When I first visited what would become our spot in Vermont, it was love at first sight. Not for the single-wide, kit built “manufactured home,” the dilapidated barn, or the marijuana patch out back but for the sense of isolation, privacy and the kind of quiet that’s getting hard to find.
When you’re here it’s easy to imagine there are not another 20 million or so people within 500 miles. Unfortunately one of them is part of a family that owns property up on the hill top behind the cabin and they have an axe to grind. This property has been in his family for along time and abuts a state forest. They live out of state, have no winter access yet they hate the noise from snowmobiles. They want to close a legal road to the public. It is a critical road connecting a few towns that gets more use in sled season. Not on any published moto routes and never will be. Too hard.
I’ve heard Vermont described as a state that is a national park and in some ways it’s accurate. Like a national park the environment and aesthetic are priorities; the guy in charge of road signs calls them “litter on a stick.” You will not find billboards in Vermont. Access to the woods is precious.
Vermont has the more dirt roads than paved. Vermont also has close to 1,700 miles of Class IV roads which are unmaintained legal rights of way open to motorized traffic in the summer and limited to snowmobiles in the winter. Maintenance and post flood damage on these Class IV roads are done by local snowmobile clubs, to legally ride a snowmachine in Vermont you must be a member of a club that is part of the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers (VAST). The VAST network uses public (class IV) and private land to create a trail network that allows one to go from Southern Vermont to the Canadian Border. If you ride the Northeast Backcountry Discovery Route (NEBDR) there are a few places were you’ll be riding on a class IV that is also on the VAST network.
It is a big deal to get a class IV road to be “given up” by the town. It’s a process that requires a vote at an open town meeting and it is very rare that a landowner can succeed. In the case of my neighbor on the mountain he’s been suing the neighboring town regarding their classification of the road, putting it on the VAST network on so on. He picked it up again over the holidays with our town and tried to play games with scheduling, agenda items and the calendar to get a quick vote when nobody was paying attention. It failed because we do and the room was full of concerned citizens. The motion was tabled pending review.
As the review will involve researching maps, boundaries and landmarks from 1931 to present this is being done on horseback and GPS to disprove the landowners claims. We want this road, not only for our own enjoyment but in this case safety as well, when the floods came last summer for those with proper equipment this provided access days before the class III road was open.
Scenes like this play out across the country all the time. For the last 20 or so years I’ve been involved in doing all I can not only to protect our rights to ride but to preserve them as well. The reality is protection has to happen when preservation has failed, usually because of bad behavior.
In this case we’re lucky that the opposition doesn’t have any specific complaints or events with motorcyclists to sway votes, all he has is the law, a bunch of maps and questionable interpretations; we’re confident we will prevail. This is in contrast to what happened in southern Vermont a few weeks after the Backcountry Discovery Rides published the NEBDR when a few hundred feet of road near a park was closed to motor vehicles due to constant complaints from residents.
I support the American Motorcycle Association and am glad to serve on the Recreational Off Road Riding Committee. I firmly believe all riders benefit from the AMA and their efforts to represent us with Federal and State Governments. I’m not looking for a wave of appreciation; I do this because I enjoy it and believe that once in a while I might make a difference. What I am looking for is help with preservation of what we have.
By the time the AMA gets involved with a riders rights issue chances are preservation has failed. In the case of a HOA board it’s because a few riders just had to have straight pipes, be hooligans near cross walks and so on.
In the case of dual sport or adventure riders preservation takes much more conscious effort by the rider. Noise is noise but how fast is too fast on an unmarked dirt road? What does reckless riding look like to someone on a mountain bike or out for a walk? What is reckless riding on dirt? How about that lady on a horse? Here in Vermont with 20 million souls less than an 8hr ride away the chances of encountering all of the above on any given ride is quite high.
So… This is where we all come in.
Each and every time you ride your adventure bike, like it or not you’re an ambassador. The big bike, big lights, luggage and the fancy Klim suit attract eyeballs, it’s what they’re designed to do. I figure the average encounter folks have with us are very short, sometimes only seconds and rarely involve conversation. To this day I can tell you about when I was a kid in the backseat of the family wagon when a guy on an R100RS went by at pace. I thought about it yesterday when a I saw a guy going down I91 on an RT. At pace.
Positive impressions are quick, painless and can be rewarding. In the woods or the dirt roads around here this means slowing way (way!) down for pedestrians, especially those with dogs, slowing down for folks on bicycles (how about a cheer for the ones going uphill!) and this one is big, full stop and shutting off the motor for folks on horseback. Waves and smiles go a long way as does respecting gates.
It’s still quite possible to have a great day and let your inner hooligan out to play for a bit, it’s just very important to know where it’s good and where it’s not along with whatever your tolerance for risk is. My rule of thumb is once I see a house, mailbox, or person it’s time to roll off, chill and focus on my fun and theirs too.
We’re all in this together and we need to work with, not against, the rest of the public. The US population has increased by over 30% on my life-time. More people means more competition for resources and for us places to ride in the woods is a very precious resource.
No matter where you ride when you ride somewhere new or your favorite weekend destination why not ride in a way that a local might just invite to a cookout instead of thinking something not so friendly.
#letsridebikes.