Sometimes It Better To Skip A Ride

After careful thought Friday evening, I decided against riding to give back to the trails. One of the trails out in the Uwharrie National Forest was in dire need of some tree-clearing, so I gave TomTom call to let him know that I would be there early in the morning to help. This was a planned work day, and I'm not sure why I didn't plan to be there in the first place. I guess I was being selfish like most mountain bikers, deciding to skip out on trail work to go for a ride.


I'm glad I came to my senses.


We met up at the trailhead, and surprisingly there were only four of us that showed up. Kevin B., TomTom, Good Guy Greg, and of course, me. We grabbed the saws and hiked our way out into the forest, casually chatting it up with the hunters that were out there to bag some deer.


We had a shitload of work to do, and in this case it wasn't cut out for us. Trees blocked a lot of the trail, so we got to work.


I'll just post up a bunch of pictures now.

Some of the trees were pretty damn big:

But we managed to get it eventually.

Sometimes it was hard to even find the trail:

But we did, and got it cleared.

It was a long day. We cut trees, cleared the trail, and walked all over the forest. We were too tired to ride afterward, but it was a good kind of tired. While most people were out enjoying some riding in perfect NC fall weather, we were out there busting our asses trying to get one of our favorite trails in the area back in ride-able condition. I'm not saying that I'm special or anything, because it's not really a big deal. What is a big deal is that a lot of people don't give back to the trails.


That's a damn shame. You like riding, right? Well, get off your ass and get involved. There are organizations all over that build and maintain trails, and with all that fancy Internet technology we have these days it's easy to find one.


I expect to see you out there putting in some work on the trails you love to ride. I'm not asking much, you know.



Just give up a little bit of your riding time to do a little bit of work. It makes a big difference.