“Ten years from now? That’s hard. You should probably ask someone in Washington, but those guys don’t know $#!& so they won’t be able to answer it either. If we don’t get more active, more involved and more vocal, you’re not going to have off-road riding. You’ve got to speak up and you’ve got to be pissed so you can make something happen. That will enable us to keep what we have now. You won’t get any more than that, but that will keep us where we are. Otherwise, we’re all on motocross tracks.” -Bill Berroth, President, Motonation “The biggest problem is going to be land use, and we need to make ourselves a little more environmentally friendly, especially with the noise situation. The reason there are more golf courses than motocross tracks is because of the noise. If we can quiet the bikes down to where the decibels are low enough, nobody is going to care! It’s not like they hate dirt bikes; they just hate the noise. If we can get the noise down, I definitely see more riding opportunities down the road.” -Mike Girardi, President, Girardi Wealth Management Group“Ten years down the road, I see a lot of people out recreating on dual-sport bikes in areas where the only way you’ll be able to get in is on something street-legal with a license plate on it. And I see us doing it on two-stroke motorcycles! They’re cheaper, have better power and are easier to work on. As long as the magazines don’t sell us a bill of goods about how four-strokes are the future, we’ll be safe. We’ve got to protect ourselves against the media because they got behind the four-stroke thing and swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Now, we’ve got bikes we can’t afford to ride, parents who can’t work on them and who need to send their kids to school to get a Nuclear Science degree just to own and operate the darn dirt bike! There’s not one single entity that’s more responsible for that than the media.” -Scott Harden, National Sales and Marketing Manager, Husqvarna“In ten years we’ll have a whole new set of rules to be sliding in between. Right now sound is at the forefront and most responsible riders are quiet. But if you look at any current route management plan, you see erosion is the new catch-all. There are fights going on about particulate matter being introduced into the air or water and by law the land-use agencies have to manage it. Clear Creek in California is currently shut down because of bogus asbestos hype. The wacko greens have the EPA involved. Our enemies don’t care about protecting the land; they just want us gone. You have to realize that and start getting involved. There are way too many riders who don’t do a thing.” -Dirt Rider Editor Jimmy Lewis“I think it’s gonna be about the same, because in 1972 they were telling us ‘Less Sounds, More Ground.’ Back then I used to ride at the Elsinore and Perris TT tracks on minibikes with expansion chambers and no silencers at all, and I thought it was the death of the sport. It’s gonna keep going.” -Kinney Jones, Photographer Extraordinaire
