"Not all fat bikers"

 Inconsiderate fat bikers ticked me off recently by flaring up again on the cross-country ski trails. The outbreak was brief, overshadowed by an epidemic of foot traffic. Passive aggressive behavior? Impossible to say.

On Tuesday I had one of the cats at the vet. While we were waiting to pay our bill, motion outside caught my eye. A rider on a fat bike pulled up and plunked his bike into the snow pile beside the walkway. He had come to pick up some pet supplies he had ordered. The front desk crew asked where he had come from. He said he lived on a road about five miles away, but he had ridden down the railroad line that the snowmobiles use in the winter.

That right there is the fat bike's original mission: biking on existing transportation trails to conduct practical business or to pursue challenging tours or races. To use trails that they can't hurt, because the intended use is already a heavier impact than cycling. Admirable, though it still calls for a higher level of disposable income than a lot of riders might be able to justify. If I lived where he did I might ski to the vet for anything that didn't require bringing the actual pet.

Anyway, it was refreshing to see a self-reliant fat biker out there representing.

Fat bikers are an invasive nuisance

 Cross-country skiing is on life support on our local trails. After weeks depending on our kilometer of man-made snow, we finally got a storm that delivered six fluffy inches that packed down to a barely slidable two inches on our network.

Fat bikers consistently underestimate the impact that their tires have on the ski trails. They push constantly for unlimited access. If they are denied permission, their most diplomatic ambassadors just go in anyway, even when a trail is posted. They're doing it now, probably believing that they can't hurt the meager cover because it's not deep enough for them to sink in. They're shredding the cover that we can't replace.

If the cover is so thin that you don't sink in, you don't need a fat bike. Go ride on the rail trail, and leave us alone. Go ride on snow machine trails that no one is using, because the motorized users don't want to tear up their machines.

Fat bikes were developed for intrepid riders doing unsupported rides, sometimes for days. But sport fat bikers are some of the neediest whiners in the off-road demographic. They also consistently overestimate their economic value. For a ski area, they do more harm than good. Someone needs to establish fat bike touring centers to run the complete economic experiment. See how much revenue they actually generate after you have arranged for land, built and maintained the trails, and established a rental fleet for the visitors who don't want to invest in their own bikes.

Fat bikes are like a recurring infection that dies down for a time and flares up. I'd say they were like herpes, but you at least get to have a little fun once to get herpes. Oh, or you could get it as the result of rape. So maybe the analogy does hold up. Fat bikers certainly don't seem to understand consent.

Do we need spike mats?

Between ignorance and arrogance, fat bikes present a growing challenge to trail system managers everywhere.

Singletracks published an article on the closures of major parts of the Kingdom Trails and included this significant paragraph:

"To make matters worse, the organization has already spotted fat bike tracks poaching into the closed trails that are marked with signage, so it doesn’t look like mountain bikers will stop shooting themselves in the foot anytime soon."

Yesterday, on Wolfeboro's Sewall Woods trails -- closed to biking in the winter -- a ski renter reported seeing a fat biker with a dog. The fat biking "community" had recently gone to considerable effort to get trails opened to them on town land, but Sewall Woods is not town land and was never included in the negotiation. To make matters worse, yesterday was decidedly soft and sloppy, so the shared use trail was closed to biking anyway.

A member of the mountain bike trail group dropped in last week. Because he has been driving the Wolfeboro Singletrack Alliance's new grooming machine, he shared his observations on how time consuming and difficult grooming is, and how frustrating it can be to see people stomp it up and abuse it afterwards. He also showed us on a map where he and others want to put in a network of new trails on the town land, to improve the prospects for fat bikers.

"It's only about four miles of trail," he said. "But you don't have to ride very far on a fat bike to be tired out."

You don't have to ride very far on a fat bike to be tired out. So much for its heritage as an expedition bike. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the sport category of fat biker seems to be throwing down a couple of grand a pop on a bike that they'll ride a couple of miles at a time, between visits to the brew pub. 

Money in the economy is money in the economy. It's not like they're engaging in child prostitution and opioid dealing. The proprietors of the beer joints act as a conduit for funds to the rest of us. Considering the amount of liquid involved, and the insistence with which it leaves the body, it would appear to accelerate the "trickle down" aspect to a point at which it sort of works. Now all we need are pay toilets to monetize the entire process. But then you just end up with yellow snow and every sheltered alcove smelling like piss as the outlaws simply evade your trap. We just can't win here.

Fat bikers go on the list with walkers -- with and without their dogs -- occasional errant snowmobilers and ATVers, and kids who build forts and campfires, as chronic and incurable irritants to ski trail managers. Our only consolation is that they tire quickly. Let's just hope they don't start tag-teaming.

Disposable Income

Watching a recorded video of the Wolfeboro, NH, selectmen's meeting from Wednesday, Jan. 8, several things struck me about the public comments regarding the shared use policy drawn up to accommodate fat bike riders in the winter.

