What is the meaning of VMX ?
It appears to be about fracturing a niche past-time into as many possible factions as possible...
Seriously, the "old dirt bike" thing is about a lot of stuff - restorers, historians, engineers, racers, trail-riders, dreamers, wannabe time travellers, etc, etc.
With the power of hindsight, its kind of unfortunate that
racing was the seed and the focal point for the old bike thing - because the racing has dominated the other branches, and because the other branches have
possibly 'watered down' the racing.
If we look just at the Racer crowd, there's a multitude of interests and motivations:
Re-living your personal glory days;
Re-living an era that you weren't invovled in;
Cheap racing;
Low pressure racing;
Racing a bike that you've 'built', restored or improved yourself;
Etc.
People naturally have a competitive streak - sometimes its big and nasty, sometimes its barely visible - but it is there in all of us. And that competitive streak means that (some) people will push the rules regardless of whether the reward at the end is a million dollar prize, a plastic trophy, or simply a pat on the back from a mate.
Similarly, lots of people love to tinker. They can see a better way, and they want to use it on their bike.
So people will
always push the boundaries of what other people consider to be acceptable. There are two main ways to keep things from getting out of hand. The first is peer pressure, and the second is a set of rules that are clearly understood and supported.
Despite the talk on the forums, and despite the fact that I regularly see stuff that makes me cringe, I think we're doing pretty well. The biggest drama isn't people pushing the boundaries and getting away with it, its
EVERYBODY's stubbon, blinkered insistance that their personal point of view is the only correct one.
