Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Cycle News 1971 04 13

Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles

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o vehicles) fN~ ·.-tJ£.~\';-·-- . b~~~"-~;--~~.-;;--;- ;1 #.... has also raised new qu~tiO.lU as to wb¢e sych.veliil:l"es can By Ron Schneiders The politics of repression can be either brutal or subtle but the end result is the same: Some freedom is gone. Young people in Czechoslovakia and Chicago experienced the brutal variety, a rather new experience for them. Minorities have been experiencing both varieties for years. Now motorcyclists are going to experience the subtle variety but they don't know what's happening yet. By the time they find out they'll be faced with a fait accompli and they'll have just about as much chance of reversing the situation as the black man bound for the land of the free on a slave ship. Right now. the desert is, for all practical purposes, closed. There are three areas where runs can be held. Thin k about it, gesert riders. You've already had about 6 runs in each of the three areas and the BLM is shunting you to one of the three areas every time you make a request for a race. The trails are getting so worn that you might just as well put up street signs. Then you can simply write out the directions and save all the trouble of liming. It doesn't take much imagination to see, in a couple of years, some reason for one of these remaining areas to be shut down. Maybe the military will want one for yet another bombing range. Then you're down to two. Runs will get shorter and eventually you'll be racing in a large playpen that nobody else wants, Sunday after Sunday. The terrain will look just about like the Ponderosa (the race course, not the ranch). One person's private vision of hell is racing the Ponderosa - forever. The deserts are gone righ t now. The process of repression has been thorough and painless. Its been so painless that's it going t6 take a hammer blow right between the eyes to make desert riders realize how thoroughly they've been had. Now come the forests. ' The Angeles Forest is open right now. With very little exception you can ride where you want to. It takes a bit of research and iI)genuity to get around some of the locked gates, but it can be done. In years past, races have been held in the forest and enduros are still held in many forests around the country. With Southern California riders being pushed off the deserts and out of the counties they've turned to the Angeles National· Forests as a last resort. This has irritated the horsemen and hikers who have had the forest to themselves up to now. They are putting pressure on the Forest Service to "Do Something". The Forest Service reacted in typical bureaucratic fashion: they calle- U

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