Originally Posted by gastro
I don't think the distinction is as cut and dried as you'd like to make it. An afternoon ride I recently went on with some friends went like this: Leave vehicle in lower lot, drive bikes and riders to top of ridge. Drop in, descend trail 1 to lower vehicle. Pedal back up road until trail 2 turns off. Ascend trail 2 all the way back to upper vehicle at initial drop in point. From there, descend trail 3 to point below lower vehicle. Climb back up to lower vehicle. Drive up to top of ridge and retrieve upper vehicle. Total ride time about 4 hours, including a couple thousand vertical feet of climbing. Is that a "shuttle" (with the term's attendant negative connotations) or merely a harmless "point to point?"
I never said there was anything wrong with doing shuttling nor do I think that driving your vehicle to the trailhead is wrong. We all have lives and don't necessarily have a lot of extra time to spend riding our bikes to the start of a ride. That's a whole other logistical nightmare. I'm all for reducing my automobile usage but I'm not going to get rid of it.
If it were me, I would have done your ride by driving to the lower vehicle point, riding up and around all the loops and then coming back to my car. I never end with a climb. It violates Stuart's First Principle of Most Excellent Bicycle Riding: "Never end on an uphill." I only have one ride that violates that principle and if it didn't have lots of cool stuff at the bottom of the canyon to look at, I wouldn't do it
But I'm not the carfree police. However you want to do your ride is your business. As long as you are riding and having fun, why is it any of my concern?
Originally Posted by gastro
And finally, an open question to those who categorically abhor any sort of vehicular asssistance on their rides, e.g. pinkrobe et al: Is the scenario I just described somehow less valid than a ride where I drive an hour to somewhere and do an out and back of the same duration with the same amount of climbing?
You're the only one that can answer that. You make your own rules...we all do. I don't measure how you ride by my rules nor do I expect you to measure me by yours. I'm sure Pete will be along soon to tell us all how we are supposed to ride but he's a jerk and I don't give a gnat's ass what he thinks.
I ride for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it to hurt myself. Sometimes it to see things. Sometimes it's both. About the only thing I'm not going to do is throw myself off cliffs. I admire people who do...I think they are bat***** crazy but I admire them. But I've had my quota of broken bones and my wife told me that if I bring home one more cast, she was going to divorce me.
