I'm sure there are some motorcyclists who genuinely are intruding on someone's property, and doing all kinds of things that no reasonable person should have to accept, but I think living in the country ain't what it used to be.
I grew up in the Napa valley when it wasn't a famous wine growing area, but just the boondocks. I hiked over every foot, I think, of everything within a two or three mile radius of our house. There weren't that many kids out there in the sticks in those days, and people found it easy to keep track of who's kid was who. No vandalism or suspect fires were happening, and no one worried much about being sued.
Recently, the house that I grew up in was torn down, to make room for, I would guess, a million dollar home. Feeling nostalgic, I took my camera along with me on the VFR one time and stopped at the nearby hill, where I could hike up for a couple of minutes and get a view of my home, and the fields and hills and houses in the background. I'd done it hundreds of times before.
I hardly had my helmet off when a woman maybe a quarter of a mile away saw me when she went out to get her mail. She came down and asked what I wanted. I told her the story about my house, and what a vantage point could be had from up there. She said I might get hurt and told me to get lost.
Country Joe had a line in one of his songs 'she don't know nothin bout country ways' and it is not a compliment. Living in the country now is a darker, more paranoid kind of place than it was then. It's a damn shame.
My guess is that we will see more, rather than less, of this kind of thing in the future.
