Get comfortable this is a long one...
Thursday May 6th.
Donina and her cousin Dee joined me on my trip to the IMBA world summit 2010. We left in the van on Wednesday night at 9:00 PM and drove through the night. We arrived around 1:30 PM local time in Augusta GA. Augusta is a smaller city on the border of GA and NC. on the Tallahassee river. We stayed at the hotel where the convention was. They seemed to be excited about having the convention there.
After getting parked and checked in, I headed over to the convention and registered. I was too late for the last session of the day, but there were some tables with hand outs and information so I checked them out. There were a couple land managers/park rangers advertising their trail systems who I talked to. I thought it was cool to see their parks people out advertising the trails not just the volunteer group. There was a professional bike park outfit called Hillride, I grabbed some of their material for reference. They seemed to have the same marketing message as CAMBr except for profit.
At the IMBA table I grabbed a few stickers and found a free USDA "Trail Construction and Maintenance Notebook - 2007 edition". This book was a great find and I can't wait to read more about some of their drainage techniques and dealing with surface water. The book looks like a great field reference.
There was a very lonely bike polo player trying to get people people interested in bike polo. He asked if I was interested in playing bike polo in spandex and I told him "No way!".
Outside on the other side of the hotel there was a fancy brick amphitheater on the river and a turnaround for the hotel. By the amphitheater was the bike demos. There were Specialized, Trek, and Giant bikes. Fox had a truck there.
I ran into Ryan from IMBA and asked him about the trails and he told me to go to the Fork Area Trail System known as FATS. He tells me that FATS was the study trail for a flow trail system. Somehow we get on the topic of Horse Crap at Saw Wee Kee, Ryan says we make a short Horse cleaner trail to get the horse to unload before they get on the trail.
We went to a seafood place across the street from the hotel called Bummies. I get the $12 sampler with blackened flounder, shrimp, fried oysters, crab cakes hush puppies and homemade chips. It was fantastic and everything tastes fresh and homemade, makes me hungry thinking about it again.
I was tired as hell from driving all night but I decided to put my bikes together while everyone else was at a movie preview about Colonade, the new Golden, CO park, and some other park I forget where. While they were getting free beer and a movie I was discovering a hole in my tubeless setup.
After getting a tube from the Trek truck we go for a ride up and down the rivertrail and do a little urban to check out the area around the hotel then go to bed.
Friday May 7th
The next morning I get up early and head down to the convention breakfast. I say hi to Hansi our Midwest IMBA rep and sit down for the opening session.
The first speaker talks about a new program called "People for Bikes". They want to get everyone who rides bikes to sign up to get more government funding for grants and bike projects. All you need is your email address to sign up. I am doing a terrible job describing it , but go to
www.peopleforbikes.org to check it out.
The next speaker was the legend Hans Rey. I am pretty stoked. He talks about riding trials as a child. He shows some old pictures of him freeriding with straight bars in his spandex GT suit. Hans has a water bottle cage on his bike (take that haters). He talks about some of his movies and tv appearances like "Pacific Blue".
He talks about creating names for different types of trails and he talks about "Flow County" trails a term Hans has coined. His definition of a flow country trail is a trail with turns and twists that is easy enough for any beginner to ride but with curves and flowing grade reversals that keep it fun for experts when ridden fast. He talks about how most hiking and horse trails are designed to get you from point A to point B as quickly as possible. But bike riders prefer swooping swooshy trails that hikers and horse riders would find pointless. Hans hopes to bridge the gap between freeride and XC with flow country trails because the are fun for all. I think that the Brown County Limekiln (first trail from the campground) trail looks like a flow country trail and agree it is fun for everyone.
http://www.hansrey.com/latestadventures.htm - scroll down to August 2009 for a better description of flow country trails.
After the general session I am supposed to give my presentation. On the way I see Aaron from Copper Harbor and Nate from Grand Rapids, Mi both of whom I met at the MMBF last year in Michigan. I give my presentation, it seems to go well. After I finish, Terry the guy from the Golden, Co. bike park talks a little. We get a lot of questions. Afterwards I see Mike and Jerry and we go out to take the group photo.
I eat lunch with Jerry and Mike and we kick around some ideas for CAMBr. Next I go to a session on tips for dealing with bike companies. A rep from Trek and Specialized both spoke on ways to get grant money from Trek and Specialized. The rep from Trek is also who approves the Bikes Belong grants. The basic message is they give money to projects that get new riders and youths on bikes. Also they want projects that look to be successful and they won't give more than 50% of funding for a project.
I decide to skip the third session in favor of checking out the trails. There must be a good reason IMBA rates these trails as epic and decided to have the mountain bike summit here. I call Donina and Dee and we head out to FATS.
