Perhaps the biggest waste of time, money and resources ever.

First off, this is not a bash each other, or bash the government thread. Please respond though. Your thoughts are very important & perhaps even critical to our riding choices in the future.

I am going to be taking the responses to our State and Federal Agencies and trying to plead our case, so please bear that in mind. There are no wrong or right answers here, the only wrong thing is to ignore this thread, or not bother to respond with your viewpoint & then complain later.

Let me start by saying, either I am completely wrong or they (our government agencies) are totally misguided in what they think an ATV rider is.

I have talked to a number of representatives from most of the agencies involved in OHV use in the State, personally, on the phone or by e-mail. They seem like the are very committed to opening up trails for us throughout the State, there are new areas in various stages all over Florida that will be opening in the future, the ultimate goal is for any resident of the State to be able to drive for less than 2 hours & enjoy a great trail system.

This all sounds good, so what is the problem?

I refer you back to my original statement regarding the type of riders they think own ATVs. If any of you have watched the training video's or manufacturers commercials etc., you see a nice family enjoying a nice day on their correctly sized ATVs waving at the oncoming family riding their horses down the same trail. That is who they think makes up the majority of ATV riders.

I don't doubt this class of riders exist, I just don't know any. The guys I ride with (which equal hundreds of riders) are all very different from this group.

My feelings are, they are the minority. If that is true, the government agencies are going to sink millions of dollars, thousands of acres & untold man hours into building miles and miles of trail systems that are just going to be totally incompatible with the vast majority of participants of our sport.

I hate to generalize, but for the purpose of this thread, let's try and see exactly what we looking for in a trail system. In my opinion, there are three main groups of ATV riders;

1: The Sport Rider, ride at a fast pace, jump over any little obstacle, fly round corners. Happiest riding on one way trails.

2: Utility Riders, enjoy challenges, like mud or water. Most happy with their quad buried up to the snorkel in a mud pit or stream. Consider the trail as a means to get from one challenge to the next. Like to create own trails.

3: Slow trail rider. Enjoy driving around our forests and rural areas. Slower pace. Stick to the pre made trails.

What are you?

Please post, there are no right and wrong answers. If I am right and the numbers 1 & 2 of the above are the majority, perhaps it is not to late to get some riding areas that WE can use.