I, too, have struck plenty of trail bumps in 15 odd years of riding around my patch. I try to take the view of not just going off my chops at them, because genrally they are not idiots, just ignorant. Plus occasionally we ('real' mtb riders) are in the wrong.... I took my young fella down Yarra trails area the other day - nothing too serious down there so no riding for sheep stations I thought and a great place for him to learn. Despite only being ten, the young fella has fairly good trail etiquette - he pulls across first and let's others past, but I admit we do not set a cracking pace, so the odd hold up has occurred. When it dos I apologise and most seem happy to take it as being a small issue in the scheme of things.
Anyway, some young fella (and by young I mean early twenties) come smashing down towards us on a straight section, so Pat pulls to the left off trail, leaving plenty of room. This guy goes off his nut and starts yelling obscenities at both of us. He was someone I had seen before and is not a noob, but this was not on... I tired to tell him calmly to maybe take it down a notch as what he was saying was not on in front of the young fella and he had plenty of room to get past anyway. His reply was along the lines of 'you fucking arseholes should get off the trails and let real riders use them'. He started really getting in my face and and I had a gut full by this stage - So I belted the snot out of him.. Whoops... What I meant to say was he fell over repeatedly into my fist - it was the weirdest thing (if you happen to be reading this 'Brad' - I hold no grudge for the incident and my knuckles bear you no ill feeling for you dropping your face on them)
Yes, I know this is bad (in front of my son and all), but it goes to show kids, you never know who it is you yell at - it could be a grumpy bugger like me with a short temper a 25 years of unarmed combat training:fish: