Chimney Rock Conditions

Yes, you will educate someone from time to time. But you'll also make enemies yelling at the people who may ride when it's "close" to good. At the end of the day we need to understand that everyone has their own issues and that there is no right nor wrong. Let's face it, the trails are dirt. We're essentially arguing about dirt. In the grand scheme of things it makes little difference. So, while some of us may not love the fact that people are riding when the trails are a mess, I personally take solace in the fact that they will eventually blow through so many brake pads and drivetrain parts that they will stop. And I also take solace in the fact that in the summer, all these ruts will be all gone.

I know that if we all rode in the mess it would be awful. But we don't, so it's not. And you know, maybe that guy who rode the trail and put a big fat rut in the middle just lost his mom, or got fired, or who knows what. Maybe that's all he has that day, or this week. Maybe his wife left him or he just found out he has lung cancer. I know that odds are none of those things are true. But why assume? Maybe the guy just doesn't know any better. I don't think there's malice in people riding when the conditions are bad. They just don't think anything of it, are clueless about it, or just have to err on the muddy side because life is just crapping on them that day.

We can just keep trying to show people what we think it best. No yelling, no ALL CAPS, IMO. Just messages like this saying that well, if you have to you have to, but it's bad for the trails, your bike, and the people who make them.
 
Norm said:
Well, on the bright side it's nice to see that it may almost be good to ride in the frozen morning timeframe.
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Of course, this morning was probably the last opportunity for that.

JoeLee said:
do you think the people riding when trails can be damaged are looking at this thread?
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Perhaps so:
qclabrat said:
had to dismount a bunch of times around standing water... Plan to ride red and the others after work tomorrow
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I wouldn't mind as much if some people rode in less than ideal conditions if more people showed up at TM. The turnout is pretty small for this park for the amount of people from this site that ride these trails. Its tough for a small crew to maintain an entire park.
 
Word is that yellow is not ready to ride in above freezing conditions, and yellow always dries up faster than the rest of the park. I suppose I'll have to do my riding on Zwift Island for a little bit longer.
 
Admittedly I am a bit disappointed in @qclabrat for riding in those conditions, especially given that he's from my hood, and he does volunteer work in town. I'm tagging you to try and change your mind on that. I'm asking you not to ride in those conditions until @woody gives the all-clear.

The TM sessions would be a lot more productive of you guys worked around @davidcarson48's schedule. Besides, what the hell does @Kirt do all day? He should be out there with a rake like it's a curling match raking behind the riders as they make ruts.

@Clapper - do you think the Swiffer Island trails self-maintain? It's a tropical island where it rains all day. It's a shame that nobody has any respect for the TM bots that live there.
 
Norm said:
We're essentially arguing about dirt.
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We're not arguing about dirt, we're arguing about respect for other people's time.

The more people ride in shitty conditions, the more time others need to spend repairing the trails.

The more ruts people make, the the deeper the mudbogs become, and the longer it takes for the trails to dry out, so the longer the rest of us have to wait to ride.

PS: Are you suggesting that we should forgive those who trash our trails while chastising people who use all caps on the interwebs?
 
I understand and accept the time argument as something others do not like. Meaning, I am ok with Kirt (as an example) being mad that his time is not respected. However, as someone who dumps a lot of time into volunteer work, I take a different perspective. Let us take the baker, as an example. The baker spends all his working life making things that people eat & shit out. So in the grand scheme, his work is turned to shit. Yet he comes to work and makes his bread every day because he gets paid, and one presumes that he enjoys making bread at some level.

For me, I get paid in people appreciating what I do in terms of volunteer hours. Sure, I get 1 pat on the back for every 10 hours of work I do so it's a whole shit-ton of work for a whole not-shit-ton of pats on the back. But I get enjoyment out of a job well-done, and the sense of accomplishment for the community. I am not saying that everyone, or anyone, should agree with that. In fact, as I said in another thread today, most of what I've believed my whole life has ended up being wrong so it's very possible this opinion is stupid. Regardless, I just feel like this is the best way to approach the lack of appreciation, and the "well I make bread that turns to shit" reality of some things.

If another volunteer feels their time is not respected, I get that, understand that, and totally respect that. I don't expect people to believe the way I do. But it is how I deal with people who don't seem to give a shit that I/we do a massive amount of work for the community. So I take that perspective when looking at the issue. I have also talked to Kirt about this, so I know I'm not pissing in his corn flakes with this opinion.

woody said:
PS: Are you suggesting that we should forgive those who trash our trails while chastising people who use all caps on the interwebs?
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Not at all. I'm espousing the "carrot not stick" philosophy which KenS wants to promote. He believes that JORBA has a semi-Draconian image because over the years some of the stewards of the park have come off as "trail nazis" and he wants to change that. I am in his camp, and am trying to be a proponent of that. I honestly think that some of the mud riders are selfish pricks that don't GAF and I can name at the very least 1 prominent member of the bike community that many of us know that fits that description. But if we tell them that, and say it out loud, they probably aren't going to respond to either the carrot nor the stick.
 
