Had a moment of utter contempt for a set of riders this afternoon. For most of us we can get together on a Friday and today was exceptional weather so we all went out for a ride. We all met up at the base of the fell which has a large dirt 'square' as a car park and as we were chilling out down there for a while we had this van of XC'ers stop and set up too. Anyway, we were completely minding our own business and these two guys, out of no where, wandered over and no word of a lie said the following;
"Are you riding this fell too? On those bikes? You know that they wont take the run, right, its a really technical trail?"
We looked at each other, kind'a confused but replied, "Don't worry, these will handle it. The trail isn't that tough, the DH bit is, but the overall climb to it is easy."
To which the two men looked visably offended, coming back with, "We raced this trail last month, half of the guys didn't finish it."
I couldn't help myself at that point, my six year old cousin rode up this trail with me on an infant's bike. This time, though, the men looked like they were about to murder us, kept throwing out **** about how infantile and easy DH was, how it didn't deserve to be called a true sport, let alone a part of cycling. To which we pointed out that the birth of mountain biking was speed runs down California's fire roads, thus arguably DH is the birth of modern mountain biking. He said that it required no thinking, no strategy and no real skill...
It kind of bothers me when people claim DH to be so and it is certainly not the first time we've had it said to us.
If you saw a DH'er, do you consider them arrogant? I mean, I know a lot of arrogant DH'ers, as I do riders from other disciplines, but aside from these lot and a few others, there are no riders I even remotely have a disdain for. Usually I've found there's a mutual respect among riders because we're all doing what we love doing, it seems some are deadset on being utter *******s, however.