Weird Thoughts

On those days I found myself in the park working on singletrack alone, my mind would wander. Not being one (1) to hinder fun, I let it go where it wished.

One (1) day I was remembering little sayings to help a dude remember shit. I have two (2) examples.

Easter Bunnies Get Drunk At Easter. Or E, B, G, D, A, E. Or the notes on the strings of a guitar – from the highest pitch to the lowest.

The other is True Virgins Make Dull Company. Or T, V, M, D, C. Or, from my pilot training days, the True course, plus or minus the magnetic Variation, gives you the Magnetic course, plus or minus the Declination, gives you the Compass heading.

Perhaps you know of some. Lay ‘em out in the comments. I’d like to know. That’s just how I roll.

In another instance I was remembering what someone asked me. “What are you going to do when you’re done with these projects?” They were referring to the singletrack project and the U.S. Bike Routes project.

I had to think about that one (1) some. I guess the very first (1st) weekend I DON’T have to dig in the park – because the project would be complete – is sleep in both Saturday AND Sunday. And maybe have grapefruit Mimosas for breakfast both days.

One (1) day in the park I did give it some hard thought. What AM I going to do, say, in about a year from now, when things are complete and things are in transition. I think I shall take a break and take a trip!

When the sky is the limit as a dude daydreams while swinging trail building tools, realistic possibilities come forth. My touring bike is gathering moss. Maybe some sort of bike trip. I’ve wanted to see some of the western U.S. National Parks. Perhaps a bike trip from park to park to park.

I’ve wanted a European trip for some time. My ideal would be to catch a flight to Marseille with touring bike and gear along. Then, proceed to do a tour of Southern France is search of the very best in local wines and cheeses.

My typical Sunday morning is to get breakfast at Queen City Bakery. Not only do they have the best in bakery goods in town, they have a shared copy of the New York Times. This past weekend there was a great article about Machu Picchu and that general area of Peru. Evidently, there are more ruins than just Machu Picchu. They are reasonably close together and would make an awesome trip traveling around seeing the stuff.

Sometimes the mind goes strange places. Sometimes the thoughts are quite mundane and other times quite personal. But the weirdest shit are the dreams I have when I’ve taken over-the-counter sleep aids coupled with red wine. Hollywood will never come up with scripts as cool as those dreams.

Ride On.

Look What Happens

Look what happens when volunteers show up to dig. Amazingly, trail gets dug – and lots of it. Last Thursday evening and both Saturday sessions I had volunteers digging in the “North Forty,” as I call it. We were digging on the advanced loop on the hills. Trail was dug through the flat to “the climb,” up the climb, down the hill, up the next hill, and down the next hill. This probably means nothing to you if you were not there to see what I mean. What it means to me is that approximately fifty person (50%) of the east half of the advanced loop is complete.

We’ve other things going on in the park. For example, a big ass tree fell across the trail. Volunteer Rick is on the task and will come into the park this week, with chainsaw in tow, to remedy the situation.

Sunday’s session was spent fixing the three (3) problem corners on the first (1st) loop. I’m happy to report that one point nine (1.9) of the corners have been fixed. During Tuesday night’s session, we’ll fix the other one point one (1.1) corners. At that point, the first (1st) loop will be ninety nine percent (99%) complete.

To make the loop one hundred percent (100%) complete, we’ll do a walk through touching up a few things here and there. These will amount to leveling out humps that are too humpy and removing some the craters left by removed trees. Easy stuff, really.

Trail building is slowly building momentum. The volunteers are starting to show up again. I can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel – and it is not a train. The push is on the complete this project.

Ride On.

Knock Loud, I’m Home

Thursday night’s trail dig session was attended by five (5) volunteers and me. It is amazing how many feet of trail can get dug when volunteers show up. Not to mention it frees me up to prep stuff.

Trails are coming together nicely. Now, placing trail becomes sort of a jig saw puzzle. There are specific trail building rules that must be followed to have a sustainable trail. There are specific places the trail must route to. Combining these two (2) is a nice mental challenge.

There will be more digging this weekend. There will be two (2) sessions on Saturday and one (1) session on Sunday. If volunteers continue to show, we’ll knock this project out much sooner than quite a bit later.

I’m test riding the new trial tonight at 7:30 followed by beers at Monk’s. What could be better than riding singletrack and then really good beer???

Ride On.

Night Moves

I’m finding myself doing lots of evening stuff lately. It is not unimportant.

Monday evening I was at my office preparing for Tuesday evening.

Tuesday evening I was invited by the State Game, Fish, and Parks (G, F, & P) department to participate in a “visioning session” for the proposed Blood Run State Park. I had no idea what a “visioning session” was so I prepared as best I could. I wrote some notes for a verbal schpiel. I had some fancy schmancy “leave behind” materials printed up. In reality, I used neither.

