Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Trail Maintenance Kicks Butt!

And it really kicked ours too.

Regardless of how the points get added on or added to, Betsy and I are trying to do our part.

This year the WVMBA Series is trying out the Pay Dirt Program where by doing hours of certified Trail help and what-not will get you points toward your overall standings in the series.
So we got in contact w/ Mark Schooley at Big Bear Lake and arranged for a Trail Day.

As it turned out, it was just the three of us at first, then lot owner and fellow MTBer, Keith, showed up to help out too.
We worked from 10am to 3pm, and what took us all that time to mark, negotiate, and clear, we rode in about 10 minutes. That's how trail work goes sometimes, but when you piece a bunch of work together over a few weeks you've got some real trails to ride.
But the day was not w/o mishap and incident, as we stumbled (quite literally) a den of ground bees that swarmed and tried to make life more miserable than we already were. I got stung three or four time, Betsy got stung four times, Keith and Mark were spared. My tough skin proved usefull as all I got were some itchys, where as the tender-skinned Betsy swelled up, got dizzy, and generally had a bad time from that point until the next day.
I also lost my nice foldable Gerber saw. Poopie pants.

After working for 5 hours we decided to go on a "one" hour ride. Mark wanted to show us the new trail by the pines too, "shouldn't take too long".
2:45 hours later we were all back. No flats, just a longer ride, a misplaced rider, but some really nice riding on a really nice day.

But it crushed us but good!
We got home, barely, tried to walk dD around some, then came home, maybe ate some, and took a nap, then woke, tried to get things ready for the race the next day, and fell back to sleep. We were wrecked.
I also forgot to put Betsy's race shoes in the bus.
And of course that lead to a frustrating time the next day...



Betsy's normally thin wrist looking not so happy.

No comments: