work is good

I've been working overtime, at least that's what it feels like. Not just the job I get paid for but everything in between and even though most of the work I've been doing doesn't pay me in cash it pays me in other ways like that sweet feeling of riding your bike trough the woods on singletrack you've worked hard on. It's totally different than riding a trail that someone else built, trust me.

This has probably been the wettest winter we've ever seen, I'm not sure which is worse a cold winter or a wet one. I think we've been able to ride more but only if you've been lucky to be off when the skies are dry. Those days I've been torn between, "Should I ride or should I spend time trying to get this trail finished?" I've tried my damnest to do both but one eventually ends up falling short, in my case it's been the riding.  I did try to sneak in a ride a couple of hours before the club meeting this week but half way through the ride we pulled the plug and went home due to muddy conditions. Honestly I thought it would have been dryer but I guess the whole "freeze thaw" was in full effect and I hate the thought of damaging the trail. I was off three days this week and it rained 2 out of 3 of them. The one dry day was right between the two rainy ones so I opted to do trail work. Me and another guy put in a solid 4 hrs of work finally getting the trail open. It felt really good to get it rideable but I later found out some yay-hoo rode it in the rain the next day no doubtly screwing up the work we had done. Who rides a brand new trail in the rain knowing full well it's not ready for that kind of abuse?

These pics are a couple weeks old and alot of work has been done since.

A sweet natural berm.

It's kind of hard to see but there is a small drop here. We actually ended up putting in two. They were there almost naturally, I just merely sculpted them into something fun to ride.



A little more polishing work to do and maybe some rock armoring here and there and I hope we can call it good. I'm ready to move on to the next project which is more on the maintenance side of things and be done until next fall, my trail tools could use the rest.

After we finished Wednesday I could barely move but knowing it was going to rain the next day and I would be at work all weekend I had to ride. I went home ate lunch, popped a couple ibruprophens and grabbed my bike to see how my handy work rolled. It felt good, the trail that is, a bit soft and in need of packing in but good flow. Me on the other had, by that evening I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.