We head for a trail called "the skinny". By the time we ride a mile of trail to get to the intersection for the skinny I realize that these trails are phenomenal. Tight twisty trail winds through a beautiful pine forest. There are pine needles all over the ground and on the trails. They look like they could get slippery in the turns but they don't give me too much trouble. The downhill sections are fast with so many places to get air that I think to myself they should change the name of the trail to air time. The trails are very much like Brown County but perhaps a half star better. It's hard to put my finger on why I like FATS better than Brown. I think the grade reversals have a little more kick to them making it easier to get air in the fast sections. Even Dee and Donina get the tinniest bit of air but like it and handle it well.
It seems that there is not a single stretch of trail that is straight. I am swooshing back and forth and launching and launching then swooping all in a non-stop rhythm. It just feels perfect. The pumping on the Roscoe in the fast sections are perfectly timed, bouncy, bouncy, swoop, swoop, bouncy, bouncy... There are some uphills but they are filled with grade reversals so none of them seem to equal the downhills. The whole time I am riding I am thinking about what a great trail it is.
So so much fun, but I have to stop frequently and wait for Dee and Donina who are getting tired. While we are catching our breath Hans Rey rides up the trail. We talk for a second he says he can't believe what a great trail it is. He says he is waiting for a giant uphill climb at the end. The girl riding with him says there isn't one, that's why this place is so great. It turns out the girl was right. There is no giant uphill at the end, they seemed to have done a great job breaking up the climbs so you don't notice them. We get back to the trailhead and get some free Powerade. Dee and Donina loved it, but they are both worn out from too much fun. Donina says I need to buy her a better helmet and some gloves. I drop off the girls and head back out for another loop.
This time out I ride with Terry, a GA bike shop owner who says he saw my bike park session. Terry is a real nice guy who wants to ride the skinny loop and brown wave. We head out but miss the turn for the skinny and bomb down "The Great Wall". This trail is unbelievable the sight lines are great and I scorch down this trail at what seems like mach speeds. After bombing down about a mile downhill, my suspicions are correct that we are on the wrong trail. The trails are one way, but we turn around and head back uphill to the intersection. There were reverse-grades but there was no hiding the fact that the mile back to the intersection was all uphill. By the time we get to the intersection my legs are on fire from the climb.
My second time through the skinny I am really flying as I have more confidence and know that you can haul-ass no brakes through pretty much any corner. We finish the loop and as we make it back to the trailhead and I am still all smiles from the fun I just had. I am soaked from the 90+ temperatures and the humidity (even though it probably wasn't that bad for GA) and I agree with the epic status if these trails. Mike Angus pops out of the woods behind us and we take a few pictures. I wish I had more time to ride another loop, but I want to get back into town for the grand opening of a new pumptrack a few miles from the hotel.
At the pumptrack we just miss the large crowd of IMBA people. I guess some pros and some BMX'ers were at the park riding. When we get there there are still some BMX'ers left and few MTB'ers I recognize from the conference. The pump track looks very tight with large rollers placed very close together and super tight radius berms. There are a few small jumps and a large spine in the middle. The dirt doesn't seem to have any dirt in it at all and is really red clay and sand.
I scope out the pumptrack and decide to give it a run. I didn't bring my DJ and the Roscoe won't work here, so I jump on Donina's Jack and give it a shot. Just like it looked, the rollers were super close and steep, this was a pretty advanced pumptrack. I tried taking the inside berm to get to the jumps, but it was such a tight berm that it was very hard to make after gaining craploads of speed from pumping. I tried a few more times but ended up sliding out on the sand that covered the track and rolling around in the red clay. I left disappointed in myself for doing poorly on the pumptrack. Whether the berm was too tight for that speed or I just suck at riding the bikes didn't matter, it was a cool setup in the woods with a pavilion and a water supply. I also was surprised to see all the BMX kids wearing helmets.
So after riding Brown County last weekend and then FATS this weekend it has been an epic week of riding. There is a definite commonality to all the great trail that I rode the last few weeks and that style can definitely be re-created here in Chicagoland. As usual more elveation change would be great, but I don't see why we can't build reverse-grades every 10 or 15 feet with twists and turns. It appears to be the key for super fun trails. That's what makes Brown County and Fats so great. You get those feelings from Saw Wee Kee although I would consider Saw Wee Kee an advanced flow trail while Brown and Fats are easy for beginners making them better for everyone.
While it might seem fundamental or obvious, a MTB trail should twist and turn, it should swoop and swish, it should never ever take the shortest path from point A to point B. I know that most of our trails are already built and changing them would take a long time, but in the future anytime we are blazing a new trail or re-routing a section of trail it should look like a trail built by bikers. Cambr as an organization should never create straight flat trails.
