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Category: outdoors

Phase II of River Bends is In Progress

Published September 26, 2010

Phase II of the multi-use single track trail at River Bends that I’ve been facilitating the construction of is moving along nicely. Since completing Phase I back in June I’d written up this proposal (PDF, page 3 contains a map) for two more phaes of trail, gotten it approved by the township, and gone to work so that it can be completed by winter.

All of the Existing Segment of Phase II was trimmed back (it was quite overgrown) to a nicely rideable / hikeable state at the beginning of September, and throughout the past week I’ve begun work on the New Segment. In River Bends I’ve found that when getting started I like to clear deadfall and rake in the route. (Another photographic example.) After this then a line trimmer can be brought in to remove any small plant growth and scour the ground, and then bench cutting can be done as-needed on off-camber sections of land to provide a flat place to ride. All but ~1000′ of this new segment of trail is now raked, so I’m quite happy with how things are going. Plans are in place to do more work tomorrow starting at 3pm, so with any luck there’s only another week or two until this whole segment is ready to ride.

It was quite satisfying to be taking a break today, standing on freshly raked ground, and seeing trail rolling across the hills as far as the terrain allowed me to see. I think I’m liking this trail building thing. Not only do I get to build something fun but it costs nothing save for labor, supports another interest of mine, and being on public land it benefits anyone in the area who chooses to use it. It’s almost like open source taken to public works.

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Trail Caster

Published September 18, 2010

The things that one finds in the woods never cease to amuse me.

Another ~3 hours in at River Bends, and the existing Phase I trail is clear of deadfall, heavy concentrations of leaves, and impeding downed trees. A few corners were even slightly reworked for better flow. Even with rain falling the trail was in great shape, so now to find time to keep going on the new segment of trail…

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New Bike, Falling, Missing Flags

Published July 18, 2010

Today while trying out the new (to me) single speed at River Bends I washed out the front wheel and fell. Oops. (Crash area photo above or here. Yes, it’s blurry. It’s kinda dark in those woods.)

I also confirmed that the 34:16 gearing is too much for me and I’m now pursuing acquisition of a 19T cog. This should give me a much easier (within 1% of the ‘standard’ 32:18) gearing, which should be good for getting going again with 29er single speed trail riding. Since I couldn’t make it up a couple of the hills (the sharp turn then up ones) I think this will do. Now I just have to find the cog and tool, which I’d prefer to do before Tuesday so I can take the bike out to the Tree Farm for the group ride.

When out at River Bends I had a rather unplesant surprise. I’ve been working the MMBA and Shelby Township to build new mountain bike (and hiking and running, of course, since they are shared) trails in the park. On Friday I marked another large segment of trail for us to build out, but someone removed almost all of my tape flags over the weekend. I suspect it’s someone trying to keep new work (or bikes or something?) out of “their” part of the park, but it’s hard to say. I also found dirt bike tire tracks (photo) on both the two track and single track, and a couple torn up areas from the dirt bikes riding off the trail and doing doughnuts on the two track. I guess these are just the sort of things that have to be dealt with as part of the process (and inherent problems) involved in building and maintaining trails.

Also while out at River Bends I ran into a couple who were out looking to ride the trail for the first time. I started to take them through it, but after a little bit we ended up parting ways as they opted to ride some two track together and I sent off for another lap of the single track. I’m really glad to see people heading out to the trails to check them out.

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Cock ‘n Bull Ginger Beer

Published July 11, 2010

Here’s a bottle of Cock ‘n Bull Ginger Beer, purchased at the gas station at the corner of Grange Hall and Mackey Roads after Erik, Kristi, and I rode the East Loop (Gruber’s Grinder) at the Holly-Holdridge Mountain Bike Trails, which are more commonly known just as Holdridge. This was a quite challenging (but fun) trail, which took us 2:20 to complete the 15.5 mile route riding at a quite relaxed pace. It has everything from flowing sections of hard pack through the woods to 6′ high piles of field stones and reasonably high log piles. (Photo of Erik going over the biggest of the log piles.)

