Should E-Bikes Be Allowed on Nature Trails?

Introduction

A member emailed our bike club a photo of a trailhead sign banning e-bikes. This spawned a brief debate among our members about whether it’s reasonable to ban e-bikes, but not regular mountain bikes, from multi-use trails. In this post I provide my two cents … for free.

What is an e-bike?

Part of the problem here is that not all e-bikes do the same thing. The most subtle version is the illegal racing bike with a tiny motor hidden in it and I won’t go into that (other than to say I kinda want one). Among consumer products, there are three major types of e-bike, as described here. Class 1 helps out when the rider pedals, and can get the bike up to 20 mph. (This is the “pedal-assist” model called out in the photo above.) Then there’s the Class 2 that doesn’t even require you to pedal, and can also reach 20 mph. This is the kind that might have huge tires, and the rider is often just slumped over the thing, slack-jawed, languid, sometimes almost catatonic, his only input being the hand on the throttle. The final type, Class 3, doesn’t require pedaling unless you want to hit its top speed of 28 mph. And then there are the rogue companies putting out e-bikes that can go 55 mph if you snip a wire or otherwise disable their governor. So they’re basically motorcycles in disguise.

If a community wants to regulate e-bike use, the most practical way is across the board, even if the Class 1 might not be a particular menace.

What are e-bikes for?

Let me just say I love the concept of e-bikes. I’m not some purist who gets annoyed when some dude blows by me on the road, his cadence having nothing to do with his speed, like he’s just kind of floating along, pretending to exercise, like the person on the Stairmaster at the gym supporting all his weight on his hands. Who cares? At least he’s on a bike.

That said, I think the sweet spot for e-bikes is commuting. Sure, the world would be a better place if everybody were super fit and commuted everywhere by regular bicycle. (It would be Holland, basically.) But if somebody isn’t fit enough to ride to work in a reasonable amount of time, and/or just doesn’t want to show up red-faced and sweaty, and/or has a big hill that’s too much to handle after a long workday, and/or has cargo or a pet or a kid to carry … go for it! I’m not comparing this rider to a Tour de France racer; I’m comparing him or her to a car, which takes up too much space and wastes too much energy and somewhat endangers cyclists and pedestrians.

This isn’t to say I’d begrudge anybody for using an e-bike for exercise. Cycling is hard, and my favorite rides around here feature serious climbs. If I somehow lost half my fitness, and had to choose between riding on the totally flat Bay Trail on my current bike or continuing my beloved hill climbs on an e-bike, I guess I’d choose the latter (at least until I could somehow get my fitness back).

E-biking on trails? I’ll get to that in a minute. But first:

Whom are e-bikes for?

I’ve been Mr. Nice Guy so far but now I’m going to be less generous: e-bikes are not for the young. First of all, if a kid or teenager doesn’t have the energy to schlep himself or herself around on a regular bike, he or she isn’t being parented properly. Buying your kid an e-bike is just throwing in the towel on their poor fitness. It’s also, arguably, endangering your kid. Check out this article about the disturbing uptick in bad accidents involving teenagers who lack the skill to pilot an e-bike safely, and lack the sense to even try.

Safety is why allowing e-bikes on trails is problematic. I don’t have an issue with older folks taking up road cycling, though if they choose e-bikes they’d better be careful. (I wouldn’t want to tell them not to do it, since managing the risk is really their business. If they hit a car, it’s not like the driver is gonna get hurt.) I also have nothing against older folks taking up mountain biking—after all, as a high school mountain bike coach I actively recruit parents as assistant coaches. But these parents are not on e-bikes, and that keeps things safe. Given how rigorous it is to pedal up a steep dirt climb, new riders develop gradually, and their skill builds along with the range they can cover. This is all for the best. Older folks learning how to ride off-road on e-bikes is just a recipe for trouble, and the danger extends to other users of the trail, who don’t have two tons of steel protecting them.

