Mountain Bike Camp

My job at White Clay has to be one of the coolest in the world. I get to work with great people and ride my bike with some pretty amazing kids. I take the weeks off from work (without vacation pay) because I believe in this program that much. I'd do it for free.

This week we have the level II kids. Most of them are 13-14 years old but some are as young as 11. That is a pretty big age gap. Today is Wednesday and we have over 50 miles in for the week already. 20 of that was today. These guys are lucky this week because the trail crew has donated the time of two of their full-time trail builders to ride with us. This is cool on several levels. First, they built the trails. They know all the new ones, secret ones, and future ones. Second, they know what it takes to build them. We really stress trail stewardship in this program. Things like being a courteous trail user, volunteering, and maintenance. Not every ride has to be a race. Good stuff to know. The trail crew guys can really enlighten the kids more than the rest of us because they know how long it took to build something. They know what riding on soft soil does to the trails and so on.

On Tuesday we sat the kids down and had a chat about all of these things. We asked them if they knew how long it takes to make a trail. Obviously, none of them really knew. We rode 10 miles at that point in the day so I said to Adam (one trail crew person) "How long does it take?" He said (which is pretty amazing) "10 feet and hour if cut by hand." (a lot of it has to be)

10 feet and hour!

I asked the kids if anyone knew how many feet were in a mile. We came up with about 5000. Close enough right? So I asked them how many hours it took to make the 10 miles of trail we just rode. They scratched their heads and realized it was 5000 hours. I think it hit home with them. Adam and Chip did some quick thinking and said that it actually took them about to 3000 hours to build those trails but still a long time.

Tomorrow is another day to teach them something else.

Saturday Chad, Jeremiah, and I will be in Brownstown racing for 55km. It will be hot and possibly wet since they are calling for T-storms.

One more thing...If you haven't been to Downtown Isaac's lately, GO! They really went the extra mile on the outside dining. Big planters, fancy plates, and linen! No more paper napkins. And from what I understand they buy their veggies local when possible. Care to comment on that Mr. Jacobs?

Go now.