"...I think the Trail Team marketing idea works because it lets Toyota do off road stuff without it being in the mainstream. In other words, they aren't pissing off the environazi driving Echo and Prius owners by showing support for the 4wd community.....".
This is the problem that we have in within our
so called 'community' that doesn't actually exist.
We're either pissing and moaning about what the greenies do or say without
any intelligent discussion as to what it might take to make that problem more manageable through our own efforts involving personal responsibility(cash) or shaming/pushing bad actors within our ranks into law enforcement's hands....or we are sauggesting (above) that corporate America should support responsible wheeling only in the shadows like we're all some kind of lepors or something.
The Trail Team's sponsors had(have) a golden opportunity to bring something fresh and new
into the "mainstream" area of organized wheeling. Please don't discourage them from passing up a golden opportunity that the fledgling side-by-side 'community' had/has (
finally being able to introduce the young, old and disabled to the outdoors) because they were pc-correctly scared of a 'fight'. We need an FJ or even Toyota-wide related group to fianlly START pushing issues like pay-to-play; all-encompassing unity and no-nonsense enforcement into the mainstream of our sport. And if anybody believes that a corporation can't or shouldn't be doing this...then quit supporting those within your own 'community' who have been playing lip-service to those very same ideals for decades now and little else.
Footnote:
We have this same damn problem in the orv community regarding our national leaders and their buddies in the motorcycling community. These cyclists continually sneak around behind everybody's back presenting "our impact vs theirs" proposal-related arguments and constantly close down large areas to wheel for nobody but their damn arrogant selves...yet every damn
one of these national organizational leaders act as if the vast
majority of us orv owners should go off in some 'corner' to talk about it! ("You can't talk about so and so in the AMA! Why....his wife and mine had drinks by the hotel pool together when we wrote off that entire vacation/off-road convention together!).
It's a mess, folks....and the very people hoping/praying that you send them in money every year; but NOT ask to many damn questions concerning their positions affecting our largest trail systems....are right in the "p.c/non-profit"
middle of it.
