Here's the page where we lump all of your responses, rumors, rants, raves and insight into the world of dirt bikes. Click here and email away.

Well, It has been nearly a year since we updated this - and what a insane year it has been. High time we get back on the ball and post some of the comments our readers sent us this year... Check through the comments by month.

09/18/2002 - Mike, I just finished reading your article "What you need to be legal." Thanks for all the info. I wanted to let you know however that you stated in the article that the temporary out of state sticker program was dibanded. This is not correct. I just checked with the state and got a list of bike shops in my area where they sell them. They cost $20 and are still required. Here is the info on who I contacted at the state.

California State Parks ? OHMVR Division,
Non-Resident Permit Program
P.O. Box 942896 Sacramento, CA 94296-0001
916-324-4442; E-mail, pubinfo@calohv.com

Keep up the good work,
S. Nugent

Awesome - Thank you!

09/13/2002- In the 2003 CRF450R article you state "The aluminum-framed four stroke single that set the world on fire last year is basically unchanged for 2003, except for minor details". A whole lot changed on the bike, get it right!

Our mistake... I guess it depends on how you define "A whole lot..." Honda gave us very little detail on enhancements - Honda's own Press Releases are extremely vague.

By the specs:

Hopefully this translates into quicker turning, rather than instability. On the positive Side - Honda just released info on it's new 2004 CRF250R - which will be running in the 125 classes against the YZ250F - and the new CRF250X Electric Start.

Kim, Thanks. Once again, a great many people can feel satisfied, going to bed throughout the month, wondering what the hell it was you were trying to say and still close their eyes with something more than they woke up with.

- Fidel Gonzales

09/11/2002 - Hit the nail on the head.
Me, the nail.
Hit on the head, used to it.

Good article - Matt McLane

Glad it wasn't just our confused noggins she hit! Thanks Matt!

09/06/2002 - Mr. Hobbs,

Why the hell do Bell helmets cost so damn much anymore?

I finally had to replace my Moto 5 (what's that smell?) and was shocked at how much Bell is charging! Outrageous!

So I bought an MSR on sale for $150.00. A comparable Bell cost around $400.00.

Too bad, I've worn Bell helmets all my riding life. What's the deal?

Rgds,
Matt
Burbank

Ya' know, I think it's just a name recognition thing and folks still buy
'um. That, and they have themselves into so many different markets they
need to offset the cheap stuff they sell at Wal-Mart.

MSR's are nice helmets and I'm sure you'll be happy with it.

Thanks for writing,
Mike Hobbs

09/17/2002 - I used to live in a suburb of Dallas, Tx. After the ft Worth arena Cross in 1998, we returned home from racing the event on amateur day. I unhooked my trailer and left the bikes in it. Since we lived in a small, fairly nice housing subdivision, I used the trailer to keep all of the tools and gear in instead of keeping it in the garage,. This kept the garage looking nice and gave us room to work. Anyway, every bit of dirtbiking gear, bikes, spare parts, etc were in the trailer. I drove the van to work and upon returning, NO TRAILER. some low-life Piece of sh!T stole my trailer, bikes and all. The police came to the house and fortunately everything but the trailer was insured. The trailer was not but considering what I lost I considered myself lucky. The police were fair but one said i should have had a lock on it and that is when I broke down. I own my stuff. i don't think I have to lock my truck or buy expensive locks to protect property that is mine. I think that thieves should get their fingers broke and spend hard time instead of a slap on the wrist. but in reality I have gone to extremes to protect my investment and hard work. My 13 year old son was 8 at the time and really upset about the whole situation. I have my new trailer insured and keep it hooked to the truck 90% of the time and drive a different car to work. insurance at 100 dollars plus a year for 3 bikes, etc. etc. just my little story.

Kevin Ruckdeschell

A friend at an Enduro in New Jersey had this happen while he was racing about that same year. Thieves pulled the trailer right off his truck while his family was helping at the race - all of his kids bikes were gone. Makes you wish you could have been there to beat the snot out of 'em...

09/17/2002 - I have reicently lost a ATV due to theft. A 2000 Yamaha Banshee, I had $13,000 in the bike. It was covered by homeowners, due to the theft was from my locked garage. The thieves broke into my house thru a window. I replaced it with a 2001 DS 650 and proceeded to extensively modify it. I cannot find anyone who is interested in insuring my ATV's for a reasonable rate. I have a 2001 Bombardier DS650, 2002 Bombardier DS50, and a 2002 Yamaha Grizzly 660. Every insurance company I have checked for theft wants to tag on collusion, Insulating the a MSRP is like adding 3 new cars to my policy. Is their anyone who specializes in ATV insurance?

Thanks, Brian Cole

I have had great service fromn "insuremytoys.com".

