Hello From Year Two On The Road!
June 1998
Hello from year two on the road! It has been a while so let us give you a brief update.
We kicked off the year again at the Cactus Cup. It's becoming an annual event for us! This year we were joined by the second crew - Holly Hill and Ric Balfour. We worked together in the Grand Canyon state (Arizona) after which they headed east while we went west. Three weeks in California that were anything but typical as far as the weather. From snow in San Deigo, to hail and sleet in Auburn, we saw that California could be a lot more than just sunny.
Then on to Ely, Nevada, which has awesome riding, and some real hidden treasures. Not many people associate Aspen groves with Nevada, but they're there. Along with stone arches, and Great Basin Nat'l park. Utah, where we worked with the biggest group to date, 100 people from O.R.C.A. ( Outdoor Recreation Coalition of America). With them we managed to build almost a half mile of wonderful new single track in some very challenging terrain. Warm Boise, Idaho; has great single track right out of town. There we worked with the local land manager and SWIMBA to resolve some user conflicts caused by a fast narrow trail that acted as the main access point to most of the trail system.
The Northwest offered up some endless riding in Bend, Oregon and technically challenging single track in Bellingham, Washington. It threatened to throw you at every turn. We felt like we hit the rainy season in Montana where we didn't ride much but got to spend some quality time with the forest service, Limb, and other local land managers. While we were there, we took a day off to engage in another sport we dearly love; rock climbing. Thanks go to Kurt Kreuger for guiding us and getting us back down just before the hail storm from hell hit.
On to Colorado to attend the Rocky Mountain Regional Summit in Montrose; to work on national trails day weekend in Boulder (a new record high attendance at 150) and Ft. Collins; a meeting with land managers from two districts in Vail, and we wrapped up our stay at the Subaru Rendezvous weekend.
Now we are up to date!
From Colorado we headed east to Lawrence, Kansas to see what the trails were like in the great plains. Contrary to belief we rode in lots of trees, with most of the trail being rocky and very technical. We climbed at total of 1100 feet in 12 miles. Very impressive!
Wondering if our preconceived notions would be shattered again, we headed to Oklahoma City, OK. There we worked with O.E.F. who had just built 6 miles of new trail. This was, for most of them, their first attempt at designing and constructing new trails. Although not much elevation was available to work with, they built a fun, winding, hoot of a trail. It seems that they not only know their wall clouds, (watch the movie Twister here) they know trails too.
Off to Kansas City, MO via historical route 66 (gotta be a tourist) through Oklahoma and north to the home of the Chiefs. The first night there we were treated to down home southern cooking at the world famous Strouds restaurant. It might be hard for a restaurant to live up to their slogan, "we choke our chickens", but they did a superb job! The fried chicken was great. The next evening we worked with an ambitious bunch (Earth Rider Mountain Bike Club) on some problematic muddy areas. They also treated everyone to a cookout afterwards and told riding stories until we were laughing so hard we almost cried. Thanks Mike and Craig, watch out for spiders.
Right now we are on our way to Arkansas, then to Conyers, GA for the World Cup race.
Despite the extremes in weather (from below freezing to 105 degrees and a good amount of rain) the turn out for our work parties have been greater than last year. Thanks to everyone that has participated so far.
Gotta run, talk to y'all again soon.
Jan and Mike Riter