Several skiers made excellent points about the negative impact that bike riders will have on the ski experience. I made the point before about the irreducible width of 31-inch handlebars. There's also the emotional impact of having to share trails with people working way too hard to go way too slowly, getting incomplete exercise while adding sizable flotsam in the form of their oversized bikes.

A couple of people in support of the bikes made the comparison -- almost entirely incorrectly -- between fat bikes on Nordic trails and snowboarders on downhill ski areas.

First off, alpine skiers and snowboarders are both gravity-dependent sliders on snow. Throw fat bikes onto a downhill ski area and then you have a comparison. By the way, alpine skiers were none too fond of Telemark skiers either. The rhythm of free-heel skiing, within the limits of the gear of the time, made our paths a bit more meandering than your locked-down, fully-mechanized alpine skier would follow. We didn't gouge things up the way the one-plankers did, but we still got in the way of modern progress. Telemarkers cured the problem by turning their gear into what was essentially alpine skis and boots. Snowboarders cured their problem by simply being too numerous to ignore. Needing the money, the downhill areas caved in and sold out. The snowboarders do have a negative effect on the snow surface, but downhill areas are such a mosh pit anyway that lift riders have learned not to care. It's just a theme park.

Proponents of the fat bike revolution tell the cross country skiers that they will be fine just as alpine skiers were fine. It's a nice way of saying that your time is up and you have to watch yourself being replaced by this new thing that is really different from your thing, that requires all the concessions from the skiers, until skiing finally dies out. This is the wave of the future. Resistance is useless.

It's a bit like deciding whether to go ahead and welcome the Panzer battalions or let the invaders machine gun and shell a bunch of you first.

At least two commenters referred to Wolfeboro as becoming a mountain bike and fat bike Mecca. They contend that this is the only thing that will attract "a younger demographic with more disposable income" to the area.

Actually, some jobs would be a really good start. People came here in the 1980s in droves and hordes because land rape was going full bore, and anyone even pretending to be a builder was basically printing money. But many of the people who moved here became super commuters, driving hours at each end of a work day to get to their jobs in Massachusetts and the southernmost parts of New Hampshire. You have to be young to pull off a schedule like that. Other jobs proliferated in the school system, to service the kids that accompanied the influx, which drove taxes up sharply. Peripheral trades, notably landscaping and property care, also saw a boom. Year-round residents use fewer of those services than the second home crowd does.

People quit mountain biking around here around the turn of the century. A few continued. Others have resumed it as various midlife experiences impel them that way. But disposable income had become much more of a requirement.

In the 1980s and '90s, you didn't need a huge amount of money to ride mountain bikes. A mountain bike used to be something you could use to go somewhere. Now it's something you go somewhere to use. You can drop a thousand bucks just on a car rack to carry your fleet of behemoths to your chosen venue. Or you can fake something up, if you're handy with tools. But you'll need more than a thousand dollars per bike per category to get a bike that's reasonably well made and sort of durable. Two thousand a bike is a safer estimate. When everyone was mountain biking in the late 20th Century, it wasn't about the money, it was about the fun: accessible fun that anyone could join. Mountain biking is definitely no longer that.

The people who are riding now, or have returned to riding, are earning comfortable salaries at various things that pay comfortable salaries. They can afford to sit and chat for hours in a place that charges $6 for a single glass of beer. In a way, it's always been true, that the well-off only have to wait a little while for poor upstarts to fall away. Being really good at riding your bike does not provide a pathway to secure long-term income. So the well-funded hobbyist reigns supreme at the recreational side of riding.

The unanswered economic question is whether there are enough well-funded hobbyists to offset the costs of trying to pander to them.

The bike addicts can't level the same charge at cross-country skiers. A crazy top-end ski set might run you more than a grand, but you can do quite well for less. Then it's just a matter of stick time. Go out every day you possibly can, for 30 minutes or an hour, and you can put a serious hurt on posers with expensive gear and no training. Or, if you're not afflicted with competitiveness, you can just enjoy the benefits of the world's most complete exercise and let the neurotics chase each other around.

I guarantee that the median income of our old mountain bike group was half of what it is for the current group, even adjusting for inflation. No one says "whoever dies with the most toys wins" anymore, but they certainly exemplify it.

Here's the thing about a young crowd with disposable income: they get older. You look at the cross-country ski trails, you see people of all ages. Yes, a lot of the them are pretty darn old. But whole families can take it up and keep doing it with fairly minimal investment for decades. How many people in their 60s and up will be spending what's left of their disposable income on mountain biking? And who will replace each wave of the young and affluent as they age out?

