Philadelphia Mountain Biking Association - Forums

Rumor has it Lou had a sketchy confrontation with some dudes driving down Wises Mill. If you see this guy, head for the hills.

It wasn't sketchy at all. What happened was there was a pickup truck full of what looked like illegal aliens and as they were driving down Wises Mills Rd towards Valley Green Inn, they were throwing all the garbage out of the pickup!!!!!! I was so pissed off that I almost stopped and got out the Machete I had in the Bob trailer. They were no doubt going to Devil's Pool to trash that area as well. Gotta love those people. Oh well, I guess we will just have to clean up after them as usual...

We rode by devils pool on forbidden later in the afternoon and there were a TON of kids down there.  100+ maybe?

Anyway there were still a bunch of them walking coolers etc down that way, so the party was probably still getting bigger.  I'm sure that area is completely trashed now.   >:(

<this was sunday afternoon>

Douchebags!!!!

It does not make sense to me that the police can not come and do something about this. It's litering at the very least.

We were working on Wises Mill on the retaining wall. I saw the same pickup, come flying down the road into our work site going way too fast. I don't think the vehicle was legal.

Most people who came by our worksite, which was signed with a "volunteers at work sign", were driving way to fast, slamming on their brakes as they came up on us, all pissed off cause they had to slow down for us, it was very discouraging and left me in a bad mood most of the time I was there. I overheard one car load of these scumbags yelling "run them over" as they approached us.

So..here we are volunteers working our asses off in the heat to build a retaining wall so these peice of shit people have a place to park! Makes no sense at all. So they can drive their illegal cars here and throw trash all over all the place and have no respect for anyone or anything. It's messed up. I'm need to do some real trail work to get this negativity out of my system stat!

I couldn't belive how many cars we "flying " down the road towards Vally Green, in their cars, even with the cones and obvious people working with machinery, on a road in the woods...
 ???

Can you say " ?!&&@@!? "

I don't understand people sometimes...
 

Im not surprised at all....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy)

a bit unrelated but I wanted to mention that there's plenty of sihtheads on this side of the park too.

I rode down to Neil's in the afternoon and checked out the race for the first time. It was the last lap and I stationed myself at the top of the Fall after the Wall. Sun was shining, the small crowd was getting excited, the helicopter was down on main street. Then a big group of police motorcycles came by blaring sirens all the way with the mayor on the back of one, waving uncomfortably. Everyone cheered. Next came the pre and pace cars,  and everyone started clapping. Then first three cyclists came by about 35mph and I felt goosebumps... with the peloton about 20 seconds after. Everyone stayed on to cheer the stragglers and then slowly the crowd began to ebb away. It was awesome!

As everyone is leaving across the street were a couple of unkers chuckling aloud and saying, "Out-of-Towners', GET OUT"!

What a total embarrassment. It just made me sick.

As far as Devil's pool. I like to believe that most people are pretty good and neighborly, and that many of these yahoos were excited to be letting off steam by racing around and showing off, being proud of being idiots when they've little else to be proud of. But really it's impossible to find and excuse for this behavior.

I'm proud of FOW's new trail ambassador program but I fear it's a mistake to have volunteers try and police that mess.

Wonder if we could have flipped that car into the creek with the SK.  Something to consider next time...

Hey Jesse, I hear ya dude. I look at these people and they really don't have much in life, and don't have much hope for the future, which is a bummer. It does not excuse them to litter and shit on the planet, but they really don't know any better or they simply don't care because they have nothing. I mean, shit, Devil's Pool is like the "country" to them and they swim in that extremely polluted water and love every minute of it. We are fortunate to have what we do and until these people have a future to look forward to, they ain't gonna change. And I totally agree that the Police are the only one's who should do anything about this as I guarantee that they have some guns with them and it is not worth it to confront them, not to me at least... 

I'm not sure if they have guns but this hardcore mexican has something else in store for you.

Kids were out today, jumping from the center of the stone bridge at VGI.  That's a pretty big drop (20-25ft?), I wouldn't have thought it was deep enough.  They kept doing it, so apparently it is deep enough.

Dat bro is packin some heat!

.

wow, i would like to see that.  little kids?  i have to think they touch bottom.

Watched them do it last summer. If you notice, they're jumping off and landing in the middle of the creek. The kids have to tuck before they hit the water, or they'll hit the bottom. I don't think it's more than 8' deep when the water is at normal levels :o

The innocence and naivety of youth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a leading cause of broken necks is diving into shallow water or water that has hidden objects. Someone throws a shopping cart in one day and someone jumps the next...      just make sure you go feet first.

In the UK it's become a chav sport and they call it "tombstoning". 2 died last year and a bunch permanently injured. What the hell; MTB over time is just as
dangerous...

