Little Things You Hate

stirk

Burner
@Norco Maniac

Hey you! You've been through a shit show, good to see you're out the other side.


The debate about gender re-assignment and identification is so complex. Each case if I dare call it a case will have its own unique background, struggle, triumph and hopefully final contentment of one's self and acceptance into society as the person you feel you are.

Does the argument go the other way with men feeling cheated if women identify as men and compete in their sport gender category and win?

I ask because I get handed my lungs by women riders all the time!

I only have one trans friend and a few gay/lesbian friends and they don't do sports so don't have much personal experience from them in the sporting arena but know their personal challenges to just be themselves is a win.

I hear what you're putting down and there might be people exploiting situations and rules and fairness but I hope they are in the minority like with any cheats.
 

Flow-Rider

Burner
Let me tell you something mate, making a public statement of mountain bikers riding unsanctioned trails is not a good look for the Brisbane mountain bike community, it's exactly this that's giving fuel to the Green groups and it's putting a handbrake on everything. It's no longer a bargaining tool like it was in the 90's, it makes us look like outlaw environmental criminals. Gap Creek trail network (the only legal trail network within the Brisbane city precinct) was meant to be a model to show the community how well sanctioned trials work, instead it has done the opposite. That Borra group has a lot to answer for, they're gambling with our trails, throwing punches in the dark like a bunch of desperates and escalating the problems.
The NIMBY's are on fire.

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Flow-Rider

Burner
^ to be fair, they're legitimate concerns.
I'm trying to tell people not to do it but there's a mtb advocacy group telling the council it's too bad because they don't let them build legally, all the Karens have jumped on board with the Greenie groups, voted against council's draft plan to get some of the stuff legalised and to build it to cope with environmental laws. A lot of the trails have been there for longer than 15 years but people take it upon themselves to expand them.
 
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Flow-Rider

Burner
Not gonna lie those trails and that hut look like such a good spot to ride.
Most of what these green groups are saying is rubbish, who's going to build dirt jumps in a flood zone that need to be rebuilt all the time.

At one of the parks they claim that noise of mountainbikes disturbs animal habitats but what they forget to tell everyone is that you can hear the train station, the main road and planes in the sky, over the noise that your mountain bike makes when you ride there.
 
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creaky

XMAS Plumper
Most of what these green groups are saying is rubbish, who's going to build dirt jumps in a flood zone that need to be rebuilt all the time.

At one of the parks they claim that noise of mountainbikes disturbs animal habitats but what they forget to tell everyone is that you can hear the train station, the main road and planes in the sky, over the noise that your mountain bike makes when you ride there.
We looked at a similar issue for the (now failed) Mt Coot-tha zipline project. As there are busy roads, a quarry, aircraft noise impacts on the bushland already the ambient noise was high so the impact of the project was minor in terms of standard noise assessment metrics.

I saw a bigger issue being a potential predator response reaction from wildlife with a high speed object audible flying through the tree canopy. Same could be said for mountain bikes I guess but the (project) ecologists reckoned it was a non-issue. The wildlife seem to get used to those kind of sounds over time and move back into those close proximities to trails etc. when comfortable again.
 

Flow-Rider

Burner
We looked at a similar issue for the (now failed) Mt Coot-tha zipline project. As there are busy roads, a quarry, aircraft noise impacts on the bushland already the ambient noise was high so the impact of the project was minor in terms of standard noise assessment metrics.

I saw a bigger issue being a potential predator response reaction from wildlife with a high speed object audible flying through the tree canopy. Same could be said for mountain bikes I guess but the (project) ecologists reckoned it was a non-issue. The wildlife seem to get used to those kind of sounds over time and move back into those close proximities to trails etc. when comfortable again.

My thing with these environmental conservationists is that, it's a bit 2 faced in what they're trying to do in a lot of bushland around Brisbane but I generally don't have a problem with what they stand for. From my own observations, walkers are just as bad and if not worse than mountain bikers in these Brisbane parks, if they throw us out of parks on conservation values alone they'll need to do the same to walkers and everyone else that visits these places, instead they're trying to use votes from these people and turn them against us. Hardly anything in these parks complies with the conservation act but yet they want to bully Mountain bikers out of there. The few mountain bikers that go building illegally are giving them ammunition, as you can see with all the pics they're posting across the internet and papers.

In the big scheme of things concerning Brisbane parks we are nothing. I see motorbike riders rip these parks up and ring authorities up and nothing ever gets done about it. If you go over to Karawatha Forest you'll see all the water bottles, the food packaging walkers throw everywhere, they cut the fences around the quarry every week to go swimming and council goes back and repairs it every second week. The fire roads in there are causing more erosion than any MTB trail in there, council has gone in there and cut down some green trees to block trails that the green groups have complained about by making allegations that mountain bikers swiped a school walking group.

