Who needs ISIS when we have NBC and Redbull?
I lived in Riverside, California, years back.
At that time, the surrounding cliffs and rocks were breathtaking.
One day I noticed something very wrong. The areas of natural beauty were looking more like industrial sites. Ugly paths were torn into the rocks. These eroded with each rainfall.
Hoards of dirt bike riders were using the rocks as their playground. Everywhere you went in the desert, you found unsightly erosion and destruction.
In a few short years, the cliffs were decimated to dirt piles of eyesores.
I wrote a letter to the local paper, but the press is right wing. I then shot a documentary for the local station. Bikers were all over, They were actually tearing into protected desert land, like the Mojave Desert. Running over endangered Desert Tortoises.
Pilots said that from the air, it looked like the desert had been swarmed by insects.
Eventually, we moved east, and I felt that surely some of the environmental organizations would take up the cause.
The “Redball Signature Series” on NBC a few days ago put that fantasy to rest.
This NBC sportscast showed the thrill of bikers doing their gymnastic tricks in the desert out in Utah. Say good-bye to Monument Valley as we remember it from John Ford movies.
With national television giving respectability to this destructive sport, the numbers will grow. It will all be gone in a few short years.