Instead, I participated in “visioning exercises.” The night started off with introductions and then a short talk on what was happening so far. HDR Engineering was running the show – more on them later.

The “visioning exercises” started by each table doing a SWOT analysis of the proposed park. We SWOT-ted and then gave our results to the Compiling Chicks. They wrote stuff down and posted the notes up. Everyone was given sticky dots and asked to “vote” for what they felt the important stuff was by using the sticky dots.



This is EXACTLY what the Compiling Chicks looked like (this is nothing like what the Compiling Chicks looked like).

The Compiling Chicks counted the votes and the results were read. Based on the cross section of participants, I was not surprised at the results. More on this later as well.

Next up was drawing on the map. The HDR people wanted us to draw what we wanted to see and where on the map. When this was done, each table needed to explain their drawings. The drawings were numbered and, once again, the Compiling Chicks collected the maps. When this was complete, the evening – three (3) hours of it – was shot.

Here’s what my take on the evening was. I felt like the HDR people were new to this process and the whole evening felt amateurish. They led off with how archeologically sensitive the area was. Then, they asked as to mark on a map what we wanted to see giving no direction to where the sensitive stuff was. To me, this was an exercise in futility. “Let’s put a (blank) here!” “Oops! No, there’s a burial mound there!” Not only were the sensitive areas not shown on any of the maps, the maps lacked contours. “Is this a flood plain?” “Maybe.” Geesh.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, the HDR types explained they were conducting one-on-one sessions with “important stakeholders.” I have no idea who these people are. I also felt, as a percentage of the participants, neighboring landowners were overly represented. It is my opinion, the G, F, & P is giving way too much responsibility to a group (HDR) with far too little experience and know-how.

Mostly I tried to do a lot of listening during the whole evening. From what I heard, I’m pretty sure everyone’s “vision” involved wanting some trails. Ah! Something I can relate to! I’m pretty sure all the adjacent and nearby land owners want this to be a day use, no camping, oh and don’t route the main entrance traffic by my place, mind-set. Memories of the Leaders Park approval process came rushing back.

I have a game plan for this project. I’m not going to share it now. I don’t want the proverbial cat-out-of-the-bag just yet. But, I’ll provide a report on here as things transpire. Plus, I have some key people to discuss this with, first. I need buy-in from the keys before the plan can be enacted, so to speak.

Wednesday evening was busy as well. This time with my paying job. With several people gone from my office, I’m pulling double-extra duty. I left at 5 PM, went to grab some food, and then headed back for more work. The good parts of working late are there are no people or phone call interruptions. The bad part regarding work late is it is working late. It sucks.

Tonight we’ve got a weeknight trail digging session. I’ll be ram-rodding that as well as doing some forecasting for final trail location with another dude. Digging starts at 6:15 PM and runs until dark. It will be a full evening.

I’m hopeful I’ll have nothing on Friday evening except winding down from the week and mentally preparing a full trail digging weekend. There’s not a better way to wind down than to throw some dead animal on the grill and sit on the deck drinking adult themed beverages. For the vegan types out there, sorry, I’ve always been a carnivore and always will. Ribeye, anyone?

Ride On.

Trail Digger Blues

I don’t know if it was the weather (actually not that bad), the Father’s Day thing (I wished mine one), or less than enthused volunteers, but, I seem to be doing an awful lot of trail digging solo. Contrary to what you parents told you as a kid, there is no trail digging fairy.

Last Thursday evening there was a scheduled dig session. I was the only one (1) digging. Saturday morning’s session had me and one (1) other digger. Saturday afternoon’s session was just me. And Sunday’s session was me and one (1) other digger. Despite the lack of warm bodies much was done.

I’m not sure what people are thinking. Maybe they are scared of the mosquitoes. I don’t know why, we’ve got bug spray that does a wonderful job keeping them at bay. Maybe they have an unnatural fear of sweating. Well, no one said manual labor was anything less than manual labor. What do people think, trails dig themselves?

Tomorrow night I’m planning on speaking at the first (1st) public input meeting for the proposed new Blood Run State Park. I plan to propose the park should have a huge amount of singletrack. I plan to propose, that in order to keep things as inexpensive to taxpayers as possible, the singletrack be IMBA designed and Falls Area SingleTrack built. Now I’m not so sure I should say anything. What if the State is all for my proposal and there are no volunteers to help out? To be safe, I shall propose a majority of the trail be machine dug. It would be much quicker and I know I can count on me to show up and run the machine.

Ride On.

