The Purpose of Mountain Biking Is to Teach Dishonesty

Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.

May 31, 2026

1. NICA (National Interscholastic Cycling Association) is not about “cycling”. It’s only purpose and activity is the promotion of mountain biking. It claims to be interested in improving health, but mountain biking regularly causes broken bones, concussions, paralysis, and even death. Our children are being deceived in order to sell mountain bikes. BTCEB (Bicycle Trails Council of the East Bay) is a lie: there are no bicycle trails!
2. NICA races for the San Francisco Bay Area are over 100 miles away. What does that tell you about their impact? No local parks are willing to be subjected to that much damage! In 2000 a mountain bike race was held in Briones Regional Park. One rider ended up brain damaged! These races are no longer permitted in any local park.
3. Mountain bikers claim to be interested in nature. One mountain biker killed an Alameda whipsnake -– a female, the largest ever found, and a federally Threatened species – in Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve. A ringneck snake was killed by a mountain biker on a trail closed to bikes (in Claremont Canyon Regional Preserve). Mountain bikers ride as fast as they possibly can. What do they learn about nature? About as much as someone racing through an art gallery at high speed on a bicycle would learn about art.
4. Knowing that mountain biking is very unpopular, when mountain bikers want something, their favorite tactic is to hold secret meetings with agency staff, in violation of the open meetings laws, so that people opposed to mountain biking won’t be present. This has happened in Olympia, Washington and the East Bay Regional Park District in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example.
5. In online discussions of mountain biking, the mountain bikers aren’t able to support their claims using facts and reason, so they always resort to ad hominem attacks on their opponents – lying, name-calling, etc.
6. Whenever an employee of a public or other agency becomes a mountain biker, they lose all objectivity. Mountain biking is an addiction, like a disease that infects the brain. So-called “scientists”, if they happen to be mountain bikers, ensure that their papers support mountain biking, claiming that mountain biking is no more harmful than hiking or horseback riding, although a moment’s thought will tell you that mountain bikers travel much farther than a hiker, and hence have much greater impact.
7. Mountain biker Scott Bartlebaugh of BTCEB and other mountain bikers have said that trail erosion is “caused by rain”, although the ruts have the width and direction of a mountain bike tire.
8. Mountain bikers claim to ride illegally and build illegal trails as “civil disobedience”, due to being discriminated against. But true civil disobedience, as practiced for example by Gandhi, is done openly, not secretly. There is also no discrimination against mountain bikers: the exact same laws apply to everyone. Mountain bikers claim not to have access to all trails, but actually they have access to 100% of the trails: all they have to do is walk! Only bicycles are restricted. Bicycles are machines, not humans, and have no rights.
9. Mountain bikers always claim that they ride illegally and build illegal trails because they don’t have enough legal trails. But actually, no matter how many trails they have access to, the illegal mountain biking and illegal trail-building continue. The reason is simple: they ride so fast that they don’t experience anything that they are passing, and consequently quickly get bored with any given trail and then want another and another, endlessly! They are insatiable!