As consumer society and car culture flame out in their final frenzy, all forms of human powered transportation face deadly competition on the public right of way. Human powered transportation and recreation would have provided tremendous lifestyle benefits for those of us with lesser means, if we had acknowledged as a species how limited our means actually are. But we're still drunk with the excesses of more than a century of expanding resource exploitation, reinforced and amplified by our collective fantasy life played out on screens large and small. What is the true cost of that disposable income?

Nordic got run over by a fat bike (originally posted on Explore Cross-Country)

Think of the tune, "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer."

Cross-country skiing is dying, killed by climate change throughout its range. This is happening more rapidly in the lower 48 states of the USA than in Scandinavia, but all over the Nordic racing world events are being held more and more on manufactured snow. And that's only possible if temperature and humidity -- not to mention budgets -- allow for enough snow to be made and distributed over a trail system.

Racers will put up with incredible tedium to develop and maintain their fitness, and then submit to torture on a challenging course. Any skier might prefer more variety and free range, but the addicted competitor will go around and around and around and around and around and around a kilometer or two for the sake of race-ready strength and technique. They are not the majority of cross-country skiers, but they are the ones who will spend the most money on it per capita.

Tourists make up the vast majority of the small portion of the population that still skis cross-country. Tourists have a variety of motivations, fitness among them, and cheapness strongly evident. That's a major reason that the ski industry as a whole dislikes them. Frugality generates little profit compared to addiction.

It takes money to run a trail system. Cross-country ski centers have to maintain trails in the off season and groom them in the ski season. Since the widespread acceptance of skate skiing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that calls for a machine that easily costs more than $100,000.00, requiring fuel, maintenance, repair, and a skilled driver. Larger areas need multiple machines and drivers. Any area also has to maintain the trails themselves in the face of erosion, encroaching vegetation, blowdowns, and abuse by unauthorized or destructive shared uses.

When Surly introduced the Pugsley as a complete bike in 2011, it launched the category as something people could buy "off the shelf." Our own shop and touring center pondered whether the bikes would make a worthy addition to our mix of users as a way to weather the increasingly irregular winter conditions that the changing climate had been bringing us. However, our early experiments discouraged us from trying to blend skiers and bike riders on a single trail system.

When the bike industry tried to make fat bikes the next big thing around 2015 there was an explosion of interest that looked like it might turn into a bit of a boom. But as the browsers browsed, most of them chose not to invest upwards of a thousand bucks in yet another bike. Various media outlets ran weirdo-news features on the nutty people riding goofy bikes on the snow(!), but the curiosity was not matched by significant sales. Meanwhile, in the bike industry's usual fashion, they mutated the bikes rapidly, challenging consumers and shops alike to keep up with the need for newer and ever more expensive tools and parts.

Once the tool of intrepid, self-reliant adventurers, fat bikes seem to have attracted a demographic that might view itself that way, but often presents itself as entitled whiners. Our small touring center has seen a determined assault by a handful of riders who have looked for any possible leverage to force us to allow them onto the trail system. They have also proudly posted pictures on social media of themselves poaching the trails. I believe that it's become an obsession with them that means nothing more than another notch on their bedpost. Their own representative has stated at meetings that most riders aren't looking for a 20-foot-wide trail like an interstate highway through the woods. Minimum width for a skate groomed cross-country ski trail is about 12 feet, but much more would be needed to accommodate bike traffic and ski traffic in busy periods.

Will there be busy periods? Between the decrease in natural snow and the daunting expense of buying a winter bike, both sports remain a small percentage of winter recreational activity, far outstripped by motorized activities and downhill sports using motor-driven chair lifts. So what happens next? People want to find a place that has bought a rental fleet of fat bikes for them, on top of expanding the trail system for this new user group. How many touring centers can afford to put together a fleet of expensive and complex bikes and maintain them in readiness for whoever might want to try them out? This situation is being forced on the cross-country ski business by an alien culture.

This isn't just as simple as the ski versus snowboard debate. It has elements of the skate versus classic debate, in the different ways that the user groups occupy space on the trail and flow through the terrain. Having skied both classical and skate, I can tell you that the two techniques can come into conflict when skiers of each type converge. Now throw in some bike riders. The skate skiers can at least bring their skis parallel and double pole through a pod of slow tourists. Skiers don't have 31-inch-wide handlebars. And riders with 31-inch-wide handlebars can't reduce that dimension for a courteous minute or two, even if they might want to.

Skiers also have their feet on the ground. If a skier has to stop, it's not that hard to step off the trail, or at least move to the very edge of it and stand in a way that leaves plenty of room to pass. It's not as easy when you come off the pedals and either need room and time to dismount or need to waddle along straddling the bike. Also, your 5-inch tire at 8 psi might not make much of a mark, but your big clodhopping feet do.

