Still in bad shape

I went for a ride last night at the science center trails. First stop hillside. Boy I love this section of trail. It's in great shape. It is the only section that has any ups and downs to speak of and offers the best workout. It makes a great individual time trial to gauge ones fitness. The rest of the trail is not in such great shape. The J-11 is now all dirt road, soon to be ready to have asphalt poured on it. I didn't make it far enough in denmans to see how good it was, the beginning section gave me enough trouble I turned back. I hope we can get this trail up and running soon. I ended up pounding out some paved trail up around downtown. Not nearly as fun as dirt. On a brighter note, it sounds like the Banner Pits mountain bike trail will be rideable after Saturday. Check out the CITA website for more info.

Good to see dirt again

I joined up with the CITA guys on Saturday for some trail work. We also had 40 united way volunteers gifted to us by the city. All in all I think we had about 60 people there for trail work. The UW volunteers headed up into the trails to reclaim some bad areas and open up some new trail, while most of the CITA members hung at the parking lot and built bridges. Due to the storms and flooding 5 bridges needed to be replaced. And that is just for the Hillside and Rollercoaster. I believe the breakdown was one 20 footer, 3 16 footers and 1 10 footer. The bridges went together easily enough. But after you build a bridge it has to be placed on the trail. That's where having a bunch of people really helps. It would have been no fun to carry a 16 foot bridge 1/4 mile through mountain bike trails with any less people than we had. It was a very successful trail work day. We ran out of time to place the bridges in Rollercoaster, but Hillside is open. It has 3 new bridges and a new section of trail. I got out and rode a few laps yesterday. The new section is very fun. It has been way too long since I was able to ride dirt. It felt good to be back. I might even head back tonight for round 2.

Pictures of the trail work day can be found here.