Sundays

My favourite Sunday mornings are the ones when I have nothing to do and no where to go. Like today.

Ride on.

Fruita Sucks!

Here’s the Jason Jonas built and produced video of some of the riding from Fruita this past April. Good times and great riding.

2011 mtbr :: fruita from Jason Jonas on Vimeo.

Ride On.

Blood? Run!

I received in my Gee Mail inbox a notification of the first (1st) public meeting regarding the new state park at Blood Run. All interesteds are encouraged to attend and speak about what they’d like to see.

I’ve been in contact with both our Governor and the head of Game, Fish, and Parks about this proposed park. Both individuals were interested and enthused about what I had to say.

For those not in the know, the proposed Blood Run State Park would be located near the Iowa border a bit south of Spring Creek Country Club. It is sort of a hilly, wooded area including the Big Sioux River.

I’d proposed to the State that Falls Area SingleTrack would take on the responsibility of digging singletrack over several years. The game plan would be to bring IMBA on board to design the project. Even with campsites, parking, and all the other stuff involved with a state park, 650 acres is a lot of damn acres. There could be miles of singletrack. And not the “shared with equestrian” stuff, either. Hiker and biker trails are what I’m aiming for.

I’ve contacted some IMBA types I know and am preparing the presentation over this weekend. They’ve sent, and will be sending, good information and offer suggestions. I’ll also print up some “leave behind” stuff for the State people. I’ll write up my spiel and we’re good to go. Come Tuesday evening, I’m presentin’!

Ride On.

Non Sequitur To A Biking Blog

Ride on.

Vampires In The Park

Saturday’s dig sessions were made a bit uncomfortable by the vampires that reside there. Specifically, our State bird, the mosquito, populates the park heavily. Those pesky flying blood suckers were playing a game of Russian Roulette with me to see which of them might infect me first (1st) with either West Nile or malaria. Fortunately, Deep Woods Off does as advertised.

Despite the vampires much work was done. Saturday morning nobody wanted to come out and play with me so I took matters into my own hands. Falls Area SingleTrack (FAST) now owns a weed whacker. I put that to good use. I also trimmed the corridor as needed on the north half of the first (1st) loop. I was able to correct one (1) tough corner. One (1) down, two (2) to go. Weather permitting, I’ll handle those corners weeknights this week.

The downside to making progress in the park is I’ve little time for anything else. Like riding. I bagged Dirt Burger and have serious reservations regarding the Leadville 100 qualifier in Crested Butte at the end of July.

Perhaps I need to resign myself to the fact that 2011 is “do non-riding stuff” year and 2012 will be “make up for lost time” year. I willingly got myself into this and have no regrets.

I may take a break in July, whether it is the race in Crested Butte or for the fat tire festival in Idaho. “Fat tire fest in Idaho?” you might ask. Yes. Wydaho it is called. It’s based in Driggs, ID, not far from Jackson, WY and Yellowstone National Park. I’ve not been to Idaho or Yellowstone and this might be a great opportunity to see both.

Back to digging in the park – I’m very much hoping for a more typical low humidity South Dakota summer and less of the high humidity Florida summer we seem to be having. Three (3) liters of water in my CamelBak are barely enough for a three (3) hour dig session. I didn’t see anyone tip over that were down wind of me yesterday. I imagine the combination of gasoline, bug spray, and sweat made for quite a pungent aroma.

In order to get things done sooner rather than later I’ve elected to add two (2) weeknight dig sessions. For those around and wanting to help, we’ll be digging Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 6:15 PM until beer-thirty. Be there or be square.

Ride On.

It’s Getting Deep

I’m certainly not the smartest guy around. But, I know bullshit when I hear it. And did I ever get a truckload recently. The details are unimportant. I suppose, if a person tells themselves something long enough and adamantly enough, it becomes “fact” to them. Boy oh boy.



Just when you think life is getting dull you run into a person who makes things interesting. I’m sort of relieved to know there are some out there even more fucked up than I am.

In another instance, there’s a blog I follow for that purpose – to remind me, no matter what, there’s someone who’s more fucked up than me. I’ll not point to it or link to it. That wouldn’t be very nice. Not that I’m feeling particularly nice these days.

As Kenny Powers says, “…..a true champion, face to face with his darkest hour, will do whatever it takes to rise above. A man fights, and fights, and then fights some more. Because surrender is death, and death is for pussies.”

Sometimes it’s enough to make a dude throw his hands up and yell, “Fuck it! I’m going to Spearfish!” And then pack some clothes, grab a tent and some gear, load a bike, and do so.

I feel like burning a proverbial bridge. With a flame thrower.

Ride On.