Please, check them out and tell them that "Off-Road.com" sent you.

- Pat Chicas

09/17/2002 - A simple idea that saved my bike. Put a padlock through the rear brake disc since most discs have holes located on the outer edge. This saved my bike. The thieves first tried cutting through the disc with a hacksaw which must have taken some time. The little dweebs gave up on that bright idea and, obviously frustrated, tried pushing the bike with the rear wheel locked which made enough noise and slowed them down enough for my neighbors to alert the police. When the police arrived they threw down the bike and ran. They were not caught but everyone knew who they were by that point and the police raided their apartment a few months later. They are now where they belong, behind bars. I needed to replace my rear disc but I had the pleasure of doing a couple wheelies in the alley behind their apartment a few days later just to rub it in.

Tony

Clever and less expensive than the Kryptonite disc lock! The only concern is that the bike can still be loaded into a truck easily, and the lock dealt with later... Throw an anchor cable or chain into the equation and that could be a formidible deterent.

09/01/2002 - Hey guys, Good article on bike theft. I just wanted to let you know what my buddies & I do when we camp at Glamis. We lock all of our bikes together with a heavy chain to the hitch or bumper of one of our trucks...then we always have someones tent right next to the bikes so if someone was messing with the bikes we would hear it. We also do a couple of things to the bikes to make them harder to move, first..we pull off the spark plug cap, & second...we put all the bikes in 5th gear before we chain them up..pretty hard to find nuetral that way. Anyhow, hope these tips can be of use to any of your readers. Thank you.

Jeff Birdsong
Blythe, CA

Good ideas - Thanks!

08/31/2002 - My company has a solution to this problem, a lo jack system that is installed into the ignition systems of dirt bikes. When the bike is started the system is armed.

I will send you info if interested.

James Gibson
PecBell Communications Inc.

Definitely! We will follow this up!

We've had literally hundreds of responses! Sorry we can't put them all here, but these are some of the highlights. Thanks for all your comments!

09/15/2002 - hey hunk, good to see ya still raisin hell! Still got that old red tank CZ?

not long ago i saw a front page article in our local paper about how hospitals were filling up with casualties as kids emulate their heroes who do these ridiculous freestyle stunts, both fantasy and real life. And somehow, as usual. it is the fault of the industry - not the media, the person, or the supervising parent. I think it was a UPI article, but will try and find it if it will help ya. [prob just infuriate ya] the fact that this was a front page center article completely unrelated to any local activities tells me that the envirogeeks truly DO have deep pockets and want us all out of the woods. A real eye opener to be sure! let me know if i can help ya.

paul

09/07/2002 - Well, there's one viewpoint, one that's clearly informed by long association with the forces of Good in Our Sport.

I read Rick's words, I support the same causes, I spend my time and money supporting people like Rick who support these causes.

But where does the money come from that I use to support people like Rick? From software development actually. More specifically, Internet application development ? big corporate B-to-B sites.

That's not really a conflict, between providing natural gas liftings reports and responsible motorcycle citizenship. But I've been knocking around the Internet as long as Rick's been knocking around the MX political scene, and what is clear is that there is a type of person who sees something on a computer screen, or hears the word computer or Internet, and decides forthwith to blame the device, or blame the messenger, or blame the medium.

I will grant you that there may be one or two pornographic images on the Internet. Well, I know for a fact that the Internet can be used as a medium for accessing child pornography, for accessing actual rape and snuff films, as a medium for accessing stores that sell narcotics illegally, as a means for accessing "data havens" where people trade stolen credit card numbers, as a means for hacking into governments and corporations and space agencies, and more. The Internet can be used as a tool to amplify the most offensive, illegal, morally outrageous traits of human existence.

But despite what the Baptist church thinks, and despite what Strom Thurmond and the Republican Party think, the Internet is not the agent of this offensive, illegal, morally reprehensible behavior. Bad people are just bad people. A far greater number of people do amazingly constructive things with the Internet than do bad things with it. The true Internet revolution has only fairly begun, but the fact is that a few right-wingers did get out in front before people had a chance to become educated about the fact that the messenger wasn't the problem, and could have done great harm to a tool of tremendous social and economic growth. Here's what you do when someone messes with child porno or snuff or whatever whacked-out crap people mess with: arrest them. Rehabilitate them. Elect them mayor of Washington or governor of Louisiana.

Last weekend at the track, some little punk threw roost in my face, but I don't blame Freekstyle or Electronic Arts. He just has ineffective parenting. I have no doubt he saw one of us adults roost each other and mimicked what we'd done, because we do in fact roost each other ? call it male bonding. Did the kid knock there's a difference between doing it on the trail, like he'd seen us do, and brodying on pit row and spraying a bunch of wives and pets? No, but his parents should take the time to teach him these things if they're going to let him hang around an MX riding area.

