Oh, for crying out loud! They found out my family has lately snubbed the disc in favor of the spoked wheel, and they been riding in Upper Park a couple of times a week.

The stories they tell, the bloody contusions - I'm absolutely certain they are guilty of "irresponsible summer use." Damn them.

It's my fault, I kicked them out of the garden. I mean, you know, MY garden, not THE garden. They were doing jumps over my squash patch, and the dogs were chasing them around - it was like The Wild One. I'm just standing over my cucumber vines, innocent old fat lady, loading my collander full of the magical fruits (cause they make you toot), when this hoarde of unchecked mountain bikers comes blazing through, airboure over the firepit, some kinda hounds from hell slathering at their heels, yap yap yap to wake the Devil.

So I sent them to Bidwell Park. I said, "go wreck public lands and bother strangers, stay the heck out of my yard!" I made them take their dad, which I realized later was a mistake. Dads are probably the worst influence on children. Last three words many children hear from their father: "Hey, watch this!" But they're both old enough to climb a tree to use a cell phone, so I try not to worry. First time they went, the big one got completely smeared, stuck to his bedsheets for days. Now it's not so bad, old hat. I got all the first aid figured out.

Now I try to send them every Sunday so I can have peace and quiet to watch Boston Legal. Maybe I will learn something about the law.

"Although foot traffic on the trails causes some erosion, the majority of the degradation to the trails is coming from mountain bike traffic."
Hiking is the only user group allowed in a wet park. Therfor the only group that is allowed to damage the trails. Disc golf, horses and bikes all have rules in place to protect the trails. Lets get some rules for the hikers too. While we are at it lets outlaw hiking boots, floppy hats and ski poles from the trails. The park would be much better off without them. Its the uniform of the user group "The Littigators."

How about a couple of ways to drum up funds for trail maintenance:
No Helmet = $500 fine
Riding Closed Trails = $1000 fine
Riding a Costco bike on any upper park trail: $2000 fine

This eliminates one huge segment of "irresponsible" trail users: THE STUPID

Of course, who the hell is going to be there to catch these evil doers? Certainly not the ranger(s)

Side note: How much erosion is caused by drunk teenage drivers who spin donuts in the middle of upper park road while the ranger is off yankin' his crank at one mile?

A good way to drum up funds for trails would be to return the ~$50,000 diverted from trail maintenance to pay for the first round of Master Plan funding ($274,000, which later ballooned to somewhere above $600,000).

It would even be nice if the city would complete the horse/bike path from Wildwood Park to Horseshoe Lake.

As for the side note of drunk teenage drivers, the answer is 35.6. I'm not sure what the units are.

Lon

A few years ago we had proposed upgrading the trails to standard specifications. Then wet-weather use would have been fine, as it is in most areas of the US. The mtn bikers formed an alliance of convenience with Friends of Bidwell Park to block the upgrades. Steven O'Bryan and especially Tom Barrett renounced the Trails Manual standards that they had written while they were Park Commissioners. My fellow environmentalists in Friends, CNPS, and BEC sacrificed the environmental benefits of having a to-standard trail system, in their lust for power and to obtain environmental studies for their allies to work on. Dennis Beardsley facilitated the obstructionists, and ignored the policy direction given him by the Park Commission.

Otherwise, Chico Hiking Association would have provided our community with a complete, multipurpose, year-round, sustainable, low-impact trail system which would be completed by now. The city only needed to do the normal mitigated negative declarations, and fund two bridges over the creek.

Chico Hiking, BEC, CNPS, mtn bikers, disc golfers, Park Commission, and Friends could have joined forces to keep the houses on the south rim back, out of sight.

Josephine Guardino's husband worked as a consultant for the CSU, Chico Ecological Reserve, and CSUC Provost Scott McNall wanted him to prevent recreational use of the Reserve, so they wanted a substandard system in the Park. Guardino worked as a consultant for the developer of the south rim homes.

McNall is now a sustainabilty guru, and Guardino is a Friend of Bidwell Park. John Merz is one of her mentors. These people have seriously harmed Bidwell Park, and will sacrifice the health of our population, the environment of our watershed, and the public interest in their corrupt quest for power, control and money. They should look in the mirror and be ashamed.

Good luck, you'll need it. If you need to get away it all, see sacramentovalleyhiking.org. We have lots of lovely, sustainable trails, built to specifications, with nice people on them.

The BPPC has gotten so ridiculous, I'm going to ignore them.

Yesterday, after work, we climbed the highway to Juanitaville. It wasn't that bad here in the valley, but it was 20 degrees cooler up there. It's nice to hold your sweaty armpits to the breeze off the canyon. I was so tired, I fell asleep in my lounge chair by the fire pit, and when I woke up, my face was all sticky with Biscuit spit. She's the take-advantage type, you know.

I tell you, it is so quiet up there, you can hear the neighbor sneeze. I know, cause when I sneeze, our neighbor will call up, "Gesundheit!"

My kids spend their time with flat shovels and rakes, digging their trails, lining them with dead trees and rocks, meanwhile unintentionally creating defensible space around our little hideout. It looks like the CCC's been in there. It sure as heck looks better than the trails in the park.

No, we don't hang around with the trail minder folks. They're kinda uptight. What's that old expression about a needle and a tractor? We decided, the park is such a political hotbed, we better spend our last $5 on 5 acres of our own, so when they make the last fascist rule that shuts the park down to everybody but them (The Littagators, I love it), we'll have somewhere to go.

Well, I've got to get myself back to the garden. Here's a clip of Merz and Guardino back in the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKdsRWhyH30

I dreamed I saw the hippies, turning into a swarm of kid-hating hippie-crits....

Michael,

I don't know about people being in the pursuit of power and money. But I do agree that some of the efforts to "save Bidwell Park" have actually detracted from it. At the same time people like Susan Mason certainly deserve credit for putting in volunteer hours.

Hiring an attorney in 2003 to prevent the disc golf project is what diverted the trails funds to a master plan rennovation. And in 2007 the same attoney was hired by the FOBP. The GSD estimated it would cost $100,000 to deal with that. The last head of the Planning Department said at one city meeting that an overestimation of Butte County Checkerbloom during a botanical study did push the homes on the south rim closer to edge, making them more visible. I believe you're correct as to who completed that study, but like all things I'm sure there are two sides to the story.

The loss of the Annie Bidwell Trail, and a broader concept of connecting it to the PCT is something that I find really sad and short sighted. That was part of a broader effort to prevent bridges from providing easy access to the south side of Big Chico Creek. And it's an interesting concept that limiting access to Bidwell Park was part of an effort to protect the the preserve east of the park.

I really think this whole thing is a lot simpler than that. There is an ideology that doesn't want people in natural areas. Spending money on studies helps identify a means to reduce access. Plus it keeps funds away from making the trails more usable, and then people can point to their condition as a reason to restrict access (like during wet weather).

Beyond the ideology, which I don't agree with, there is a personal animosity that some of this group's leaders promote if you disagree with them. Fortunately, they don't just direct that at people like you and I, they also direct it at Councilors which undermines their credibility.

Lon

Juanita,

You're living the dream. My dream in fact, if you added about 35 acres.

Lon

Well chrissakes wake me up before the tax bill comes!!!