Kindaslow

Going for a hike this morning with my wife, one of our together hobbies, and great exercise!

Kindaslow

You might be missing my point here.

i think in part I am so surprised because I am not a strong climber and these are barely hills. If I can cruise up them on my single speed at my age, I cannot imagine a good reason for healthy looking young guys, healthy enough for gap jumps and drops, to be pushing their bikes in this area. Also, the XC trails in this park get very little usage compared to the free ride area. One of the trail maintainance people told me that the young people avoid one of the trails because it is too strenuous. We are talking about a 12-15 minute ride that has both up and down.

i am still thinking this is just kind of sad behavior for healthy young people.

I-Like-To-Bike

A big fat, So What! Just grumpy old griping, IMO.

There is also nothing wrong with walking a bicycle uphill, not wanting to put out "the effort", or choosing not to breath hard and make legs burn a bit. Riding like you is not necessarily the only way to ride a bike, believe it or not.

OldsCOOL

nobodyhere

Your area needs a swarm of 75+ folks to ride those hills and XC trails and show those youngsters a thing or two. Standby while I drink some Geritol!

OldsCOOL

It's really quite simple. They dont have Strava.

osco53

When I'm on a climb and I bail off the bike I keep going, never thinking about what others may think of me,,

When you just cannot pedal any more the trick Is to jump off right before the bike stops and hit the ground running. Then as soon as the grade slackens to the point where you can ride do so and pedal away as hard as you can.

If you can do this without any problem then you should have pedaled farther up the hill, you had more to give..

Kindaslow

The more I have thought about it, the less I think it is grumpy, especially if people saw the hills I am talking about.

And, today while out hiking I saw a woman who had to be 80 going up a tough trail. The contrast to what those guys were doing is profound. Please note, I have said each person needs to ride their own ride, in different wording.

BlazingPedals

There aren't many steep hills in central Michigan. I remember visiting my brother in Mission Viejo and meeting one over by Dana Point where the road basically went up the cliff. I don't even think cars could go up it. Being on a borrowed, mis-fitting bike that couldn't get into granny didn't help either.

qcpmsame 

***Deleted my ill thought out content, I was doing what I had criticized, judging him when I didn't know what the intent of his OP was. My bad all the way around, and my apologies to Kindofslow, (which perfectly describes my brain most of the time.)

Bill

Kindaslow

Bill, I appreciate your thoughts. You might have missed where I pointed out that nobody with significant health issues would be riding a black diamond run with gap jumps and drops. I guess folks would need to see this for it to make sense. I am very glad folks are out riding.

qcpmsame 

[Deleted poorly thought out content I had posted. No excuses for my behavior. My apologies, again]
My best wishes on your adventures, and on making those difficult down hill runs, they are well beyond my abilities. but I would be very entertaining to watch with my PD and the balance issues it gives me to battle with. Peace, my friend.

Bill

Kindaslow

I am too old to recover from missing a gap jump. Maybe I need to HTFU.

i was using that trail to get back to the top of a medium level free ride trail. I do ride the black diamond XC trails, but they are tough as hell for me. I encourage folks to try stuff. Again, if folks could see the people who were pushing their bikes, how many there were, and how easy the hills were, maybe this discussion would read differently.

StanSeven

Pushing when it gets difficult or slacking off isn't related to age. Perhaps the riders walking have a physical problem, doing recovery ride or alternating occassionally from their road bike, maybe just taking it easy to enjoy the scenery, or any number of reasons. I do lots of tri's and the age group which pushes the hardest from what I see are the 30 to 40 year old. They seem to have the most solid base of training and not the long term nagging injuries of the older participants.

downtube42

You observed a few data points, jumped to conclusions based on those observations, passed judgement based on those jumped-to conclusions, then acted upon those judgements by posting here.

In politics and I suppose on social sites like this, that kind of behavior is normal and even considered acceptable. On the other hand, if your goal is to seek something close to truth, you have to work much much harder.

Definitely not a grumpy old man thing, because people of all ages often follow the same pattern (observe, jump, judge, act). As far as 'or should the young ones HTFU' as the alternative, there you've created a false dichotomy.