Life is full of inconveniences. We have to make allowances for each other. Motorists hate having to accommodate bicyclists on the roads, and make many arguments about the differences in speed and maneuverability between the various size motor vehicles and the ones being pedaled. The difference is that all of our taxes pay for the public right of way, and that we all have a right to travel freely. A trail system is not the public street. The idea that cross-country ski trails should be coerced into admitting fat bikes is fairly recent even in the short history of fat biking itself. The pioneering riders used things like snow machine trails, just as their ancestors did, way back in the 1990s, when winter riders on the mountain bikes of their era either bought or made studded tires to go ride on those trails or on frozen lakes, woods roads, and other open venues.

The group of fat bikers that set its sights on the trails in Wolfeboro saw trails already groomed and looked for a way to commandeer them. With absolutely no respect for the decades of time, effort, and non-governmental investment that went into the trails, they seized on a flimsy legal possibility to force their case. Since they opened this can of worms, other user groups have tried to present themselves at the same loophole to be allowed to walk their dogs on the trails. The grooming is not done by town employees using town equipment and town funds. If a dedicated non-profit organization had not devoted itself to maintaining the trail system in town, that system would not exist, and we wouldn't be having this discussion. The fat bikers would be riding on whatever was open, just like the poor kids do in towns that don't happen to have a well-established and once-respected ski association.

The ethical fat bikers

The recent commandeering of the cross-country ski trails by an aggressive faction of fat bikers has stirred a return wave of support from the riders who respect the decision to keep bikes off the ski trails.

As far as we can tell, only one of the self-styled legends who have been leading the incursions onto the ski trails even lives in town. The nonresidents can’t even play the “aggrieved taxpayer” card. The visiting riders are not only not paying trail fees, they’re not paying anything.

Right and wrong are not automatically about the money, but taxes and membership fees are forms of the same thing: they’re the contribution an individual makes to the group treasury to support the aims of the group. Public-private partnerships are common in support of nonessential lifestyle enhancements like ski trails, skating rinks, performance venues, and more. Because a library is a public space, can you go in and dribble a basketball up and down the aisles? Should you? A ski trail system on a mosaic of public and private land is the same as that library: a space where proper etiquette and usage are understood by the grownups and taught to the unruly young.

It has been a great relief to hear from the grownups in the Wolfeboro and Tuftonboro fat biking culture.

Theft of services

Skiers poaching on a trail system for which they have not paid a daily or seasonal use fee are technically guilty of theft of services. The New Hampshire statute reads as follows:

TITLE LXII
CRIMINAL CODE

CHAPTER 637
THEFT

Section 637:8

    637:8 Theft of Services. – 
I. A person commits theft if he obtains services which he knows are available only for compensation by deception, threat, force, or any other means designed to avoid the due payment therefor. "Deception" has the same meaning as in RSA 637:4, II, and "threat" the same meaning as in RSA 637:5, II.
II. A person commits theft if, having control over the disposition of services of another, to which he knows he is not entitled, he diverts such services to his own benefit or to the benefit of another who he knows is not entitled thereto.
III. As used in this section, "services" includes, but is not necessarily limited to, labor, professional service, public utility and transportation services, restaurant, hotel, motel, tourist cabin, rooming house and like accommodations, the supplying of equipment, tools, vehicles, or trailers for temporary use, telephone or telegraph service, gas, electricity, water or steam, admission to entertainment, exhibitions, sporting events or other events for which a charge is made.
IV. This section shall not apply to the attachment of private equipment to residential telephone lines unless the telephone company can prove that the attached equipment will cause direct harm to the telephone system. Attached equipment which is registered with the public utilities commission shall not require a protective interconnecting device. If the telephone company cites this section in its directories or other customer informational material, said company shall duplicate the entire section verbatim therein.
Source. 1971, 518:1. 1977, 175:1, eff. Aug. 7, 1977.

***

While skiers are seldom  prosecuted for the offense, it is in the background if a poacher pushes the point when apprehended by a trail patroller.

A bike rider poaching grooming on a ski trail network hits into a bit of a gray area. They're not skiers, stealing the work of the trail designers, builders, groomers, and stewards. They weren't attracted by the full value of the product for the users it was designed to serve. They just like it because it's packed down for them.

One comment on my previous post, "Parasitic Fat Bikers," stated, "Fatbikers groom several of their own trails and complain of postholers, yet they will still ride and enjoy. Let's all just enjoy." My answer is that the injustice you suffer on your trails does not excuse and invite the injustice you perpetrate on the cross-country ski trails. People who don't ski on performance skis have no way to assess the effect their tire tracks might have. On an ideal day, you might see little or no imprint. On a less than ideal day, there will be ruts and ridges, even from a "5-inch tire with 10 psi," as someone put it in another discussion. Once a trail system is thrown open, even with some restrictions, riders will take it for granted. With use comes abuse.