Then you’ve got your ageing former bikers, who at some point put on fifty pounds and gave up the sport, and now want to drop $10K or so on a fancy e-MTB and pick up where they left off. I was on the backside of China Camp a couple years back and came upon one of these guys. The backside has some gnarly descents, but the climb getting to it hits pitches of over 20%, which normally keeps the novices, and the out-of-practice, from partaking. This (rather stout) dude had motored his way up there and found out the hard way how much his skills had atrophied since the last time he did this descent. His collarbone was clearly broken and he was being carried out by EMS.

What, and whom, are trails for?

Now let’s step back and come at this issue from the other direction: the purpose of nature trails. I love mountain biking, and I also love (well, like) hiking. There’s a fundamental difference, in my opinion, between road cycling on the one hand, and mountain biking or hiking on the other. On the road, you have to contend with cars, along with other aspects of humanity like buildings and of course the road itself. So even though it’s super fun, it’s not exactly communing with nature. Biking on a trail, I can enjoy more of a Grizzly Adams experience, and have a relief from the crush of humanity I normally have to tolerate. (Yes, I’m an introvert.) And when I’m hiking, free of the need to operate a machine, I suppose I’m even closer to this bucolic bliss. I don’t appreciate being spooked by a bicyclist whose sense of a safe passing speed may be radically different from mine, but fortunately this is a rare occurrence.

With all this in mind, as a mountain biker I do my very best to respect the hikers I encounter. I slow way down; I offer a greeting so I don’t startle anyone; I am gracious when a hiker doesn’t feel like acknowledging me. We MTB coaches teach our student athletes that they need to slow down enough that when they say hi, the hiker has the chance to say hi back. (This is a lot to ask of a teenager but we’re tenacious about it, and they generally behave.) With this as the model, I believe that mountain bikers deserve the privilege of sharing trails with hikers. That being said, I’m totally fine with some trails being for hikers only, and I’m stoked to have encountered a few trails specifically set aside for bikers. But not e-bikers, because of the…

Unique problems e-bikes present on trails

Since I started mountain biking in the early 1980s (when the sport was brand new), I have observed how tenuous the relationship can be between bikers and hikers. In the mid 1980s, I loved riding the Shanahan Ridge and Mesa trails in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado … until the city heard from too many angry hikers and closed every single trail to bikers, a ban they still uphold. (I attended the city council meeting where this was argued about, and—being an unprepared, clueless teenager—made an absolute ass of myself and was laughed at by the entire room, which is why I have so much character today.)

The debate about regular mountain bikes on trails will never end, which is why I think we need to be really, really careful when it comes to e-bikes. This technology presents several unique problems.

First of all, as I mentioned before, part of why regular mountain bikers do okay on trails is that they have to pay their dues, fitness-wise, before they have a lot of gnarly descents to contend with. By the time they’re passing hikers on a steep downhill, they’ve acquired the skill they need not to lose control and take somebody out. With an e-bike they’re going everywhere, ready or not.

Second, with increased speed comes extended range, which means more total encounters with hikers. I mean, if I could ride twice as fast on an e-bike (which I probably almost could), I’d go twice as far, and automatically pass a lot more people. And as careful as I try to be, I’m going to encounter some hikers, usually older people, who cannot abide mountain bikers in any form. Even on a regular mountain bike, with all the politeness I can muster, I can’t do right by some of these folks. I could dismount my bike, greet them kindly with a tip of my helmet, hand them a $100 bill and say, “I’m pretty sure you dropped this, even if you don’t remember doing so,” and then give them some homemade chocolate chip cookies and a hand-knit sweater for their dog, and they’d still scowl at me with a look that says, “Go back to your gutter, you filthy vermin.” Meanwhile, at the other end the spectrum, you’ll always have a few mountain bikers who are rude and/or incorrectly gauge the socially acceptable passing speed. If, due to a surge in e-bike popularity, the trails suddenly had twice the number of bikers going twice the distance, the number of pissed off hikers would surely increase, and as I said before, this détente between hikers and bikers is already precarious. In a nutshell, I don’t want e-bikers tipping that balance and ruining the party for us regular bikers.