Norm said:
@Clapper - do you think the Swiffer Island trails self-maintain? It's a tropical island where it rains all day. It's a shame that nobody has any respect for the TM bots that live there.
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Those bots work for coconuts and are pissed nobody gives them thanks. What they don't know is that there are others that assist in tm(trimming, clearing, etc.) after hours that don't ask for a pat on the back.
 
message received, Sunday morning was the last time till I get word from Woody

Is there a way to get a dashboard of sorts across each NJ region of trail conditions?
for example CR would be red, meaning don't ride and RV may be yellow for ride lightly
 
qclabrat said:
message received, Sunday morning was the last time till I get word from Woody

Is there a way to get a dashboard of sorts across each NJ region of trail conditions?
for example CR would be red, meaning don't ride and RV may be yellow for ride lightly
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I think that would take a lot of work to keep up to date. Best bet, learn the draining habits of the parks you ride or at last resort ask for a locals opinion in the conditions thread.
 
qclabrat said:
message received, Sunday morning was the last time till I get word from Woody

Is there a way to get a dashboard of sorts across each NJ region of trail conditions?
for example CR would be red, meaning don't ride and RV may be yellow for ride lightly
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Awesome, thanks! @woody will be happy to see he made a difference today!

Ideally I'd love to have a network of us that constantly put in trail conditions and it keeps a rolling log of what people are seeing. The trailspinners used to have something like that, not sure how much it's used anymore.

@gtluke and I discussed this. But he said to wait until we have the new board in place to see what sorts of widgets it might have to help it. Thoughts? @soundz may have some input.
 
Would be cool make a map that would correlate a park's drainage characteristics, precipitation in the last 5-10 days, and current temperatures to predict what might be rideable. And have it self-update. And be free to create. And actually be right. Maybe I'll put that in my list of things to try to do.
 
rlb said:
Would be cool make a map that would correlate a park's drainage characteristics, precipitation in the last 5-10 days, and current temperatures to predict what might be rideable. And have it self-update. And be free to create. And actually be right. Maybe I'll put that in my list of things to try to do.
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I was thinking more of an anonymous data input point. No names, so you don't have to admit you rode shitty trails. Just a subjective assessment on how good/bad it is and maybe a comment field or sorts, then you collate the data and come up with an index. Places like Allaire, Six Mile, CR would have a lot of people adding info. Other parks less so but the more people use it the more it would be accurate.

I wonder if anyone has a system like this that actually works. Paging @KenS and @gt2brew on this one.
 
Norm said:
I was thinking more of an anonymous data input point. No names, so you don't have to admit you rode shitty trails. Just a subjective assessment on how good/bad it is and maybe a comment field or sorts, then you collate the data and come up with an index. Places like Allaire, Six Mile, CR would have a lot of people adding info. Other parks less so but the more people use it the more it would be accurate.

I wonder if anyone has a system like this that actually works. Paging @KenS and @gt2brew on this one.
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I actually started to look at trailforks, as 2 of our JORBA folk pointed it out to me. You can update trail, not anonymously though http://www.trailforks.com/region/allaire-state-park/ as you can see by my Blind Trail report last week....it will only work if everyone uses it. Judging by requests for folks to stay off trails by other organizations, no one has THE answer yet.

woody said:
We're not arguing about dirt, we're arguing about respect for other people's time.

The more people ride in shitty conditions, the more time others need to spend repairing the trails.

The more ruts people make, the the deeper the mudbogs become, and the longer it takes for the trails to dry out, so the longer the rest of us have to wait to ride.

PS: Are you suggesting that we should forgive those who trash our trails while chastising people who use all caps on the interwebs?
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Woodys comment really struck a nerve here. Many of us who build trail do it for the love of the trail and take time away from friends, family, and ride time to do it. Norm's remarks regarding a baker was funny because I thought "maybe the baker makes bread for people to enjoy regardless of the fact it becomes toilet fodder the next day". That's how I always felt about trail work and I was always hopeful that folk would respect the trail, not just the folk who busted ass to put it there or keep it nice.
 
all this good content is getting lost in a conditions thread....where someone that doesn't live near CR will never see.
 
qclabrat said:
message received, Sunday morning was the last time till I get word from Woody

Is there a way to get a dashboard of sorts across each NJ region of trail conditions?
for example CR would be red, meaning don't ride and RV may be yellow for ride lightly
Click to expand...

For someone with decent programming chops, this would be a great project. It would probably take a year of self reporting and temperature, wind, precipitation to train a model for each park (trail breakdown may be a bit harder). You could get pretty close to figuring out how far after a storm a trail will be ridable again. Wunderground probably has an API to get the temp, wind, and precipitation data.

Okay, maybe I'll try this. My programming skills are quite minimal and my attention span is just as low, so don't expect anything to come of this (5% chance of actual working product, 10% chance of pseudo code).
 
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