I personally don't think it's about conservation anymore, especially when they state to go build trails out of the Brisbane area, these parks have been mined, logged many times over and been used as dumping grounds, mining excrement left all over the place. Why the fuck would you go and ruin virgin land out of the Brisbane area, like the conservation act doesn't matter to them as long as the trails are away from them.
 
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Asininedrivel

caviar connoisseur
A lot of the trails have been there for longer than 15 years but people take it upon themselves to expand them.
Anecdotally I'm seeing the same stuff happen around the Yarra Trails, both from my time working at Parks Victoria and during the lockdown. Trails have been there, "illegally" for years and PV tacitly acknowledged it and (privately) have had no issue with people riding them. Then lockdown happens, trail expansion goes nuts and the councils / PV respond by shutting down whole areas where trails used to run through. Certain "conservationists" haven't helped either, many cases of trees being pulled down(!) to block trails.

There's just not enough education around the fragility of environments and why they need to be respected, so people build (badly), erosion occurs, the whole area gets pretty messed up and we end up losing way more.
 

frenchman

Eats cheese. Sells crack.
Unsanctioned trails in Brisbane have always been the best to ride. If there were none being built BCC would’ve put 8km of fire road around cootha and called it a day.
 

pink poodle

気が狂っている男
Anecdotally I'm seeing the same stuff happen around the Yarra Trails, both from my time working at Parks Victoria and during the lockdown. Trails have been there, "illegally" for years and PV tacitly acknowledged it and (privately) have had no issue with people riding them. Then lockdown happens, trail expansion goes nuts and the councils / PV respond by shutting down whole areas where trails used to run through. Certain "conservationists" haven't helped either, many cases of trees being pulled down(!) to block trails.

There's just not enough education around the fragility of environments and why they need to be respected, so people build (badly), erosion occurs, the whole area gets pretty messed up and we end up losing way more.
It's two way...no point convincing everyone how fragile the ecosystem is and just building a fire road through it. Teenagers give about 0 fucks for ecological sustainability, they want jumps! A few kids in my neighbourhood have just built a few jumps out of sand (yes...sand! In a shitty garden bed near my house. If the authorities build/facilitate interesting trails and features they will reduce the number of dickheads building garbage.
 

Flow-Rider

Burner
Unsanctioned trails in Brisbane have always been the best to ride. If there were none being built BCC would’ve put 8km of fire road around cootha and called it a day.
Too many have a bad etiquette with Strava and youtube these days, the real fight now is just to be able to keep on riding in the local bush.
 

Jim Junkie

Used to sell drugs, now he just takes them
NBN Co.
My neighbour, in his infinite wisdom, goes to install a new driveway upon moving in. During this, he neglects to DBYD and uses his fancy cable finding (excavator) machine to find a cable a rip it out of the ground. Cue calling me over to go check my phone and see if it still works. I advise him that's no phone cable, looks more like coaxial cable, but he doesn't listed. Pour concrete.

12 months later, around comes the NBN rollover. Our technology? HFC. No surprises, NBN decides they need to replace that cable run between pits. They use the grace of an overweight hippo to shove a new conduit under my driveway, lifting it in the process (it's 2 concrete strips). This leaves (beyond a giant mess on the footpath) a big lip in my driveway between segments and a large void next to the driveway where they haven't backfilled properly. I complain to the NBN. They get the driveway straight and fill the void.

One year later it rains. What can I say, it was a dry year. This rain has the effect of creating a subterranean river which ejects itself onto the footpath right where the backfilled void was. Cool. I get some video and send this off to NBN to fix again. They do, poorly.

2 months later, you guessed it, it rains again. Back comes the hole. Now I have a footpath with a (now bigger) hole in it AND a footpath covered in gravel. Even cooler. So I complain again and this time, NBN decides they didn't cause the damage, so they won't fix it. Take it up with the TIO they say. They even had the hide to call it a drainage pipe when I clearly have photos of they very exposed conduit which is stamped AS/NZS 2053, DOM 22/2/2018. Clearly conduit, clearly installed just prior to NBN rollover.

So I do. The TIO has decided that since it's not my property (being on the verge), they can't pursue it and I should go talk to my local council member.

FFS, what am I supposed to do, go our with a shovel and bury that fucking cable conduit myself? Maybe it's time for a new driveway, I can operate an excavator....
 
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