Third, e-bike motors are allowed to produce up to 750 watts, which is half-again more than Lance Armstrong could sustain for a single climb at the height of his dope-fueled career. This kind of power could surely enable an e-biker to spin the rear tire on climbs, not just half a pedal revolution at a time like I might accidentally do here and there, but more like a motorcycle can. They could totally peel out and some yahoos probably would. I suspect this could really damage a nature trail, which is not designed for such stuff. (And remember, not all e-bike manufacturers play by the rules, power-wise, to begin with.)

Finally, there’s the douchebag factor. Some e-bikers just wanna pretend they’re motorcyclists and will get all armored up and go treat the trail like it’s a motocross course. I was hiking at the Rockville Hills Regional Park, where e-bikes are disallowed, and this dork on an e-bike with a full face helmet and knee and elbow pads was riding with his buddies who were on regular bikes. He kept zipping on ahead and passing my wife and me, and then circling back to rejoin his friends, then passing us again. My impulse was to knock him to the ground and beat him about the head and shoulders with his bike, but it would have been too heavy given my spindly bike-racer arms. Lucky for him, I didn’t think of seizing his battery pack and flogging him with that. Granted, the prohibition against e-bikes hadn’t stopped him from riding there, but presumably the park rangers are licensed to kill and that dumbass is no longer bothering anybody.

What is to be done?

The majority of trails I encounter that allow mountain bikes also allow e-bikes, so far. It appears that the trail managers are either struggling to figure out how to regulate e-bikes, or are adopting a wait-and-see approach. As you have surely gathered by now, I’d favor something more assertive. Fire roads are fine, as there’s plenty of room for everyone, but any single-track trail that allows mountain bikes today should err on the side of caution and ban e-bikes initially, until they’ve figured out the best way to govern them. Anyone wanting to use an e-bike for exercise can go buy an (albeit sexist) Pinarello Nytro and pick on old school roadies like me, or do their shopping on an electric cargo bike. Leave the trails for nature lovers.

(At least, that’s my take, for now. I hope I’m more thoughtful than in my teenaged years, with that disastrous presentation at the Boulder city council meeting.)

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A Newbie’s Guide to Poison Oak and Poison Ivy

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and comprehensive grossness.

Introduction

Maybe you’ve never had a rash from poison oak or poison ivy.  I didn’t either, until recently when Mother Nature caught up to me with a vengeance.  If your avoidance techniques and/or home remedies aren’t cutting it, you might get some benefit from this post.  On the other hand, if you seem immune to this malady, or if your techniques are totally effective, you may yet enjoy reading about my suffering, and feeling smug in your superiority.

What are poison oak and poison ivy?

Poison oak and poison ivy are plants in the Toxicodendron family.  Do not fail to note the word “toxic” hiding in there.  And before you go casting aspersions on oak trees, note that poison oak isn’t actually oak.  Some dumbass called it that and the name stuck.  (If I seem grumpy, it’s because large swaths of my skin are grossly red and itchy and have been for over a week.)

Here are two photos of poison oak.  One is pretty good and should show you what it looks like.  The other photo is pretty blurry, which is more realistic—usually you don’t get a clear view because you’re chasing a dog or a ball or have lost control of your mountain bike, and you only realize it’s poison oak after it’s too late.

Half the time, when people say “poison oak” or “poison ivy” they’re referring to the rash that these diabolical plants can give you.  The technical term for this rash is “urushiol-induced contact dermatitis.”  (Why hasn’t somebody come up with a catchier term for this, along the lines of saying “the clap” for an STD?  You got me.)  Using the plant name to refer to the ailment goes back at least as far as 1963, when the song “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” included the line, “I went hiking with Joe Spivey, he developed poison ivy.” For the purposes of this essay I’m going to refer to urushiol-induced contact dermatitis as “rash” or “hell-rash.”

Is this rash contagious?