If the trail system charges a bike fee, riders will feel entitled, when they invited themselves to use facilities that were established before many of them were born. The riders are shoving their way in because they want to, and they think they've found a legal loophole that will allow it. And they may be right. The fact that it is bullying, selfish, and pushy does not bother them. The fact that they have paid nothing for the building, maintenance, and grooming of the trails does not bother them. We're grooming them anyway, right? How is it different from riding on the road?

When I ski a hiking trail on my backcountry skis, I expect to see marks from other users: snowshoe prints, postholes, dog tracks, other ski tracks. If conditions are hard frozen, I won't be on skis. And a lot of the time I don't use a trail at all. I'm bushwhacking in search of hidden attractions, or just to get away from as many signs of humanity as possible. It's been decades since I skied on any kind of snow machine trail. The last time I did ski on a snowmobile trail was back in the late 1980s in Sandwich Notch. A line of snowmobilers came ripping past me right off the tip of my elbow in a classic intimidation pass. I decided that whatever quasi-grooming I found as a result of snowmobile passage was not worth the encounters with motorist assholes. I put up with enough of that on the roads.

I've never encountered the "groomed fat bike trails" mentioned by the commenter. If I did, I would turn away to avoid contact. I am not a parasite. I may be an underachieving slug, but I try to carry my own weight.

I also try not to tell people how to do the things they're good at. I may decry the fact that they do them at all, but I don't presume that I have noticed something that they have not, or counsel them to lighten up and let me have my way when they seem to be lodging a reasonable or heartfelt objection.

Invasive species

The debate over fat bike access to the cross-country ski trails entered a new phase today. The proprietor of the brew pub answered my comment by implying that the riders have the full approval and support of the recreation department and the town prosecutor. I guess the town prosecutor — attached to the police department — is pretending to be the town attorney, which is a different role. Be that as it may, the riders feel that they have a moral and legal right to engage in theft of services by using grooming that they have paid nothing for.

The issue has moved from social media to actual policy makers. The outcome will determine whether Wolfeboro retains its reputation as a top-notch small Nordic center or has its trail network shrink to half of its previous length and loses all of its hillier terrain. The half that is open to riding would just be a bike park that tolerates skiers. You’d definitely want to think hard before launching down a twisting descent on skating skis if you might run into a biker toiling up it. Likewise, you might get more than a scare if you were all laid out in a V1, climbing up the grade, and a cyclist came banzaiing down. In all good conscience, we could not recommend this to skiers.

The invasive species may prevail. The emerald ash borer is well on its way to destroying that tree species in the United States. Stink bugs, kudzu, Japanese knotweed, the list goes on of aggressive competitors with no natural enemies in their transplanted environment. If the law ends up forcing coexistence, the invaders will rule by default.

Skiers have always had to accommodate the hazards naturally associated with their activity. Varied terrain and weather call for adaptability and judgment. So if skiers have to share space with people on wheels, many skiers will deal with it. If nothing ever goes seriously wrong, if the bloody, mangling collision never occurs, then all concerns beforehand will be seen as hysterical. And even if it only happens a time or two, it will be no worse than the occasional road cyclist crushed by a motor vehicle. Sad, but a necessary loss. Be glad it wasn’t you. Offer a few thoughts and prayers. That’ll cover it. As for the petty annoyances when competing users get on each other’s nerves, just be grateful that you have a place to play at all.

I will go back to bushwhacking.

Parasitic fat bikers

It turns out that the fat bikers I saw slithering down Mill Street on Sunday were on their way to poach the cross-country ski trails. They posted proudly about it on Facebook afterward, on the page of their flagship drinking establishment.

They assured their readers that they had been told that fat bikes were welcome, by a town official who has nothing to do with the rec department or the Wolfeboro Cross Country Ski Association. But people are eager to hear what they want to hear, instead of paying attention to what the actual overseers of the trail system have been telling them for a couple of years, ever since the whining began from the fat bike users around town.

One or two of the fat bikers around town used to ski cross-country, but have given it up for various reasons. Indeed, Wolfeboro XC considered whether fat biking would make a good supplemental income source way before the fad broke in a huge way, because we could see the way climate change was eroding our livelihood as a ski center. But the change has not meant less snow and consistently warm winters that have turned us into Maryland or something. This year was a pretty long and consistent ski season. We do suffer longer and warmer thaws in some winters, but we also have found ourselves parked under the Polar Vortex a time or two, enduring weeks of frigid temperatures that wandered off from their Arctic homeland in search of a place to hang out.

In the grand global environmental and economic scheme of things, fat bikers and skiers alike are frivolous. But for a while we will continue to try to play on what winter brings us.

Fat bikers are parasites on the grooming of ski and snow machine trails. They can also traverse roads and frozen lakes, but they love to find a trail that someone else packed out, so they can ride in the woods. If civilization ended tomorrow, biking would end with it, but the ancient practice of skiing would endure. For that matter, if just the grooming ended tomorrow, I would still be able to go out on skis or snowshoes, while the pedalers waited for ideal conditions to be able to roll.

