I have read the last couple of articles by Evonne Hedgepeth on possibly creating a park for mountain bike riding.
I have found your paper, for the most part, even-handed with your coverage, but this last article with the obvert bias has caused me to ask why would Works in Progress print these exaggerations?
I have been a mountain biker since the early 80s. I have ridden my bike in many places and in many locations and have rarely come across a person riding who fits the mythological figure of the extreme individual who spends $10k on their bike as they thrash the environment and then lay broken as our search and rescue services tend to them.
Most riders are wanting to be in nature. They want to exercise. They want to be with friends and family. Like myself who would ride with my wife and two girls.
Does Ms Hedgepeth feel that the kids running at high speeds, hitting their heads against balls and defeating others on our public soccer fields or the ones swinging wooden sticks at balls thrown at them on our ball fields or the ones tackling and purposely smashing each other in efforts to beat them down in a football field should be subsidized?
The rhetoric is sad and tiring, but is a sad sign of our times.
I have hope that Works in Progress will seek and print a less inflammatory perspective on how we as a community come together to see mountain bikers as a community of people not as a stereotype that your paper works so hard not to stereotype people for their own personal gain.
I just wonder why community members are allowed to be demonized in your publication?
Peter Brown
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