After the ride (and purchase of snacks) we headed over to Wildwood Lake in Holly Recreation Area and swam for a while to cool off (photo). Unfortunately while out swimming (and taking underwater photos) my supposedly waterproof to 10′ Olympus Stylus 850 SW sprung a leak. The camera started complaining that the memory card’s contacts needing cleaning, and after I opened the memory card / battery card compartment I found it to have water in it. It’s now sitting in a container of desiccant, so hopefully it’ll start working again soon and I can just put it to use as my standard travel point and shoot / bike jersey pocket camera.

Despite our snack of good soda and potato chips, having just biked for 2:20 and swam for 45 minutes we were getting a bit hungry, so the next stop was Union Woodshop in Clarkston, MI. This offshoot of Clarkston Union, one of my favorite America food restaurants, has a menu of great looking BBQ dishes and is some place I’d been wanting to try for a while.

With $0.87 glasses (mason jars, really) of Badass Beer (yes, the Kid Rock stuff, a passable lager) on special during the final game of the World Cup (which Spain won) we each ordered pulled pork with a variety of side items. I chose mac and cheese (ala Clarkston Union) and sweet potatoes (with roasted jalapeno and a hint of maple), which can be seen here along with some corn bread and sweet butter. Typcial of most midwestern restaurants portions were large enough to ensure leftovers. I’ll definitely want to go back there, but the typical 1.5 hour wait on most weeknights may make this difficult. I guess we’ll just have to plan for mid-afternoon on a Sunday again.

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Mountain Bike Trails at River Bends

Published June 27, 2010

Those of you who regularly read what I write and pay attention to biking stuff will know that I will frequently ride at Shelby Township’s River Bends Park, located a scant four miles from my house. In the past few months the MMBA, with me providing representation for this project, has been working with Shelby Township to develop new multi-use single track trails in the park. While the MMBA is a mountain biking organization, the trails we build are perfect for biking, hiking, trail running, and numerous other activities, so we’re an ideal organization to build new trails in a park.

Yesterday we had our first full trail day at River Bends, an event which brought out 15-ish people to help finish off Phase 1 of the trail. A few of us had started work prior to the Trail Day, but yesterday did the bulk of the work. We now have just over a mile of new single track winding its way along a ridge between some existing two-track and the Clinton River floodplane. If you’d like to see a KMZ of the route that we completed yesterday it can be found here.

Now, time to polish up any little quirks in the current trail and move on to thinking about Phase Two.

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Baby Robin No More

Published June 3, 2010

The baby robin that Danielle was raising has flown away. On Memorial Day she took it home and right after being taken outside it flew up into a nearby cherry tree and stayed there. The photo above is one of the last photos I took of it, with it standing on my kitchen counter after slowly trying to eat a piece of nightcrawler. It kept making noise and trying to pick it up before Danielle fed it directly to the robin.

New photos of the rescued baby robin, all taken the day before it flew away, can be found at the bottom of this page and on this page.

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Ant Hill at Bald Mountain

Published May 31, 2010

Bald Mountain State Recreation Area, North Unit has some slightly less morose things to see too, such as quite-large ant hills like as the one above. These are a common site along the mountain bike / hiking trail, often found in slightly sunny sandy areas. Today I took a fast turn a little wrong and almost ended up hitting one, which would have been in no way good. (They are super-soft, likely to cause a crash, and filled with likely-to-be-angry ants.) Thankfully I avoided it and did not fall, continuing on my way.

This one here is found on the east side of connector from the orange loop to Predmore Road, between numbers 16 and 17. (Map) This connector is commonly used to avoid the low laying and frequently wet trail between the old ranger’s house and the lake. As the trail was mostly dry I rode that segment, but used this section to get back to Predmore and thus back to Addison Oaks where I had parked for today’s bike ride.

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Lumberjack Route at Big M and North Country Trail

Published May 24, 2010

This weekend Danielle and I headed up north to the Manistee area to meet a bunch of Trail’s Edge folks at Big M to ride this year’s route for the Lumberjack 100 Mountain Bike Race. After doing one lap of this 33 mile course I’m quite certain that there’s no way I’d be able to complete the three required for the race. It’s a hard trail, almost all tight, winding single track with unexpected sand at the bottom of hills.