For God’s sake, no!  This myth about contagiousness is oddly persistent, probably because the hell-rash is so hideous to behold.  People must lose their normal faculty for healthy skepticism when they look at the disgusting blistering and pus-oozing sores on your skin.  Here’s the full story on how this rash develops: 

• The oils on the leaves of the actual plant can spread like crazy, so you want to be very careful around the plants (more on this later).  But…
• Once you have the hell-rash, it will seem to spread across your body gradually, creating the impression that you’re causing this spread, but…
• The urushiol oil spreads only until you shower, and no matter how much you scratch at the ensuing rash, and no matter how much pus you may cause to smear around (isn’t this disgusting?!), you won’t spread the rash.  It’s not the pus that causes the rash, it’s the oil, which you surely washed off long before you saw the rash (but obviously not soon enough).
• There is no way to spread the rash from one person to another, but you could spread the oil to another person if you got really friendly right after a hike (i.e., before your shower).

Will this post include some gnarly photos of the hell-rash?

No, I wouldn’t do that to you.  It’s bad enough having to look at this rash.  I’m not even going to describe it to you, though that would be a fun literary exercise.  Suffice to say, the right photo or description would have you PUKING FOR DECADES.  I was actually so worried about the severity of my rash, I even considered going to the doctor, until I showed it to a fellow mountain biker who said, rather casually, “I’ve seen worse.”

How long does the rash take to develop?

The rash can take anywhere from like 12 hours to 10 days (maybe even longer) to develop.  This might have to do with how sensitive you are.  Or maybe it’s just one of those things.

Anecdotally, the rash may be brought on by noting a friend’s terrible rash and thinking, “Sucks to be you!”  That’s what happened to me.  A week after a bike race at a notoriously Toxicodendron-infested course I was on a team ride and saw this other racer’s rash in full bloom, and thanked my lucky stars at my apparent immunity, and then BOOM!—two or three days later I woke up with blood all over my legs.  I’d evidently scratched the crap out of my hell-rash, in my sleep.  Several days later I got an even worse rash on my left arm, starting at the wrist.  (Could this have been a separate exposure?  Sure it could!)

How can I avoid getting this rash?

A surefire way to avoid Toxicodendron plants is to stay indoors at all times, and avoid snuggling with a hiker until he or she has showered.  Unfortunately, staying indoors all the time leads to sloth, lack of muscle tone, depression, arthritis (via video gaming), brain-drain (via passive video entertainment), and myopia (from too much reading).  This indoor lifestyle can even lead to rickets.

The fact that in over 47 years I never had a reaction to poison oak/ivy, despite doing a lot of hiking and mountain biking among these plants, may be a simple matter of luck (more on this later).  That said, I have almost always taken steps to minimize my risk, and maybe they are effective—so here goes: 

• Cover as much of your skin as possible; i.e., long pants and sleeves when hiking, and arm warmers and leg warmers when mountain biking.  (It helps if you live in a cool climate, obviously.) 
• Watch out for the plant, though this is pretty tricky because a) many plants resemble poison oak; b) it’s practically everywhere; c) even when there are no leaves, the stupid twigs carry the oil; d) the oil gathers in puddles which splash on you when you’re mountain biking; and e) when you’re biking you can’t always avoid crashing into a large clump of this or that Toxicodendron and/or whacking against it like a slalom skier against a gate.
• As soon as you get home from your outdoor adventure, a) take a cool shower (cool because hot water will open up your pores, allowing the oil to spread), and b) wash all the clothing you wore because the oil can stay on it, spreading to you and/or the person who does your laundry for you, you lucky dog.
• Use Tecnu, an anti-urushiol skin cleanser.  (Note:  I haven’t tried this yet but several mountain bikers have recommended it.  I’ll update this post later when I have some firsthand intel on this.)

Are some people immune to the Toxicodendron hell-rash?

It seems like some people are indeed immune to this awful rash, but I have always suspected you simply get some number of freebies before your body decides it’s allergic to the urushiol oil.  I’ve done my best to avoid it all my life, which might have extended my grace period.  There have certainly been times when I came in contact with poison oak without suffering any consequences.  One time my wife said, “Dana, look down,” and I discovered I was standing right in a big clump of poison oak, while wearing shorts.  A couple months ago I crashed into it on my bike.  Neither time did I develop a rash.  It’s possible this was due to my cool-shower regimen but probably I just got lucky.

