Columns: The Stupid Breed Faster

Last month in Downieville, the shop at Yuba Expeditions sold 120 presta valve tubes. That's a pretty big number for a shop in a town of 300 people that does almost all of its business on weekends. That's roughly 30 tubes a weekend. Wouldn't seem like such a big number at a big shop in a big town, but here in the boonies it speaks volumes about the size and proliferation of jagged, tooth-sharp chunks of granite and the consequent maulings they serve up on tires.

Sales of all those tubes is one thing, but the landscape many of those tubes end up in is another thing altogether. The Forest Service estimates that more than 12,000 bikes went down Butcher Ranch trail here last season. The season officially runs from Memorial Day weekend to mid-October, and 12,000 bikes going down any one trail is a big number for anywhere. It's safe to say that not many of those 12,000 trips down Butcher were made by locals. But, as is so often the case, it's the locals who have to pick up the empty Gu packs, broken bits of plastic and the hundreds of tubes that end up getting strewn from tree to rock to river along the way. It's amazing how so many people can make a big deal about packing stuff into the great outdoors, buying high-tech packs and filling them with lightweight pieces of survival technology, and how so many of those same people seem genetically incapable of refraining from littering.

I'm developing a coping mantra to deal with this. Every time I see a person stub a cigarette out on the ground and not pick it up, I say loud enough to be heard, "You stupid asshole." The same for every piece of roadside trash on Highway 49 between Nevada City and Downieville. Every time I stop mid-ride to pick up some stranger's discarded tube, I say it again. "You stupid asshole." For every shiny PowerBar wrapper, for each glittering piece of broken reflector, and with every single shotgun shell and empty Keystone Ice beer can, I say, "You stupid asshole."

I say that a lot these days, and even though not all the people who are leaving trash around for others to pick up are technically stupid, and even though some could argue that they are not, in fact, assholes, I keep on saying it. I say it because I honestly do believe that people who litter are stupid assholes. In fact, calling them stupid assholes is my way of being charitable. I'm a foul-mouthed man with a lot of resentment for society, and I do a poor job of keeping it in check. I try, though. And "stupid asshole" is about the gentlest thing I can say about people who litter.

People who litter are self-absorbed. People who litter obviously think they are the center of their own little universe. People who litter don't seem to understand that the world is not their personal trash heap. People who litter, I suspect, are the same as animals that shit their own nests. Animals that shit their own nests are few and far between, and are generally not held in very high regard in the animal kingdom. People who shit their own nests, however, seem to be pretty damn common these days.

Which brings me back to all these stupid assholes. Some of you reading this might even be stupid assholes, and might think you're either not stupid or not an asshole. You'd be wrong. This is my column, and just like you think it's perfectly OK to throw your trash in someone else's backyard, I think it's perfectly OK to call you a stupid asshole for doing that. And getting angry at being called that won't help one little bit, or change the fact that you are what you are. But calling you a stupid asshole as I stop, get down off my bike, fold up your dead tube, stuff it in my backpack and continue on...well, that makes me feel a whole lot better.

You stupid asshole. You know who you are.