The snowmobilers might or might not mind encountering a bike. I think it's masochistic to expose yourself to interactions with motor vehicles in the winter when you have to put up with it all summer, but I have a low tolerance for self-induced misery. I can assure you that bikes and skiers don't mix well under most circumstances. You will find videos of happy mixed groups doing their thang on trails together, but it's far from assured. Unless the trail surface is bulletproof, even fat tires will sink in to make weird ruts. And the rhythm and flow of skiing and biking are different enough to induce friction pretty easily. Not only that, the trails are posted. Any time anyone cares to call the touring center and ask first, they will get the same answer: fat bikes are not allowed on the ski trails at this time. Initial testing was negative and further review has only confirmed that it's not a good idea.

On the particular day that these poachers went out, the combined factors of snowstorm and Sunday meant that they were unlikely to encounter many -- or any -- skiers. We did have renters out, and season pass holders might go at any time, but it was generally a quiet day. No doubt they will find the negative feedback amusing and annoying, because they don't feel that anyone was hurt.

The grooming machine cost about $100,000. Upkeep is not cheap. The guy who does the grooming gets up at 04:30 to do the system, and then comes to work at the shop until after 6 p.m. -- sometimes well after 6 p.m. Bikes are only barred during the ski season, and then only from the ski trails. It stinks that they don't get to play with their expensive, recently-invented toys on a trail network that existed for skiing decades before most of them were born, but life is full of disappointments. Their sense of trail ethics is certainly among those disappointments.

Legal rights versus legal standing

As a slick, heavy, late winter snowfall accumulated on the roadway, I watched three riders on fat bikes slithering unsteadily down Mill Street with a motorist trapped behind them. I contemplated once again the difference between official rights and the treatment someone gets for exerting those rights.

Rights only seem to be won at a blood price. Women were beaten by men, and some died, as they protested over many years to get the right to vote. Black people have endured centuries of oppression and discrimination, massacre and murder. They can tell you how their rights are respected in actuality even now, as opposed to what is written. That’s not even addressing the way some things need to be rewritten even further to secure liberty and justice for all. Native rights everywhere get crushed beneath the advancing front of militarized industrialism. Labor confronted management for a fairer division of the proceeds of that industrial system, but their gains are being erased even as the system continues to gouge the illusion of profit out of the dying planet.

Because the roads are a shared space, every user has to consider the genuine rights and needs of the other users. A cyclist almost always appears to be on a trivial errand. A motorist will ask, "does this person need to be riding here, making me wait and maneuver around them?" By law, the roads are the common herd paths we have all agreed to use to get from place to place by whatever means we have. Horses are still allowed on most of them. You're within your rights -- but out of your mind -- to walk along most of them. Both equestrians and pedestrians will always get more sympathy than a bicyclist, because we have a sentimental attachment to horses in our history, and pedestrians seem like fellow drivers who are just down on their luck. A bicyclist has made a conscious choice to get this wheeled thing with which to wobble half in and half out of the legitimate territory of big metal boxes that go effortlessly quickly at the push of one pedal.

Many of us have had the experience of reporting a motorist to the police when we had only a full description of the vehicle including license number. If you can't identify the driver, you have no case. And, as a bicyclist, your problem seldom merits any expenditure of resources by police to help you nail down that identification. The registered owner simply uses the standard excuse that someone else was using the vehicle that day and the whole thing goes away. Even in cases where a cyclist was killed and the driver was known, penalties are disproportionately light, because bicycling is viewed as a voluntary act known to increase the rider's vulnerability to what would be a minor collision between the armored vehicles customarily used for personal transportation in the modern world.

When a police officer pulls you over in your car, what do they ask for first? Your license and registration. That is the moment at which they nail down who is driving what at the time of infraction. They've got facial ID and the perp in the driver's seat. That is the standard, and it's a good one when you consider how unpleasant it would be to live in a country where you could be thrown in the slammer on nothing more than an accusation. While that is unfortunately common in racially biased enforcement, and hardly unknown even among the privileged, it is not the official standard. It gets complicated when persons of interest are brought in for questioning and actual suspects are detained, but that's beyond the street level experience of a rider simply trying to proceed unmolested in the perfectly legal act of using the public roadway.

I thought that the fat bikers were being foolish and selfish, but I did not get to see whether they were just taking a few yards to pull off safely in the slithery conditions. It wasn't as bad as the morning many years ago when I saw one of the athletic firebrands in Jackson, NH, riding his cyclocross bike down Route 16 in about six inches of new snow, with a gigantic state plow truck stuck behind him. Rights are one thing. Smarts are another. Because we may be asked to pay a blood price for our rights at any time, pick your battles. I hardly expected the plow truck to crush the macho man on the 'cross bike, but I'm pretty sure the penalties would have been slim to nonexistent if he had. Similarly, had one of the fat bikers fallen in front of the car behind them, I doubt if the driver would have been cited for following too closely when he was unable to stop before sliding over the fallen rider. Just bad luck. Sorry about that. You shouldn't have been out there on a bike when you didn't need to be. And who in this great land of ours ever really needs to be on a bike? You hardly even see the DWI crowd riding bikes anymore. At least I don't see too many of them around here.