I will grant that the content of video games, since it is CONTENT, needs a more strict examination than the MEDIUM of the Internet. But only so that we'll know if it has blood, gore, simulated crime such as Grand Theft Auto, overly realistic death or such. There is a ratings system for these things and stickers that go on the box saying "this one has blood and gore and women in g-strings, be forewarned." Then parents do what they do, either keeping it out of the hands of their kids if they are very young, or having an educational session to the tune of "you are old enough to know the difference between make believe and real life, and this is what our family's and your beliefs are on X and Y and Z topics."

If you don't have time to do this, it means you are a bad parent. If parents just don't do this cause they can't be bothered, it means they're bad parents. If people grow into young adults with an inability to tell right from wrong, it means that they had bad parents. If somebody gets to be Rick's age and still can't tell a videogame from reality, I have to think they're marginally clued old codgers who can barely fire up Microsoft Outlook to get onto the American Onlines to bitch about pornography on the Internet, only even they've figured out that nobody is listening to them bitch about porno on the Internet any longer so they're gonna go after video games. Good timing ya know, all the consoles are getting Internet connectivity now, and they're quite realistic these games. Maybe there'll be some cheap thrills along the way while they investigate what it is they should be offended by.

Let me help, here's a quickie tour of current and upcoming things for you to be offended by:

• Grand Theft Auto: You're in the Mafia, and you regain health points by screwing hookers, but you can beat up the hookers after you use them and take your money back.
• Blood Omen 2: You're a vampire named Kain, and when you kill a man and suck his blood it's just gory. When you kill a woman and drain her body, your victim very clearly has a dying orgasm as you swallow her lifeforce. Mmm look at her shudder.
• Aggressive Inline: You are an inline skater, one of 10 or so "well known" skaters, or one fictional skater, Chrissie. She has pony tails and a Catholic schoolgirl outfit, and when she gets upside down breaking sick air you can check out her whitey tighties.
• Dead or Alive 3: You're a ninja see, only you can play as one of these chick ninjas and show serious nipp and ass.
• Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball: Coming Soon, the girls from DOA3 return in a volleyball game for Xbox Only! Featuring special nude mode.
• Medal of Honor: Remember that movie with the opening half hour so bloody that you could barely sit through it? Now you can Be There! That's right, Stephen Spielberg does games and you can go soak yourself in the blood and gore of Omaha Beach and go hand-to-hand through Europe, blowing heads off, you name it. Among the bloodiest games ever, certainly among the best games ever.

All of these are in fact wonderful games. Appropriate for small children and marginally clued old people? Definitely not. Will small children and the marginally clued come into inappropriate contact with some of them? Unfortunately, probably yes.

Even worse, some of them may write columns with an audience of 5.7 million readers.

Electronic Arts? Ahh, I actually thought the commercials were a bit much too. There's a limited number of MX titles that come out, and we're gonna buy pretty much every title that comes out anyway. It would have been enough to say "better trick system than Ricky Carmichael with some cool level innovations."

If EA's going to continue as a primary sponsor of the sport of MX riding though, I agree with Rick that it is incumbent that they immediately become visible as Good Citizens in Our Sport. Support with their time and money and name the fight to keep riding areas open. Support with their time and money and name educational programs that communicate to a wider audience what our issues are.

See, that's the thing, I think the average citizen has no real opinion about OHV's or 2-stroke pollution or land use issues or the things that we live and breathe. I think that if they did though, they would be much more likely to support our freedoms than to want to limit them.

Oh and Freekstyle? Wicked fun game, but somewhat derivative of Sled Storm and that other EA Big title. Wish it had a nude mode like DOA3 Volleyball so we could get really freaky with Jill.

- Joe Abernathy

Well said... Wanna write for us?

09/05/2002 - Rick, I had to take lunch and a 24 ouncer of Steel City before commenting on this.

Remember back in the 50's when William Gaines published Tales from the Crypt? It was so controversial that Sen. Whatshisface from Tennessee launched an all out Senate investigation bent on preserving the moral fiber of our youth. It went nowhere and Gaines later went on to publish Mad Magazine.

This is just another fad that will soon be over (like shaved heads, piercing and freestyle mx hopefully). Since I live in Los Angeles I have to wade through thousands of bald headed, tattooed and pierced goofballs daily, and that's just to buy beer!

I could go into my standard diatribe about how women getting the right to vote, long travel suspension and 4 strokes started it all but I'm too busy standing around in the garage gazing at this cherry '67 BSA 441 Victim I just purchased. A rotten bike but what a rotten bike. Oooh, looka that tank....

Know where I can get a ziener diode?