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tombstoning

Teenagers.....feet first.   And they were jumping from standing up on the railing, so it was that much higher.

I have a friend who's in a wheelchair for life from doing that.

Yeah.  Jon P. rolled by when I was watching them jump and there were a few Idiocracy comments between us.   ;D

There is an effort to raise awareness of the obnoxious disrespectful behavior attributed to Devils Pool. Here is what Maura from FOW had to say:

"I know that the senior FPC staff have been talking with the rangers and police about presence at Devil’s Pool. And I met with the captain of the 92nd and a local detective on this issue, but as I said before, I am not aware of any action in the Devil’s Pool area yet. We’ll keep talking at the higher levels with police and rangers, but it does also really help if the public calls in complaints about the area. Enough calls and they have to prioritize the requests."

So basically. Call and complain. If they get enough calls they have to do something.

What's the number and is their someone to ask for?? I know a lot of folks who have their fingers on the buttons >:(

Call the police or more specifically the 92nd district....

The other side of the Idiocracy theory (that dumb people multiply because they have no natural predators) is the Darwin Awards (http://www.darwinawards.com/) which shows that dumb people tend to kill themselves in stupid ways.   Perhaps the kids jumping off of the bridge are just part of the larger evolutionary process.

If you do call, call the 92nd district and speak to the captain, Captain Khalid Syed and the number is 215-686-7292 

thanks a lot Jeremy!!!! I had a brush with Death alright!!! wow, didnt think i could get this hurt riding bicycles  ???  just got home from 3 nights in hospital... gotta rest....

I am so sorry for hitting you w/ the Jeremy jinx. After I heard of your real brush w/ death I thought about this thread. Get well dude.

I was there.  It was really scary.  We need more discussions on the EMT as well.  They had no idea where Hermit lane is. 

I've been planning to start to put together a set of maps, photos and GPS coordinates for EMT access to the park.  Maybe I'll head out with my GPS and camera after the horse/bike event on Sunday if anyone else wants to come along.

What exactly happened and what's the damage??? Lou get better buddy...

-p

Yeah Lou, I hope you feel better.  Rest up!

Why don't we schedule meetings with the "Shift Managers" for the EMT's, Fire Department, PPD and FOW to develop contingency plans for these types of situations? Maybe invite them to our monthly meetings to begin the planning stages. 2 incidents in 2 months is fairly serious. Especially as the amount of park users increase with the warm days of summer. That way all users can at the very least be assured of some type of safety plan in place to extract anyone in a decent amount of time.

I have seen the park rangers and police driving on Forbidden drive the past few weekends, quite the surprise to see a car come rolling down the gravel when approaching blind spots :o

until the STI is in full effect I agree we should come up with a starter plan. I think Jon's on to the right start with the GPS. We should start to identify every road accessible entrance to the park and train ourselves to know what each of them is.

Is it part of the STI? But for right now we should know, for example, that the Henry Ave 7901 apartment have an entrance to the park and that if someone has a problem in that area it could be given to the dispatcher, and the local EMTs would have a GPS location already laid out.

We're going to have a board meeting soon and we'll probably form a committee to help put together a starter emergency plan ASAP. The STI version is on the way, but I reckon it will be a long time before it's in effect.

If anyone is interested in helping out with just let me or Jon or any of the board know.

Chuck you were telling me on the trail, describing how the fire department was having Lou walk back to the parking lot from his
crash site!...and the EMT's  put him on the stretcher standing up when they got there. They could have caused more damage to him by moving him.

Lou....I am sorry to hear you are down, what exactly happened? I hope you are okay.

holy crap are you kidding?! yeah they def could've done more damage by doing that!

No joke.  The fire department did a quick once over (lou was trying to move around and was sitting up) and then determined it was too far/not needed to carry him up the hill even though we all offered to help.   So they started to walk him.   A little ways up the hill the EMT arrived and immediately stopped him and began to check his back/neck for pain or displacement.   He then put a collar on Lou and then strapped him to the board standing up.   After Lou was all buckled in, then tilted him back (on the board) and carried him to the ambulance.

Was one of those things where you feel like you should stop them, but I figured they knew what they were doing.  So after offering to help carry, I didn't know what else to say.  :-\

Sounds scary.

The EMT did the right thing. The fireman f'ed up.

The EMT was a pretty serious dude.  I got to spend some time with him in the ambulance.  He was definitely on point.

Can anyone fill me in on what happened???

Lou had a pretty bad crash and suffered a brain sprain among other things :o   He's at home recovering now, probably getting ready for the DH race this weekend.

As you can read above though once again the Emergency Services had trouble locating him. It has us all thinking about the need for a preliminary emergency response system as it will be a long while before the STI measures can be put in effect.