Correct–it was saying that the terrain didn’t permit them.
I’m saying that this trail doesn’t permit devices like his to turn around and thus is unsafe for them unless he has a helper along. Lots of trees, a branch may come down!
Well, there’s a sign very much like that at Mammoth Cave National Park. It has nothing to do with suitability of paths - there’s stairs. Lots of them. If you can’t climb 4 stories of stairs, there’s as far as you go on that tour.
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You seem pretty confident that you know more about this trail and the capabilities of this cyclist and his bike than the cyclist himself.
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I wouldn’t shit on these cyclists, but I’d help hold them down while someone else shat on them…
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A more appropriate reaction might have been:
“Hey, cool bike! Have a nice ride!”
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That hasn’t been my experience with pedal assist e-bikes at all. The one e-bike exception I’ve seen is the person in my neighborhood riding a steel frame road bike that was converted to a full electric which she rides at 30 mph in heavy traffic. Just the thought of it gives me nightmares.
I commute to work most days. My normal top speed during the commute is ~23 mph; sometimes flying past e-bikes. No question that going faster than one can handle (especially on the trail) causes problems, but thats a different sort of problem. Any cyclist new to trail riding can be dangerous to themselves and others if they ride faster than is safe, but no one is adding skill tests or safety class requirements to the parks.
To me the issue that someone going too fast is dangerous is wholly orthogonal to whether e-bikes should be allowed.
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That could even have been his second reaction and it would have been fine.
“Hey you shouldn’t have that here.”
“I’m disabled. I can’t walk.”
“Hey, cool bike then. Have a nice ride!”
The guy just had to double down.
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Despite your solid post, I doubt it. Instead we’ll have about four more days of people doubling down on making excuses for the obnoxious ableist cyclist and four more days of blaming the victim of his bullying. I’m not sure why that’s in any way OK, but it seems to be how this topic will go.
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I know I get irrationally upset when people don’t loudly and spontaneously announce conditions that may affect my ability to judgmentally chastise their behavior when they enter earshot of me. It’s just so rude.
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And Mammoth cave is very far from a wild cave. Lots of dynamiting and concrete was involved.
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Well, I can confirm at least one of those is true!
And it’s five times that I’ve witnessed. The kids are softies for dogs and probably haven’t told me everything. Our neighbor told me my five-year-old son needed to “man up” because her completely unregulated fighting pit bull rescue (chopped ears, bobbed tail and scars everywhere) scared the fuck out of him to the point he would run inside, lock the door and go up to his second story room any time it was in our yard, which was every damn day. He’s the one who had already had a tooth punched out and was bloodied twice by dogs. But it was just him being a pansy, I guess. Or maybe he wasn’t polite enough. 
I also watched a dog rip a guy’s nutsack open because he… walked out of his apartment door at the wrong time? Or smelled like food because he was a chef? Point is, we don’t know, because those very dogs that licked my kids faces every day turned savage in a split second with zero warning and all we can do is speculate (they were no longer allowed anywhere near my kids afterward).
Probably, but the issue is that you never have time to react or predict it. So you either tell the kids never to go near a dog (fat chance) or trust that people will maintain awareness of the situation and the threat that their animal poses to small humans. In my experience the latter is the failure point.
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Careful your confirmation bias is showing.
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There are a lot of people here, while not explicitly defending the grumpy cyclist, who are keen to point out why it might not be allowed for him to ride that there. Rules at any managed trail should be reassessed periodically to accommodate new technology that allows everyone to enjoy the great outdoors. If you are able bodied and don’t face barriers such as finding a useable toilet, entering a store or restaurant etc. you should just stfu and get out of the way even if you feel you have been mildly inconvenienced.
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Not really, tenbrook qualified their statement to “many” rather than all.
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In my brief search, I didn’t find numbers about mountain e-bikes specifically, but in my favorite LBS maybe 1/4 of their sales floor is mountain e-bikes and I have seen them on local trails. I also live in an area where winter fat biking is exploding and those are even bigger, harder to pedal, and generally don’t move very fast; there are electric versions of those too, now. It’s just seems inevitable to me that places will have to relax or redefine their rules about e-bikes, meaning 'ole meany there will just have to pre-twist his chamois before heading out cuz he’s going to run into them.
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Fair enough
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May all the ableist people in this thread gain compassion for others by a means other than directly learning… some day you might be the person who needs the ebike.
Seriously, get over the whole bike thing. That ship has sailed, it is over the horizon, it is gone. Give it up.
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Well hopefully if the disgruntled cyclist ever does break his back or neck from riding he finds a more compassionate trail experience.
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I can’t speak to percentages, but hugely so and I’ve been hearing about them for longer than in the road bike world. It turns out a lot of people love thrashing down a mountain, but are less hip to slowly grinding back up the grade. It is the same concept behind why bike parks have lifts and trail trucks. They were extraordinarily controversial at first and then everyone kind of cooled to a general state of “as long as they aren’t otherwise being a dick”.
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Not sure what it’s like where you live, but I live in Southern California and although mountain bikers were rather rude when the trend first started a few decades ago, I have had nothing but pleasant encounters with them since then. They always tend to be polite, let me know how many others are behind them, etc. I think maybe they realized early on that they had to police their own ranks if they didn’t want to start getting seriously regulated.
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