Hello, everyone;
I've been locked into work things the past couple of weeks, so I haven't had a chance to post. I see ATV supporters have made some interesting replies to my last post. I encourage you all to read them, I will respond later. On the whole, there are some good points, some bad points, many "missed points", and one personal threat, offered I hope, in jest.
I will respond later to some of the arguments, but the last one seems important. Yes, there IS a decibel limit on ATV's, just as there is on snowmobiles, but in winter you can hear snowmobiles in nearly every corner of Vilas County. Is this what we want in summer?
Snowmobile noise is a result of speed and popular after market mufflers The DNR has only begun to try to get snowmobile speed and noise under control in Vilas County, lets give the experiment a couple of years before we introduce another noisemaker.
I agree with all of the posters that most ATVers are good, responsible people, just like everyone else that uses the northwoods. I don't hold the same for ATV manufacturers, who are just in it for selling more vehicles to whoever will buy them. They know there is a big "racing and mudding market". They don't have the family recreational ATVer's interests at heart, any more than they do when they turned snowmobile trails into winter racetracks.
5 comments:
Remember the Northwoods 30 years ago? Pure silence. Peaceful silence. Why do we get away to the Northwoods in the first place? Back to basics. Back to the silence.
I agree with you. If you ask most people what they think of when they think of the northwoods, it is "peace and quiet".
We need to have quiet seasons, quiet times of the day, and quiet places.
I go to the northwoods for peace and quiet too. My ATV isn't noisy (it isn't like I'm on the trails riding a Harley for pete sakes and some of you make it out like we all are). As an ATVer, I enjoy stops at waterfalls, rivers, scenic overlooks and the list goes on. There are places to park our machines so that we aren't riding through these precious areas. I'm human too and love the same things that you all love.
Plenty of places remain silent and there is something for everyone out there. If all things were the same...how much fun would this world be? What if we were all the same? We'd have a bunch of clones walking around and it would be boring. Life is about having all different walks of life out there enjoying what they decide to is fun. You can do your silent sports and I can ride my ATV. It is as simple as that. The difference at this point is that I'm spreading the word and educating fellow motorized user groups.
Personally, I would like to see a law passed that requires all ATVers to take the safety classes and know what is right and what is wrong. I'm not a head honcho (just a Joe Schmoe with strong backing in the ATV world) of anything but I know that it should be this way. How else will people learn?
Think outside of the box and life will be much simpler that way.
Jessica "Muddychick" Priem
I spend a lot of time in the northwoods (and any other stretch of woods I can find). I travel the woods a lot--a couple thousand miles of off pavement travel every year.
I go to places that would take hours to walk into. Guess who I see in those places? Others, like me, who got there on some time of "motor mobile." Mine happens to be an ATV. In the last four years I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've seen a hiker more than two miles from where they can drive. Well, not counting me, of course.
And on the same fingers of one hand I can count the number of times I've seen a bicyclist more than a few miles from where they could drive into.
So, what we end up with is several hundred thousand acres of Wisconsin that are not being used by the silent sports enthusiasts because they won't go there since they can't drive there.
For the life of me, I can't figure out who we will disturb with our ATVs when there is no one out there but us.
bill
Ditto Grizz. Where are these silent sporters on all of these trails that we, as taxpayers have the special joy to provide whether we like it or not? At least with ATVing, I'm paying into my own sport and gladly doing so.
We've been on ATV trails where you park and walk in 3 miles to a waterfall. I guess I'm an ATV/Silent sporter if you will in these cases but see none of these other silent sporters out there in all the times I have rode.
Now what I have seen of the silent sports community, were kayakers/canoe people that packed tons of booze and loved nudity. Very interesting to say the least. I won't say how I'm really feeling on this but just had to put it out there for some humor to break the chain of this sillyness. It could have been Sue Drum out there on the nudist canoe spots? Who am I to say for sure? Could I say it was? Yes or no....this is up for debate.
Jess
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