Editor:
I enjoy reading letters to the editor, they give me my kicks for the day. Why, if it isn’t tall tales about urban deer, which could well be reclassified as rodents, it’s tales of urban dirt bikers laying claim to civility and declaring the right to ride on paved trail – why are they called dirt bikes?
As for civil behaviour, I would like someone to please snap a photo of the young biker dude and his dad showing courtesy on the trail; rare indeed.
We live next to the Trans Canada Trail and have skied and hiked it since before the tracks were removed and have been bicycling through it since. I’ve yet to meet a dirt biker on the trail equipped with either courtesy or common sense. To emphasize the point, last summer a dirt biker ran into the side of a truck driving on Eagle Ridge road, while exiting the trail.
As for places to ride, we have a dirt bike track within earshot that gets used occasionally. If you can’t afford the gear to remove yourselves to somewhere beyond the periphery of where civilized recreationists go, then get a cheaper hobby – it will benefit everyone else too.
In order to remove these pesky varmints from within the confines of the city, one needs to lobby for by-laws to that effect, otherwise these motorized pests actually have a right to the trail; sad but true.
So, verbal dirt-biking dude, quit your whining and do something adult like get proactive and form a group of like minds, develop a civility code, and remake some of the local dirt bike trails.
Larry Hudema, Grand Forks