In response to Re: removing obstacles?
One of the bad things about e-mail and posts is that the intended point of view, message, and tone is almost always lost. Never fails.
Actually , my previous response was not pointed at you personally, but more in general to a snippet of what was in your post that I felt pertained to everyone in general. I should have pulled that out as a quote and responded to just that as that.
Many times it is said that we who build and maintain the trails do not make, or keep, some feature that someone wants to keep. My point that I failed to make was - for those folks - to come out and join us on some workdays and see just what goes into giving up ones free time to build, repair, reroute and constantly fix the same problem area over and over again. There again, that is not pointed at any one person, just throwing it out there where I had a chance to comment. Sorry it took on a piercing blow.
After more than a few years you decide it’s time for you to ride and enjoy the trails as well, so you start looking for ways to make the trails hold up to weather, over use, skid braking, dragging brakes down drops, and damnit, people pulling features out of the trails. You find ways to make it more difficult for them to take features out, but that is quite time consuming to plan, design and do. Something is going to get passed over, and if it gets passed over enough times, then it is made into something easier to maintain so you don’t have to think about it anymore. That’s where you end up pissing people off.
If 20-30 people showed up on any given workday and helped make it right that would be sweet. With so many miles of trails to take care of there is not enough time in a 3 or 4 hour block to do everything that needs to be done. Obviously there has to be someone in charge for each work crew, and each of those have to be on the same page as what needs to be done and how. A few folks have taken trail building classes and have been heavily involved in trail building and maintaining them that there are now a handful of folks who can share in this job. Trouble is they aren’t always available at the same time. There are so very many opinions of what makes the trail right, difficult - yet sustainable, and appealing to the masses. Someone is always going to be put off by what you do.
Now, you look at who comes out to the workdays and puts in their time week after week, month after month, year after year, and listen to their input of what the trail should be like. Sure, you want a trail that serves as many people as possible, but if you make a bunch of difficult trails what B+, A riders, Racers, and Extreme riders want, the people who either can’t, or don’t wish to ride those trails don’t show up to the workdays to build and maintain trails they do not ride. If those people do not show up to the official workdays, then there are only like 3 - 5 people who do show up and the only thing you can get done is trim as many face slappers out of the way as you can so you can at least ride something. A vicious circle I tell ya’, a vicious circle.
Hope to see ya’lls name on the next workday - which ever trail system it may be at. ;-)
G