In the mostly urban areas where a lot of people live without cars, and a lot of them use bikes for transportation, the culture of acceptance builds alongside a corresponding seething cauldron of hatred from committed motorists subjected to large numbers of bicycles in the traffic mix. The cyclists can make a better case that what they are doing is necessary, but they are still branded as slackers and wastrels who should get better jobs and buy a car like a normal person. Rather than respect the contributions of workers on the lower end of the pay scale, performing necessary functions that most of us would prefer to avoid, our wealth-obsessed society scorns them and treats them as disposable interchangeable parts. Lose one dirtbag, grab another one from the sidelines to fill the spot. A lot of bike commuters are involuntary, on really crappy bikes, with no awareness of cycling culture and tradition. They're not out for the health benefits and to save disposable income. They're stuck with it, and are trying to make the most of income that falls far short of any surplus. However, they are reaping some exercise benefits in spite of themselves, and the economic benefits are no less real. With a focus on promoting the lifestyle and improving everyone's experience of it, every bike commuter and transportation cyclist would benefit.

Hope as I might, that is highly unlikely to happen. In spite of the fact that my haphazard pursuit of creative dreams has left me working for less than the proposed minimum wage of $15 an hour, and facing a destitute old age, the fact that I am a white male from a middle class background automatically condemns my ideas as elitist, tone deaf, and contemptibly out of touch with reality. I have been excoriated before. Until I shut up and go away, I will be again. It's sort of like riding your bike. You know that someone is going to yell, honk, swerve, or throw something. Your only defense is surrender. And that's not really a defense.

Bi-- Sk-- Uh-- wha--?

If March turns cold and snowy after this fiasco of a winter so far, it would put the icing on the cake. I've been on the verge of resuming the park and ride commute several times, only to have just enough snow return to slather the path and reactivate our sputtering ski business.

After decades in New Hampshire, I can zig or zag as winter changes its moods. But the oscillations have been short and crazy this winter. Yesterday, the morning low here was minus 12 F. Today's predicted high is in the 40s, with rain. This is on top of two or three inches of snow and sleet that fell overnight. The high on Sunday was about 3. That's right: three degrees above zero was the high. Maybe 5 in the sun, but there was a steady breeze. Monday, the temperature crawled up through the teens as the day advanced, while clouds moved in ahead of the storm.

There's always pie. This is a clean-out-the-freezer berry pie. It's the follow-up to a chocolate chip dessert quiche I slopped together because I wanted to bake something to help warm up the house and I didn't want to resort to the default pan full of brownies.

Even in thaw weather, the house needs heat. There's a long, hypothermic span between sub-freezing temperatures and actual balminess.

Last night, the silvery patter of snowflakes whispered over the silent forest. It reminded me why I live here. For a few hours, no sound of human activity tore the peace. Even in our rural area, people keep having babies and those babies keep growing up to buy motorized things. When they all fall silent it is a blessing.

The next storm of predominantly rain is forecast to hose down the closing weekend of what should be our largest earning week of the winter, in the ski business. Most of the clientele starts thinking about boat shows and Caribbean cruises after the notorious Vacation Week ends. Dedicated skiers will take advantage of whatever they get, but they're few in number compared to the dabbling hordes that actually keep the industry going.

Cross-country skiing is the ancestor of downhill skiing. But its roots can be its downfall in a couple of ways. First, it takes more effort than downhill skiing. It started out as a means of transportation. Second, as a means of transportation, it was a free-range activity. In other words, a cross-country skier would get the equipment and then -- theoretically -- be able to ski for free wherever conditions permitted it. The 1970s cross-country ski boom promoted this idea heavily.

Some sort of grooming makes skiing easier. Traditionally, trails would get better as more people used a track and firmed it up. Touring centers would pack trails, using snowmobiles and various drags. Just as improved road surfaces led to vehicles that needed improved road surfaces, improved grooming led to ski designs that need really well-groomed trails. Touring centers have to charge more for trails that require more elaborate construction, maintenance and grooming, but skiers who have learned to like those things see them as necessary to the experience. And yet, deep down, the traditional cross-country cheapskate lives inside all of us.

This brings us back to the dabblers. Whether they rent or buy, the majority of cross-country skiers only go a few times a season. Some of them have to live where opportunities are rare or nonexistent, saving their ski jollies for one great vacation trip. Others just don't care about it enough to seek it out on a regular basis, even if they live where winter provides snow, and some sort of open land provides a venue.

