{"id":4438,"date":"2013-02-26T21:40:16","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T05:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/?p=4438"},"modified":"2013-02-27T11:03:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T19:03:50","slug":"why-good-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/2013\/02\/26\/why-good-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Why? Good Question!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20120421111-Malibu-Creek-State-Park-Hike-Bike-Run-Hoof-300x199\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Mark Langton<\/p>\n

It was recently brought to our attention that newly elected president of Equestrian Trails, Inc. (ETI) Robert Foster, a retired law enforcement officer, donates his time as an emergency medical technician at So Cal High School Mountain Bike Racing League races. Mr. Foster is a staunch supporter of the league, and in his president’s message in ETI’s most recent newsletter he stated that it’s a new era in our public open space trail systems, and mountain bikers are part of the trail user community so we all should try to figure out ways to get along.<\/p>\n

Now I’ve been doing this advocacy thing for over 25 years, and I’ve experienced a lot of encouraging progress in the areas of shared use, especially when it comes to opening more trails to bicycle use. To hear the president of an organization that has historically had some of its members rally against mountain bikes say that we need to get along is truly groundbreaking. But things like this come fewer and more far between than I’d like, and during these 25 years I have often asked myself “why am I doing this?” The answer is always “because it’s the right thing to do.” This might sound insane (insanity once being defined by Albert Einstein as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results), and in many ways this might be true. But then something like Robert Foster’s reasonable position comes along and I think to myself, maybe we have been doing the right thing after all.<\/p>\n

Over the years we have heard many reasons people feel mountain bikes don’t mix on shared use trails, but only one is valid; people riding their bikes too fast at the wrong time and place (around other trail users) is just not a pleasant experience for the people being passed at an inappropriate speed. As I’ve said many times before, we all have within our power the ability to solve<\/em>\u00a0this issue: slow down. In other words, use caution when around others. Let me put it another way; your actions represent the entire mountain bike community. The smile you create through a pleasant trail encounter goes a long way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mark Langton It was recently brought to our attention that newly elected president of Equestrian Trails, Inc. (ETI) Robert Foster, a retired law enforcement officer, donates his time as an emergency medical technician at So Cal High School Mountain Bike Racing League races. Mr. Foster is a staunch supporter of the league, and in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,22,23,25,28,29,31,32,13,252,14,16,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4438"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4447,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4438\/revisions\/4447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corbamtb.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}