At one point I was coming down a hill, only to see Nick and Erik standing at the bottom of the hill. It turns out that Bill (pictured on the right) had slid a bit in some sand and hit a tree hard with the side of his head, leaving him sitting dazed on the ground. As I tried to assess where I should go and slow down I too slid in the sand, but instead spun my front wheel around and stopped against the tree, hugging it and holding on to stay upright. Just as I came to a stop I watched my front wheel roll up towards Bill, only to stop an inch from his helmet and face.

Thankfully I didn’t hit him, as that would have made an already bad situation even worse. Even more thankfully, after sitting for a while Bill was able to get up and ride out, feeling only a bit shaken and showing no obvious signs of what I knew to look for indicating serious brain injury.

After the ride we headed over a nice, but older campground a few miles from the Big M ski area where we’d reserved a number of campsites, and a cabin for the less hearty of the bunch. Tents were set up, a fire was made, food was cooked, and beer was drank while sitting around. We ended up eating a spectrum of food, from locally made beef jerky and kielbasa to spanish tortilla, a mini-keg of Oberon to Trader Joe’s house-brand Pilsener, from Annie’s Cheesey Lasagna made with high quality turkey in a dutch oven to sandwich cookies and M&M’s.

The following morning, after eating breakfast at a local diner and breaking down camp, some of us headed over to the Marilla trailhead of the North Country Trail to do some riding there. Erik, Kristi, and I took off together, but with the terrain there being almost all bench cut trail leading up and down the sort of hills that I normally don’t ride, I soon turned back. If I was in better shape, or maybe if it was a bit cooler or less sunny, or maybe if hadn’t ridden one of the hardest long rides of my life the day prior I would have ridden more, but I’m glad that I headed back when I did. Once back at the trail head I couldn’t stop sweating, and only felt better 20 minutes into the drive home in a car with the air conditioning on high.

Here’s some of the photos I took this weekend:

· Joe, Jon, Marty, Nick, Kristi, and Bill as we are about to leave the Big M parking lot to ride the Lumberjack race route.
· Bathroom break. There were an equal number of people using trees along the right side of the trail, but the lens wasn’t wide enough.
· Consulting on the route while standing in some CCC pines.
· Sandy downhill where Bill crashed and I almost ran into Bill due to my inability to stop safely in the sand. I ended up stopping against / gently hitting the tree on the left.
· Kristi, collapsed on the ground, after riding up a hill that everyone else walked. Erik then helped her get unclipped.
· Typical Big M Ski Area signage.
· Bratwurst boiling in a cast iron skillet before being grilled.
· Bratwurst on the grill as a paper plate burns and Tak and Nick sit in comfy chairs.
· Kristi and Bill along the North Country Trail right near a bench overlooking a wonderful hill.
· Sign pointing back to the Marilla Trail Head from the North Country Trail. Much of the riding was sandy like this.
· Riding back to the Marilla trail head on the NCT alone, as I turned back before Erik and Kristi.
· This bridge was not far from the trail head, at the bottom of a ravine.
· Some inconsiderate person tucked a dirty diaper under the bridge on the North Country Trail.
· Looking over the handlebars down from the spur of the North Country Trail leading back to the Marilla trailhead.

I’m hoping to get up there to ride the NCT once more, this time a bit better prepared both mentally and physically. With all the bench cutting the trail is a little more intimidating than I’d expected, and with all the climbing it’s a bit more grueling than I’d hoped for.

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Danielle’s Baby Robin

Published May 23, 2010

Last week Danielle found a baby robin in the grass at her house; so young that it was mostly skin and without feathers. As the parents had apparently abandoned it, she decided to feed it until it flies away. This has been going well thus far, with it enjoying a steady diet of watered down canned dog food, berries, and insects.

Because it needs regular feedings the robin accompanied us on this weekend’s trip to the Manistee area for mountain biking, to Danielle’s work last week, and to my house this weekend. It’s doing fairly well living in its sock-lined cardboard box, but starting today it’s been trying to get out, stretch its now-feathered wings, and fly up on few inch high objects. I can’t imagine that it’ll be more than a few more days before it’s able to fly away.

If you compare the photo above (link) with this one you can see just how much its changed in a few days. Most noticeably it can stand up for long periods of time, climb things, and has many more feathers.

The rest of the Baby Robin Rescue photos can be found here.

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