This only matters to me because I followed an interest in human-powered transportation to an environment in which -- at one time -- one could expect to use skis to get around for a couple of months in the year. It's part of the physical and economic mix of our lives here.

Fat bikes might seem to fit neatly into the menu of options, but now you're talking about adding an expensive bike (relative to a stagnant, working class income) and all the costs that go with it. I already ride each bike in my fleet at least a little. So I would be unlikely to get rid of one to make room for another one. And fat bikes have no place on cross-country ski trails, regardless of whatever ill-considered experiments some beleaguered touring centers are trying. They really are not interchangeable.

Dabblers in cross-country skiing will not buy a fat bike. Fat bikes cost too much. If dabblers did buy fat bikes, they would expect to be able to go to the same place where they dabble in skiing. So now a touring center has to manage traffic control, in the event that ski and bike conditions exist simultaneously. That means investing in a shadow trail system and grooming it so the dabblers can play, trouble-free, with the least amount of thought and effort on their part.

I'm not ragging on dabblers here. They have chosen to dabble in what I do, out of all the other things they do with their lives. Many of them say they wish they could do more than dabble. We try to care for them. We're glad they get out as much as they do. But I still recognize the economic realities of our business. I try to see their point of view, rather than standing haughtily on some pinnacle of hard-core dedication and judging everyone else by how far they manage to scale it.

Fat bikes on the cross-country ski trails

'Tis the season for winter event planning, so the fat bike impresarios have started trying to line up venues. They'll be the first little wave of fat tire enthusiasts who will ask cross-country ski trail operators why riders can't roll where the skiers slide.

These requests inspired a post last February about fat bike ethics. Since then, more inquiries and reports from ski centers that have experimented with the mix bring more information.

First of all, fat bikers need to remember that cross-country ski areas owe them nothing. Fat biking started as a way for self-reliant pedalers to take a slow but capable bike across terrain where a conventional mountain bike could not go. They were conceived as earth-crawlers, expedition bikes for riding in areas without trails or on surfaces that required as much flotation and traction as a rider could push. Of course this got them onto snow. But they went there on surfaces that formed up naturally or were packed by fairly imprecise methods for users whose enjoyment did not depend on a very smooth surface.

No tire has yet been fat enough to distribute human and bike weight as well as a pair of skis will do. Skis and snowshoes are still the more versatile tools for getting around on varied snow conditions. Yes, some skis are adapted to firmer or softer conditions, but in the middle lies a general shape and size that really can handle anything. When it comes to snow, no bike can say the same.

Even within the range of marginally to perfectly usable conditions, bike tires will leave bigger marks, and different marks, than skis. Size matters, but difference matters more.

The second factor after trail damage is user rhythm. Along with this comes user speed and things that happen in a crash. People on skis move with different rhythms than people on bikes. The speed range is different when the two users are on the same terrain feature, and the methods used to move over those features will cause interference. How wide a highway would a ski center need to groom so that several skate skiers and several fat bikers could tackle a steep climb at the same time?

Going down, skiers or bike riders may be faster depending on snow conditions and the headlong craziness of the people involved. But imagine being a skier in a downhill turn when the rider on a 30-pound bike with sharp chainrings and spiky pedals wipes out next to you and takes your legs out from under you.

Even on mild, rolling or flat terrain, skiers and riders move so differently that they eat up a lot of trail width under the best of conditions. Say it's a hard, fast day, so fat tires are not gouging deep ruts. That still means that riders will be passing -- or passed by -- skate skiers in their wide V. Cross country trails needed to be widened drastically in the 1990s as ski centers adapted to the influx of skate skiers. That width would probably have to double to accommodate a large influx of fat bikers. Not only does this beg for a cost-benefit analysis for the ski center operators, it massively changes the aesthetics of the experience. Imagine going for a nice country drive on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Classic skiers complained about the loss of an intimate and woodsy feeling when elbow-width trails were blown out to 12 feet wide so that skate skiers -- and the big groomers they require -- could fit on them. Now double it.

To someone who is not a skier, it all seems so simple. There's a trail. You're grooming it anyway. Why can't we have our fun, too? Maybe it's just a one-day event. Even so, the costs and complications are far greater than you might imagine. And, by inviting fat bikers onto the system even for one day, the trail operator creates an impression that it would be okay.

Fat bikers who still cleave to the ethic of self reliance cut and pack their own trails or use durable venues that are already more of a free-for-all, like logging roads, snow machine trails and frozen lakes. Maybe they find a sympathetic ski center with the time, personnel and budget to accommodate them on a temporary basis. But the skiers and riders themselves will have to work out all their issues on the trails. If riders pay, they will demand their due. If they don't pay, skiers will rightly be resentful. So you see, it isn't simple at all.