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The Trouble with Fun

Fun begets smiles, most of the time.

By

Barry Wicks

This is fun.

This is fun.

You want to start a bar fight at your local trailhead? Mention e-bikes. Just drop the term casually, like a lit match into a pool of propane, and watch grown men in tight pants convulse in spittle-flecked fury. I’ve seen blissed-out yoga moms froth at the mouth over “those helmetless creations going the wrong way…

Responses

  1. Jeremiah Langston

    The paragraph about “play acting” reminds me of this portion of Werner Herzog’s documentary The Dark Glow of the Mountains when Reinhold Messner asks whether mountain climbing is a sign of degeneration of mankind. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxD1xoarP5rWS6C2agXJxtpZ2E0Fcx4RaI?si=Le7JRKdxmZRlbxmX.

    1. Andrew Ross

      Awesome clip. Thanks for sharing.

      At the risk of opening a political can of worms here (which I really don’t want to do)…

      Back before he became the controversial figure he is today, Jordan Petersen had some interesting things to say about the ideal habitat for humans being a “walled garden;” that is, a blend of nature with artificial human society. In other words, we need both mountains and McDonalds to thrive.

      When viewed through that framing, Messner’s words here make me think that the balance in our walled garden is all out of whack. It’s all walls, and no gardens. All McDonalds (and electronics and motors and internet), and no Mountains.

      When society becomes as sanitized as it became in the last 100 years, we are forced to go further and further afield to get our fix of nature. So we jump over the wall, out into the wilderness where real danger – though I am reluctant to call it unnecessary danger – lies.

      1. Barry Wicks

        I often wonder if the suffering we as human’s do is necessary in the sense that it is the thing that actually gives our lives meaning. Or that it is actually useful to suffer because we so quickly adapt to new realities that we forget how easy we really have it in our modern privileged world. I am imagining suffering as an evolutionary force attempting to remind us that everything, literally everything, we have and everything we are, has a cost associated with it in some way. If we somehow get better at learning and remembering these lessons maybe we could escape from the cause and effect oscillations, or alternatively, maybe we just need to accept the fact that life involves suffering, and go along for the ride!

        A wild topic drift for a ski website but I am here for it!

  2. Spencer Dillon

    Hi Barry.

    This debate reminds me of the classic david brooks piece about mechanized and nonmechanized users in the West that I can’t seem to find. Not sure if that’s flattering to you, hahaha. Motors present the opportunity to express fundamentally different philosophical perspectives on outdoor recreation. For me, criticism of motors is really criticism of those users’ failure to submit themselves to the natural world. Sure, my carbon whatever is a motor compared to a survivalist’s bow and arrow, but I’m not on naked and afraid and I would argue a bike allows me to be more present where I am, not less. Motors as a whole disconnect us from the world. A bike, even a fancy one, is another tool to feel the world beneath our feet.

    How would sailing fit into this question? I think it’s another form of deeper engagement with physical space even though its not human powered. Power boats? not so much.

    While I agree that live and let live is what we ultimately must do, I’ll argue to keep the ebikes and motos off the trails, even if that means it takes longer to clear the deadfall in the spring. That’s a faustian bargain, even if the West can only be saved by a political union of the mechanized and the nonmechanized.

    Mountain gazette published an entertaining account of a nordic ski traverse from Bear Valley CA to mammoth from the 70s. Those guys on wax sure knew how to get out there. Makes our fancy AT stuff feel pretty removed from the environment we are trying to savor.

    I hope we can keep smoking the Skim-E weenies for a while yet. And surely you can keep up with an ebike until its battery dies and then ride away in triumph, right? As a guy in jorts told my dad at a bike race in the 80’s before pulling away: ‘this is where they separate the guys with money from the guys with legs.’

    In any case, nicely written. This is a tough topic to make fresh, and I feel like I read something new. Thanks!

    1. Barry Wicks

      Thanks for the kind words Spencer. I agree that motors seem to be a strong delineating line in experience, especially relating to the idea of “human” powered. Its always an interesting experiment to fine this stuff out to such a granular level. Good skin track talk fodder!

    2. Barry Wicks

      To the David Brooks reference, I read “Mountains without Handrails” by Joseph Sax on the mention of it by Hadley Hammer in a piece on Wild Snow back in the good days of that site, and in that book Sax talks about the same idea of domination of nature vs submission to it and ties it back to the realities of the recreational users “regular life” experience. Maybe even references Brooks. Either way, a worthy read in my opinion!

      1. Spencer Dillon

        Cool! I hadn’t heard of that book. Definitely raises core tensions, further highlighted by recent intersectional thinking on the privilege of conservation. Tough to balance human equities with environmental values without falling afoul of one camp or the other. Classical environmentalist perspectives (protection, conservation, opposition to infrastructure) are no longer big tent ideas in progressive circles, which is both good and sad. Ultimately I think the currently valid progressive criticism of elitist conservation values are actually criticism of an economic system that fails to allow the majority of a community to be able to appreciate the natural world but is instead directed at the nearest possible target: those who think it unwise to make our mountains and forests ‘as accessible as possible.’

  3. Andrew Ross

    This is a great piece. You touch on so many aspects of our sport – the willful, almost contrived element of danger; why we’re even out there in the first place, etc. – all of which deserve an article unto themselves.

    On the technology side, I always thought that touring skis would be perfected when transition times are universally brought down to 0. No skins to rip, no bindings or boot buckles to fiddle with. Just get to the top, turn around and start arcing turns.

    In that sense, you’re spot on – XC may be the pinnacle of our sport.

    1. Barry Wicks

      Thanks Andrew, there’s so much room for gear development here, but the high skill set required to ski even moderate slopes in soft, free heel boots may be a limiting factor in motivation. I for one am all in on XCD this year. We will see how far my early season enthusiasm carries me!

  4. Peter Vordenberg

    Batteries have been added to a lot of things to make them more fun.
    I have personal opinions about them on bikes used for fun (rather than transportation) or on skis now too I guess. But in general, go have fun as long as it isn’t screwing it up for the rest of us.
    I used to have a regular mtn bike that looked like an Ebike – scott genius (genius? if you say so) and against my best efforts to quell this nagging feeling, I was constantly in a state of mentally telling imaginary people that NO It’s Not an Ebike! My internal conversation was troubling – a bit too aggressive for the imaginary people hassling me about it. Eventually I did sell it even though it was a really good NOT E bike.

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