Skipping Dirt Burger, Gotta Dig

I had originally intended to depart for Decorah, IA this morning to attend Dirt Burger. Dirt Burger is a gathering of like minded mountain bikers for the purpose of riding trails and consuming beer. Hopefully next year.

Instead I’ll be in town heading up the weekend dig sessions at Leaders Park. Last weekend we’d re-routed part of the trail and made final connections with the south and north portions of the first (1st) loop. A few minor tweaks and that loop is complete.

This coming weekend I’ll have volunteers working on the other two (2) loops. I’m pretty sure these loops will dig quickly. I’ve learned a lot from the first one (1) and the volunteers need little training. We can get right to the dirt slinging.

Next week, weeknights, I’ll be working in the park. I’ve some corners that need attention. There is some barbed wire that is in a most unwelcome area that will come out. I’ve got shrubbery trimming to tend to. These are just a few things and I’d rather just handle them myself.

Of course, once a rocker is done working in the park he’ll (I’ll) shower up, eat, and retire to the deck with a margarita in hand. I do love the summer months, the deck, and yes – margaritas. The weather is here, wish you were beautiful.

Ride On.

I KNOW MY RIGHTS!!!

Ride on.

Black Hills Fat Tire Festival 2011

I pulled into the hotel parking lot to find fellow Sioux Falls dude, Gary. Once checked in, we made haste for M-Hill. For those not in the know, M Hill, aka Cowboy Hill, aka Hanson Larson Memorial park is roughly twenty (20) miles of some pretty sweet singletrack within two (2) blocks of downtown Rapid City.

We rode some trails before getting a call from, and then joined up by, Ross. Ross showed us the new IMBA rocky trail and some machine built cross-country trails. We made our way back to the top and took a harder trail down. Riding makes a dude hungry so we were off to Sanford’s for food and, of course, beer.

Friday we were up early. Gary and I made our way to Storm Mountain to ride the loop there. It was as good as I remember it, plus, they added more jumps, berm corners, and length to the half-pipe section at the end. After we’d completed a lap, we headed back to town for food.

Next up, Buzzard’s Roost. There are approximately ten (10) miles of trails at the Buzzard’s Roost area. Just before we started we received a call from Ross indicating he’d join us. We rode some solo and then met up with Ross.


Ross steered us to the extreme (red) trail. He said, “It isn’t that bad.” It wasn’t. It was actually quite fun. We rode that trail to its end, rode back up another, and did the two (2) mile decent trail back to the cars. A good day’s riding in.

Saturday we opted to try a group ride. We made our way to Founder’s Park and signed up for the Pactola Centennial out and back ride. Funny thing, Ross was the ride leader. Gary and I were the only ones to sign up. Introductions were short and we were off to ride.



The Centennial started off with a respectable climb on double track. From there we were on single track and many ups and downs in the woods. We hit the highway turn-around spot and headed back. At the top and at the spot where singletrack becomes double track we knew it was all downhill. Into the big rings and flying down the hill we went. I managed to take the lead for a while up until a hard corner had me over-shooting and finding myself off the trail and up a hill.

Post ride we ambled off to the Sugar Shack for some huge grease burgers, fries, and beverages. The lunch of champions. After a brief rest we were off in search of Victoria Lake.

Victoria Lake area has a few trails. The ones I know of are the ten (10) mile lollipop type trail and the longer fifteen (15) mile loop trail. We opted for the longer loop trail.


About two (2) minutes in we had our first (1st) of about ten (10) creek crossings. The Victoria Lake loop has a good mix of rocks, climbs, ripper down hills, and great scenery. Three (3) hours after we started we were done and heading back to town for food and beer and to attend the film festival.

The film festival was great. However, many hours of riding make for tired rollers. Off in search of our hotel rooms.

Sunday was the rainout day. There was not much to do but visit a bookstore, a bike shop, and an indoor go-cart place. Monday was the trip home.

A great time was had even though Sunday proved uneventful. If you haven’t been to the Black Hills to mountain bike, you’re missing it. If you think all there is around Rapid City is M Hill, you’re sadly mistaken.

Ride On.

Videos Of Useless Things

Ride on.

Back

I’ve only time for the short version of my Black Hills Mountain Bike Festival recap. The drive was driven, rides were ridden, and beer was – dranken (drunken?).

I’m now back in the land of really, really bad drivers.

The trails were awesome. The new one (1) built on M Hill by the IMBA big-wigs was stellar, and we had one (1) rain-out day. But, a great time was had. There was no energy for shenanigans as we rode hard and long making for very tired, but very hungry dudes.

A full recap tomorrow along with the handful of pictures I took. Or, at least some of them. I haven’t downloaded them to check them for quality.

Ride On.