which_chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
which_chick) wrote2005-05-11 01:22 pm
which_chick) wrote2005-05-11 01:22 pm
(no subject)
I think it's time for a little satire. This one isn't A Modest Proposal but it's fun anyway.
Also, I have flung shit at the fan with the following paragraph addressed to our summer people*:
Finally, from the date of this letter, two-wheeled motorized conveyances suitable for off-road use will NOT be permitted on Valley-Hi Development Association property. This prohibition includes dirt bikes, off-road BMX bikes, and off-road motorcycles. Street-legal, licensed motorcycles are permitted on the plowed roads (Valley-Hi Road, East Shore Drive, and Mountainside Road to the turnaround) but not elsewhere. If you are not sure whether or not your two-wheeled motorized conveyance is a prohibited vehicle, please ask us for a written ruling on the vehicle in question before operating it on Association property.
All ya'll recall the ninja bikes, right?
*Summer people are the people, unrelated to me, who own a 1/4 acre piece of land (with or without a house) in the valley. They pay a yearly membership fee (not very expensive) for the right to walk, swim, 4-Wheel ATV, hunt, and otherwise twink around on our land, which is about five hundred acres (with a forty acre lake) of woods. I do not much like the summer people. I don't like their dogs, their children, their grandchildren, their propensity for mowing, their ATVs, their inability to drive in the snow, their whining about the dust from the dirt road, their need to burn things on dry, windy days, their drive to cut down all the fucking trees between the road and the lake (these trees are on property that they do not own, btw), their total cluelessness about ecology, their willful blowing away of harmless constrictor snakes, or their many other unappealing aspects. When I refer to the summer people, I am probably not going to say kind things.
And yea, the voice of reason says If you don't like the summer people, why did you sell the land to them? Some of the summer people have been around for thirty years. I am thirty-five. I inherited the summer people. The sins of the fathers...
Also, I have flung shit at the fan with the following paragraph addressed to our summer people*:
Finally, from the date of this letter, two-wheeled motorized conveyances suitable for off-road use will NOT be permitted on Valley-Hi Development Association property. This prohibition includes dirt bikes, off-road BMX bikes, and off-road motorcycles. Street-legal, licensed motorcycles are permitted on the plowed roads (Valley-Hi Road, East Shore Drive, and Mountainside Road to the turnaround) but not elsewhere. If you are not sure whether or not your two-wheeled motorized conveyance is a prohibited vehicle, please ask us for a written ruling on the vehicle in question before operating it on Association property.
All ya'll recall the ninja bikes, right?
*Summer people are the people, unrelated to me, who own a 1/4 acre piece of land (with or without a house) in the valley. They pay a yearly membership fee (not very expensive) for the right to walk, swim, 4-Wheel ATV, hunt, and otherwise twink around on our land, which is about five hundred acres (with a forty acre lake) of woods. I do not much like the summer people. I don't like their dogs, their children, their grandchildren, their propensity for mowing, their ATVs, their inability to drive in the snow, their whining about the dust from the dirt road, their need to burn things on dry, windy days, their drive to cut down all the fucking trees between the road and the lake (these trees are on property that they do not own, btw), their total cluelessness about ecology, their willful blowing away of harmless constrictor snakes, or their many other unappealing aspects. When I refer to the summer people, I am probably not going to say kind things.
And yea, the voice of reason says If you don't like the summer people, why did you sell the land to them? Some of the summer people have been around for thirty years. I am thirty-five. I inherited the summer people. The sins of the fathers...
no subject
I *hate* goddamn ATVs.
Some of the snot-nosed kids around here have a couple of them and they ride through the fields and farmland, which would be fine IF THEY STAYED ON THE GODDAMN FIELDS AND FARMLAND!!! Instead, they insist on speeding across busy roads without bothering to see if there is actually traffic on the road first. My husband almost ran over them a couple of times because they just sped out into the road in front of him.
God I hate whoever invented the fucking things.
no subject
ATV regulations
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/Stories/0,1413,138~10023~2855875,00.html
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/Stories/0,1413,138~10023~2849094,00.html
These proposals come from two fairly rural townships in York County, PA. Each township is (for which_chick's reference here) about as developed as Snake Spring Township or Bedford Township. That is to say that there are pockets of civilization with large chunks of blessedly bucolic and rural land in between. The pro-ATV citizens evidently wish to make the bucolic and rural land into dirt tracks for the purpose of riding around in circles endlessly.
In any case, neither of these areas is what I would classify as being dominated by suburban interlopers, to the extent that, say Shrewsbury Township is (having been taken over by Baltimorons, some Shrewsberries have actually tried to get a local trap shooting range shut down -- unfortunately, the new Shrewsberries are differentiable from the old Shrewsberries by virtue of the fact that the new Shrewsberries do not own guns -- a critical distinction).
In any case, the battles in Newberry and Windsor appear to be over whether endless ATV riding is consistent with peace and quiet and traditional rural values. The default notion in these parts is that "it's your property, do with it what you will" has been trumped by the sheer rudeness and unpleasantness associated with the ATV riders.
Part of the rural values I was raised with included the idea that if it does not take place on your property and it's not illegal, then don't worry about it. This applied whether the neighbors ran a salvage yard or a hog farm. There was a general exception to this rule for the local adult book store, which someone saw fit to burn down, but that was likely the work of one or a few interloping religious zealots rather than pissed off neighbors.
While tolerance was the norm, there was always a limit to the "do what you want" general rule, which was, "don't go out of your way to piss off the neighbors." This rule applied, for example, if you set up your target range so that it irritated the livestock of the farmer next door. Essentially, manners mattered.
The problem with ATVs, at least in York, is that manners do not matter anymore, at least not to the majority of ATV riders. They do what they damn well please, and piss on anyone who doesn't suck the same exhaust fumes that they do. Hence the reluctant steps toward regulation that are happening in Newberry and Windsor Townships. Neither location is a hotbed of nannying regulation. They're just pissed off that the old rules of rural life are being ignored by assholes.