Din Demolishes Dream Family Seeking Quiet, Rural Lifestyle Has Motocross Next Door

There’s a battle of dueling dreams going on south of here.

One family came to Mica Mountain looking for a quiet rural life. Their neighbors’ idea of a good time is motorbikes.

“It’s family fun,” said Dave Enns, whose sons bring their BMX buddies to the Enns’ 10 rolling acres. “I know it’s noisy, and we try to keep the noise within reason.”

The headache-inducing chainsaw buzz of those bikes is not what Bobby and Linda Schrimsher were looking for when they left a city of 3 million people for the wilds of Idaho.

“Had we known it would be this way we not only wouldn’t have bought the house - we wouldn’t have even looked at it,” Bobby Schrimsher says from an unfinished living room overlooking hayfields and hills.

In April, Linda left Atlanta and plunked a deposit down on the family’s 20-acre Idaho dream home five miles south of here on Mica Mountain.

When she returned with her husband three weeks later, something new had arrived next door: A quarter-mile racetrack filled with dirt mounds and elbow turns, its straight-away running parallel to their barbed-wire fence.

Seemed harmless enough.

Then more than a dozen young men - clad in full-body uniforms with numbers tacked to their backs - clambered onto dirt bikes and began to race.

“It’s so ungodly loud it echoes through the whole valley,” Bobby Schrimsher says. “And the dust … it fills my whole back window. You can see it from the highway a half-mile away.”

The couple considered backing out, but saw encouraging signs. Kootenai County planners had served a notice on Enns informing him they were investigating.

Relieved, the Schrimshers bought their home.

“We thought it would be OK,” Linda Schrimsher said. “The county was on top of it.”

The riders keep on riding.

They race open-throttle anywhere from one to four days a week. There have been as few as two riders, as many as 15.

According to Enns, only one other neighbor has ever complained about the noise. That man decided he could put up with it, he said.

Enns has two sons, 22-year-old David and 20-year-old Ben. Enns said they’ve made concessions to the Schrimshers.

“We went and told the neighbors, ‘Look, we’ll shut down at 8 o’clock. If it gets dusty, call us and we’ll shut them down … If you have a party, we’ll shut down.”’

But riding bikes on his 10 acres is perfectly legal, Enns said, and it will continue. One son practices so he can compete in sanctioned races throughout the region.

As for the Schrimshers’ wish for a quiet countryside, he said he told them: “You want me to let you have your dream, instead of my son and I having our dream of racing? Whose dream is going to win here?”

Meanwhile, the Schrimshers say they sometimes can’t talk in their living room without shouting.

The couple has turned everywhere they can think of for help: the planning department, the county prosecutor, the sheriff’s office. But they may be stuck where the rubber meets the dust, said County Planning Director Cheri Howell.

The county’s noise ordinance is weak.

To build a racetrack, the county does require a public hearing before commissioners and a permit. Problem is, the term racetrack is not defined in county zoning laws.

County staff and attorneys have not yet determined whether this meets that definition.It’s not a racetrack, according to Enns, but a place where bikers practice.

Bobby Schrimsher laughed at that.

“Whether people are paying money to watch them rev around, or they’re revving around for free doesn’t matter,” he said. “They’re still revving around.”

Enns suggested the Schrimshers tolerate the noise for a year or two until his son loses interest, Bobby Schrimsher said.

“Yeah right,” Schrimsher said. “I can’t take two more years of this.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo