{"id":587,"date":"2006-08-07T07:22:37","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T12:22:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=587"},"modified":"2006-08-07T07:22:37","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T12:22:37","slug":"the-motoring-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/08\/07\/the-motoring-public\/","title":{"rendered":"The “motoring” public"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an article from a Aspen<\/a> weekly about folks who own motorized toys like motorcycles and four-wheelers bemoaning the lack of trails in national forests.<\/p>\n

Environmentalists and some hikers and mountain bikers want larger sections of non-wilderness lands closed to motorized uses for what Riggle claimed is “elitist” reasons. “People think it’s their private backyard,” he said. “People need to share what little is left open for all.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suppose it is<\/em> elitist to want to protect the ecosystems that merely filter the air humans require for survival. If the “give us more 4×4 trails in the forests” crowd gets their way, we’ll all have something to share, all right: air unfit for breathing.
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Incidentally, the story is so one-sidedly pro-motorized travel that it may cause you to through things at your walls. It mentions that ownership off-highway vehicles has increased seven-fold since the 1970s, and the growth is apt to continue, because, get this:<\/p>\n

Riggle said aging Baby Boomers face a tougher time hiking great distances in the woods, so they rely more on off-highway vehicles. National demographics promise to increase that trend, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you really love the woods, you care enough to make do with the roads already going through them. Hiking trails are hard enough on the backcountry; motorized-vehicle trails are downright abusive. I’ve always liked motorcycles and 4x4s, I understand the rush of taking them off-road, so I’m not going to denounce people who own them.
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But I would offer this request: for the good of our species, don’t ask people to help you take forests that are already wounded and beat ’em up even more so you can have some fun on a Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an article from a Aspen weekly about folks who own motorized toys like motorcycles and four-wheelers bemoaning the lack of trails in national forests. Environmentalists and some hikers and mountain bikers want larger sections of non-wilderness lands closed to…<\/p>\n

Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}