This morning I met up with about a dozen other people to do some trail maintenance on the Fork Area Trail System, a really nice network of several intersecting trails just across the river from my house. This was my first work party, and it was fun, hard work. It was nice just to be out in the woods. I used a hand saw to remove a small downed tree that was sitting across the trail at about head height, then worked with a more experienced mountain biker and trailer worker named David to clean out a few dips where water had been pooling after heavy rains. We used a couple of shovel and axe-like long tools to cut out the downhill sides of these dips — hopefully the water will now run off across the trail rather than sitting there making ruts in the dips of the trails.
After a good two hours of work, David offered to show me one of the loops, The Skinny, which I appreciate because I’ve never ridden with a more experienced mountain biker who knows the trails. It was a lot of fun and I’m definitely heading back out there again soon! Maybe not tomorrow because with the combination of shoveling all that clay around and riding the mountain bike, both activities I haven’t done in a long time, I’m pretty tired and sore right now.
What’s with the cute names they give all the mountain bike trails? Road bikers tend to give pretty boring names to our rides, like Harlem Backwards. I may have to work on that when I eventually get a CMS up at ccrides.