Fortunately, we were able to identify, understand, and address those mistakes pretty quickly. The No. 1 mistake was putting all of our eggs in one basket, then dropping the basket, and jumping up and down on the eggs.
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absolute gold
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Didn’t realize cane creek used to be dia-compe
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Just checking the provenance of the stick
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Can we stop using slang terms for unhoused people in the poopbarning/crapbrapping vernacular?
No idea how old this bag is but I’ve definitely seen some of this nonsense thrown around to market bike touring accessories marketed to dirtbag cosplayers.
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I thought hobo was a traveler/trainhopper term
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I’ve always seen it used interchangeably with bum in bike vernacular. Bum-trail, hobo-trail being the most obvious. Hobo might be more romanticized, but we’re still talking about unhoused and vulnerable people who sometimes get the shit kicked out of them by train cops.
It’s not the worst thing, but it’s not a good thing.
Even if the term is accepted as normal in the rail traveler/train hopper community, doesn’t mean it’s really ideal to use it to market bespoke cycling equipment to those of relative means.
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This is the only acceptable hobo bag, everything else is hobo appropriation
Braden is right though, not a fan of using that language in a romanticized way when the people we’d actually call bums or hobos are vulnerable people with needs just like us
We’re riding the unhoused persons trails after work you should come check it out
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“pirate trail”? That’s used pretty frequently here. And fuck pirates. They were awful.
The real irony is that almost everywhere the urban mtb trail system has evolved here in Richmond has directly displaced unhoused and other vulnerable groups. In some cases, maybe for the best as it has absolutely pushed some of the more dangerous aspects of that world further away from the central areas and made use of the park system safer for women in particular, but it cuts both ways for sure.
Years ago when there was a big uptick in pirate trail digging on the fringes of the existing park system you could watch in real-time how it displaced people. Once “dirtball hill” was finished the connector trail that was legitimately a “bum trail” went from being fairly heavily used for drug/prostitution and camping to be clear of that and the associated debris. When the second wave of trail was cut and eventually absorbed into the park system, there were actual improvements made because all of a sudden that area was being heavily used by hikers, runners, and people accessing the river to fish.
I’m not sure this story arc is universal, but I bet it’s common.
Mountain bikers cut trails. Mountain bikers make areas “safer” by displacing marginalized people to areas further away from needed services. Mountain bikers use terms like “bum trail” to romanticize what they just did.
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I believe social trails is the common term for unsanctioned paths.
Or bootleg, if we’re Ok with prohibition-era smuggler appropriation.
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A hobo is a specific thing, they even have a convention. That said, hobo as used by most people is a pejorative for an unhoused neighbor.
Folk trails is a good one.
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I call all the unofficial trails around me “community trails.” Most were made and mapped and connected by locals, some were used by unhoused people, some were made by kids cutting through the woods, some are older than I can remember
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Desire path
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Most of the unofficial trails around me are made by unhoused people and unless you like needles and garbage you shouldn’t use them.
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“Social trails” is the term used by the trail building team employed by the city. It’s more often than not used to describe unsanctioned trails created by lazy hikers and people to access the park from their private property and it’s more often than not used in a negative light. Probably because the entire officially employed trail crew are also trail riders and take it personally when people make their job harder.
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I’ve always heard and called such trails poach, since the regional parks in the sf bay area were pretty shitty about ticketing mtbers on unsanctioned trails
Hadn’t heard the term bum or social trail before tbh
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they still do!
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Good point.
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