The case I have now hit me about ten days after my race.  It’s worth noting that this was the first time I was unable to shower right after my exposure.

If you still think you’re special and immune to this rash, consider this chilling tale: at summer camp back in the ‘70s, a very stupid kid rubbed poison ivy all over his hands to show off how he was immune.  The rash hit him after just a few days and it was so bad, his hands looked like entrails and he missed the second half of camp.  Everybody had a good time talking about how stupid he was.  Looking back, I don’t think he was especially stupid.  He was just stupid in a way that lead to a very dramatic situation.

Speaking of kids, my kid has this rash.  Does that make me a bad parent?

Look, your kid didn’t ask to be born, okay?

I have come down with the hell-rash … what should I do?!

Okay, first of all, DON’T PANIC.

What stupid advice.  Of course you shouldn’t panic.  Ever.  I don’t even know why I wrote that.

Second, assure your friends and family members, who are recoiling at the sight of you, that the rash is not contagious.  It’s okay to be visibly exasperated at their silliness, but don’t complain in their presence about your discomfort, because they already hate you for the disgusting spectacle you present to them.

Third, try to avoid scratching the hell-rash.  At least, that’s what your spouse will tell you, over and over.  It seems a) intuitively obvious that scratching is a bad idea, and b) almost impossible not to scratch, especially if you tend to sleep ever.

Now, I have to temper this no-scratching advice with the following tidbit, related by a friend who heard it from a former Olympic cyclist:  “Get some 80 grit sandpaper, scratch the shit out of it until it bleeds, and clean up the wounds.  Believe me, I’ve tried everything over the years and it’s going to spread a bit anyway.  Just succumb to it, relish in the scratching because it feels so good, and treat it like a scab.  If you’re not man enough for that, there is a gel available now that is powerful stuff and helps with the itching.”  I haven’t followed up on the gel bit yet, because a) I don’t want to seem unmanly; b) I can’t see how I’d use this gel without making a mess of my clothes; and c) this rash itches so bad I can’t even remember the third thing.

I’ve found that the rash itches more when it dries out.  You can keep it moist by bandaging it, and my favorite product here is Tegaderm, a “transparent film dressing.”  It’s like a big piece of clear tape, but it sticks only to skin and not to the wound.  (It’s great for road rash, too.)  Brace yourself, though:  Tegadarm is really expensive.

If the itching is driving you crazy, Benadryl does seem to help.  I had to take this before bed a couple times, which did help me sleep, but man, the hangover from that drug is a real bitch.  There’s also a spray version of Benadryl.  (My wife tried this a couple decades ago.  I don’t remember whether it worked or not, and would probably have forgotten all about it except for something funny:  she was in such dire need of relief, we didn’t wait to get home before applying it.  We went out behind the grocery store and she was spraying it on her legs when this store manager came bursting out from a back door and yelled, “CAUGHT YOU!”  His initial look of triumph evaporated very quickly when he saw our bewildered expressions.  Apparently he’d been lying in wait for teenagers who’d been tagging the wall with spray cans.)

If things get too bad, you can go to the doctor and get a prescription for a steroid.  This might be necessary in severe cases, particularly if you’re highly sensitive, and/or get it in your damn throat (yes, this can happen), or if you’ve inhaled the smoke caused by some shit-for-brains who decided to burn a big pile of poison oak leaves.

Is there any redeeming value in Toxicodendron plants?

No, there’s nothing good about these plants and I cannot see why somebody hasn’t designed a miracle herbicide to eradicate the entire species from the face of the Earth.  Probably scientists would feed you something about the “interdependent ecosystem” or the “web of life,” which is easy for them to say because they’re not straining to avoid scratching themselves to death.

I guess the only silver lining is that, as with all suffering, the hell-rash can give you an opportunity to commiserate with others.  But that’s a pretty thin lining, and probably fake silver, like the cheap pseudo-chrome they put on plastic car bumpers that eventually gets scraped off and looks bad.

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