Cheers, Matt

09/02/2002 - The game is cool. Shut up. Don't be a pussy

wow... I am underwealmed. I think you missed the point.

09/02/2002 - You go Rick!! I was disgusted also when I saw that crap on TV. What kind of booger-eating idiot would actually give the OK for that to be aired without understanding the consequences of their actions? Do they really understand the effect that is made on todays youth? Apparently not. Now every punk kid with a bike will think its cool to roost little animals and set a fire or two. The injustice and damage that EA Sports has done is intolerable.

On a lighter note, I've been reading your stuff since the days of Dirt Bike and have always enjoyed it. Thanks for the laughs over the years..

Shannon Duncan
Bakersfield, Ca.

09/01/2002 - Dear Super Hunky, I practically quit buying Dirt Bike magazine when you left! I had no idea of the off-road.com site and was pleased to find that you are continuing to offer your views and opinions to the riders of our sport. I agree with you completly, corcerning the disgusting ads on television, as I too was completely schocked to see such carnage.

As our sport increasingly reaches the limelight we must strive to present it in a positive manner to ensure it continues to thrive. EA Sports has tarnished the face of the sport for as long as Freekstyle remains in television ads and on department store shelves. Many people see me as a "freak" due to my passion for dirtbikes, and games of this nature simply re-affirm their beliefs.

E Ass Sports does not care about the well being of the sport, they simply want to exploit it for every penny they can get.

I agree with your opinion of "freekstyle" completly.

Andrew Smallwood
Newfoundland Motocross Association

09/01/2002 - Get off your high horse! It's a freakin' video game for christs sake!! If you are to much of a moron to distinguish between fantasy and reality then you have no business at all commenting on such a thing. As far as tattoo's and piercing go, not everyone who has them are bad people or "vile" as you put it. It is narrow minded people like you who form these stupid stereotypes and start all this BS in the first place! The only thing you have accomplished with this article is promoting the sale of this game. GOOD JOB

While Rick's comments were possibly excessive concerning personal appearance, I am not so concerned. I am surprised when folks who dress in a way that says "F... Y..! to the establishment and all you stand for" expect to be treated with respect by everyone. Where appearance is concerned, there is a significant portion of society which equates perception as reality. Whether this appearance is simply style or an act of rebellion is not generally considered, the easiest answer is assumed.

The same can be said of the sport of dirtbiking, especially within circles that oppose OHV use on public lands. Time after time I meet folks on the trail who shoot nasty looks, or flip me the birdie for my choice of recreation. I consider myself an ambassador to my hobby - and usually stop and talk. Sometimes it pans out and they go on with a different perception than before, sometimes not. Sometimes they have a negative image so firmly entrenched, that no evidence to the contrary will ever change their mind. Perception = Reality.

I think that supplying a negative and destructive image is dangerous as it can establish the preconception, or reinforce one already established. Rick has spent many years fighting a losing battle over OHV land use - so have I but my contribution is 7 years - his is closer to 30. He knows at a gut level the amount of damage this kind of image (whether in words, photos, video, or cartoon) can do.

To have a major supporter of AMA events present such an image is nearly inexcusable, far more effective coming from a company that "supports" the sport than it would be from the Sierra Club. I think it was stupid! It was unnecessary to sell the product - does not accurately represent the product - and may have set OHV interests back years.

I read some of the propaganda written by a grass roots radical environmentalist org in an effort to have a National Hare & Hound cancelled - stating that the bikes would do irreparable harm to the sand washes within this western Colorado area. OK - sand washes... flash floods tear down these channels several times a year. Just about any moron should realize that a flash flood is going to completely reorganize anything in it's path far more efficiently than 100 Caterpillar D8s... A race with several hundred bikes is nothing to this area.

They also claimed that "cute widdle bunnies" would be maimed and killed. I don't know about you - but I have never seen roadkill in a race, dead cattle carcasses yes... In any case - John Doe in Vermont probably has not logically explored the issue. He is happy to let others paint a picture of destruction, get worked up into a righteous fury over "the widdle bunnies," and vote his conscious - or send in public comments from across the country. Environmentalists do not have a negative stigma to overcome - we do. It's not a fair fight, they can play dirty - we can't - we cannot afford to.

"Well I don't care! I never ride trails - I think it's a stupid waste of time..." Something else to consider. If environmentalists succeed in pushing trail riders off public lands, where to you suppose these people will go to ride? Think about it a sec... Tracks, right? How many people can a track support safely? What would happen under the theory of supply and demand? I can assure you that the cost to ride would be one hell of a lot higher before there were more tracks...

I will not be buying the video game, not because they have offended me, not because it looks like a stupid game, but because they have harmed me, breached my trust, and stabbed me in the back.

- William Perry