Kindaslow

Selective reading, beyond my imagination. And, I have ridden that area 50-100 times, it just seems worse lately.

please return to arguing about the best tires or if Ultegra is really any better than Sora.

Trevtassie

Nah, they're just lazy buggers. Asked the son of a friend if he wanted to go for a ride with me. He didn't because a: I ride up hills before I ride down and b: I'd probably beat him downhill and embarrass him in front of his mates. He's 22 and I'm 48. He rides a nice BMC dual sus bike, I ride an almost original 1990s Giant ATX840 I scored from a mate for a 6 pack... he's just a sook, if you can't drive to the top he's not interested. Interestingly I offered to do a car shuffle ride, but factor b: still came in to play. Bit silly, the way to go fast downhill is to be fit from riding up hills.

Gerryattrick

On reflection perhaps I did misunderstand the op's post a bit.

I sometimes ride with a few friends of my age at the local downhill trail centres.

We always ride our bikes to the top before doing the downhill runs because of our old-fashioned idea of earning those downhill rides.

We get about three downhill runs in a morning whereas the youngsters who take the truck lifts to the top get in about twice the rides (although they do pay money for the pleasure).

I'm not 100% convinced that our way is better.

These people just love their downhill rides and get as many as they can in.

Retro Grouch 

Isn't there a board for politics and religion because I think that's what this really is.

The hard core political and religious folks scoff at everybody who has a different brand. When they run out of those non-believers to hate, they simply up the ante within their own brand so we have the North Ireland issues and Shea vs. Sunni Muslims.

I don't play golf, I don't bowl and I don't hunt or fish. I have acquaintances who do all of those things but I don't pretend to fully understand them. Still, as long as they don't actively disapprove of me bicycling, I'll concede that they can still be good people. So now we come to the bicyclists. Even among ourselves, the roadie guys don't like the mountain bikers and everybody scoffs at the people who ride hybrids and at us recumbent riders.

So, given all that, here's my question: "Why should I care if another rider chooses to use his bike differently than me. Why would it matter if he pushes his bike up the hill or even hitches a ride on the back of a truck? How does that affect me? Why on earth should I care?"

I-Like-To-Bike

You should think LESS about what "those guys were doing." Since you already believe that each person needs to ride their own ride, what the heck are you thinking/griping about then?

Kindaslow

Thanks for the thoughtfulness.

i wish I had done a better job of describing this. It is free ride and not DH. For comparison, there is a local downhill that takes a 4 mile uphill ride to get to the top. A lot of folks push, because if they (we depending upon the bike) did not, the downhill would not be all that much fun with a totally spent body. The freeride is a two minute or so run with a lot of flow and speed. The one ride back to the top might be a 1/4 mile and is pretty easy on my SS ( and I am not a stud). The other ride back to the top was some effort on my SS, but not much. Most of the guys who ride this area are in what appears to be good shape and good health (I cannot imagine someone with significant issues doing gap jumps and drops).

It is way quicker to ride back up and not that strenuous. People are always visiting at the top, so there is time to catch your breath, and it could not ruin your ride.

So, I am still surprised and I still think it is laziness. But, again, it is their ride and all I am doing is posting a perspective.

Kindaslow

My job, career, is analyzing human behavior, so I am thinking out loud and hoping for some discussion. But some folks would rather discuss and argue about whether or not you can really use a 26" tube in a 29" tire, or whatever.

StephenH

Riding up hills, no problem. Walking up hills, no problem. Walking up to coast down, no problem. Worrying about how other people are doing it- problem. Just HTFU and let them ride like they want.

freedomrider1

One time i was going up a steep hill and laughing about it , but having a little trouble and some guy said He%@ you got a triple,and i said yup but i need a quadruple. His wife about fell off her bike laughing.

I-Like-To-Bike

And some don't know when to leave their professional "thinking" at the job-site at the end of the work day and just ride a bike. My perspective: your obsession with this "non-issue" is YOUR problem and you should HTFU.