This attention likely wouldn’t have been garnered if not for the amount of users now on the trails. It’s causing a riff between the hardened, ‘core’ riders and some of the more casual members, exactly as you’d expect.
When I say we need to pick our battles, we as a collective need to understand that a lot of the places we ride are a granted privilege, not a right. More of us live in cities than not and land within reasonable commute to these cities is expensive or already developed. So, we do what we can with what we have, which means public parks and publicly managed land. We either suck up our pride and deal with the regulations that allow us to continue to build and ride or we do without. I’m sure having to drive an hour or more would make us all wish we just ate our pride and worked, tactfully, with the officials we need to appease.
At some point in our lives, we’ve all been on the outside looking in and also on the inside looking out at new people trying to break into whatever activity/club/group we’re into. When it comes to activities like mountain biking or surfing or backcountry snowboarding and many other “core” sports, we’re particularly protective against new people and the masses trying to lamestream our against the grain lifestyle. But having a stronger current going in the right general direction is often more beneficial than fighting against the current and being unable to even get close.