Friday 22nd morning ride

Kirt

JORBA: Chimney Rock, Team MTBNJ.COM
JORBA.ORG
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Any takers for a ride Friday morning before the rain comes? I'm kinda flexible as to where, I just want to start no later than 9am. Weather.com says the rain should start around 1pm. 2 to 3 hour ride depending on the place. Let me know. Thanks.

Kirt
 

Maurice

New Member
Kirt,

what about Round Valley 7am? Out and back should be done in 2:15 tops ;)

I have to work that day or I'd have mentioned a later hour.

Maurice
 

Kirt

JORBA: Chimney Rock, Team MTBNJ.COM
JORBA.ORG
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Maurice,

Sounds good, my wife will be happy that I'll be home early. I think I'll start @ 6.30am & let you catch me, I fiqure that will happen by 7.15am.:D I guess we'll have to park in the back side because of the early start. 2.15hr out & back without using the fire road?:drooling: Sounds like fun, see you Friday morning.

Kirt
 

Maurice

New Member
Sounds good. No need for a head start, shape goes away fast...

Anybody else want to get out of bed early that day?
 

Maurice

New Member
Well we had a great time! Three of use: Kirt, Bob and myself. We started just a tad before the sun went up. The trails are mint, if not a bit slippery because of the leaves.

The big bummer is that they sanitized the trail even more. Just when you thought it couldn't be more dumbed down they take the bobcat and remove any log that stands 2ft. from the trail... There was a nice little jump near the bottom of puke hill, I was getting ready to nail it... but it is no more :(

Anyway, still great fun bombing down those trails :D

Great riding with you Kirt and Bob

Cheers,

Maurice
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Cool, good deal. Glad you guys had a nice ride.

Crazy what's going on with the RV trails and the sanitizing. I can't imagine anything that Rip does isn't going to be torn down before long.
 

Maurice

New Member
Damn right.

I once spoke my mind about the gravel laid on a good bit of the beginning of the trail (better experience of nature, huh?) and was told that was a multi-use trail and that State regulations (or some BS like that) mandated a 3ft. width all along...

In my opinion the State part of the park will not change much. On the other hand the County side has a bit more potential...

If anyone has the ba^H^H guts to deal with the political stuff I can hold myself at wielding a McLeod (not the immortal).

Maurice
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
I tend to agree about RV proper, but then 2 years ago they put that switchback in, which is a nice trail IMO. I wish the Eagle Trail was a little better maintained. It probably would take 3 of us (I'll throw Kirt in here for conversation sake) about 2 hours to build up a few log crossings to make that rideable, at least until the hill. Of course it legally closes in 6 weeks or so anyway so it doesn't seem worth the bother.

The County side has huge potential. Lots of area over there. I think Rip has been at the political side of that for some time. I don't even know how one would go about taking on that. Any ideas?

Even with the green light that stuff is in need of experienced trail builders, since a lot of it will press the limits of maintainability I'm sure. I don't know what fall lines are and all that. But I do know it's steep, and steep trails need to be well made to last.
 

Maurice

New Member
Norm,

the switchbacks are an alternate route wrt/ the multi-use trail. That's probably why Rip is looking at it. Unless we have alternate trails everywhere they'll keep removing sticks and pebbles from the trail (and leave snickers wrappers behind in the process....).

I unfortunately don't have the time to go to meetings and stuff, but like I said I can lend a hand.

Hunterdon County is big with a relatively low population concentration, yet RV is the only worthy park and it's what, 10 miles of trails... Lots more people would come if there were more trails. There's a bit of potential.

Geez, let me wrap up work here, don't want to work over the holidays ;)

Maurice
 

Mike679

Active Member
A few years back (maybe 7-8) someone went in to the county side of the park and built a number of North Shore-esque stunts back there. Ladders, planks, log rides, etc. If you look on the trail review section of mtbr, its listed as "Ride NJ" - there was even a website showing all of the stunts (but oddly there were very few of people actually riding them). I'm certain these were built without permission and were dismantled within a year or so.

The stunts were, in my opinion, an accident waiting to happen. They looked cool from a distance, but were constructed largely of brittle deadfall, which I learned when I went through a ladder bridge. I would guess a couple of kids were trying to recreate what they had seen in Bike Magazine, which was leaning heavily on the North Shore "free-ride" stuff back then.

In any event, this is a different time and the mountain bike community seems to have really stepped up with its reationships with the parks as well as trail maintenance. Would be interesting to see if there is potential for a more gradual route up that side of the mountain instead of the two hellish routes currently in place.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
No JORBA chapter that I know of.

I'm fine with alternate routes! Where do I sign up? The camp road is a tad tedious. Like you, I don't have time for meetings, and like you I can lend a hand. We need a meeting goer. Too bad mergs doesn't live in Clinton.

Work is almost a standstill. But I need to finish coding up manual tar, encryption, and sftp commands for the operations guys for next week. Thankfully I'll be able to turn over this stuff to someone else who will have the unenviable task of teaching then supporting operations. In the meantime the tar/gpg/sftp process takes a while when you're working with 2G+ files. Lots of time for Internet BS. I assume from the ^H notation that you understand what I'm talking about. Anyway, I'm almost done, so hopefully I can run out of here for an early start on vacation!
 

Maurice

New Member
No JORBA chapter that I know of.

I'm fine with alternate routes! Where do I sign up? The camp road is a tad tedious. Like you, I don't have time for meetings, and like you I can lend a hand. We need a meeting goer. Too bad mergs doesn't live in Clinton.

Work is almost a standstill. But I need to finish coding up manual tar, encryption, and sftp commands for the operations guys for next week. Thankfully I'll be able to turn over this stuff to someone else who will have the unenviable task of teaching then supporting operations. In the meantime the tar/gpg/sftp process takes a while when you're working with 2G+ files. Lots of time for Internet BS. I assume from the ^H notation that you understand what I'm talking about. Anyway, I'm almost done, so hopefully I can run out of here for an early start on vacation!

Yep, no bugs to fix for me today, big plus. On the other hand I need to wrap up a performance report comparing a few protocols/software versions. I'm lucky that the +1 release of my piece of code gets better numbers so no optimization work for now. But still Excel 'n Word are such a piece of...

Also hoping to get the hell out of here sooner.
 

Maurice

New Member
wtf is the ^H stuff anyway?

It's usually the control character for 'erase' in many flavors of Unix (control-H). Every time you see that it means you start typing something and then erase as many characters as there are control-Hs.
 

mergs

Spokompton's Finest
JORBA.ORG
Correct. Currently JORBA has no chapter coverage for Round Valley so I'm looking for a point (wo)man for this park. We just got Somerset covered (WVP and Sourlands) so we're looking to identify someone like Bob Adase (Somerset Chapter Lead) and the other established chapter leaders of JORBA (Bob W and GT2BREW for example are regulars on this board).

Its a lot of work so I won't lie to you. But if you are interested I can get you in touch with someone like Bob or Frank (GT2BREW) and they can tell you what sort of workload and skills this entails. Breifly however, the bare minimums are 2 work parties and/or 2 other events (group rides, skills clinics, etc) per year for a JORBA chapter. But that's not really adequate , you need to be there at least every other month during the riding season (e.g. Frank and Bob W are holding monthly TMs and events), and you need good people skills and be willing to sit down and work with both the land managers, lead crews, and the riding public.

Also, if there are people who want to split the work to lighten the load off of one single person that's perfectly ok too (example mentioned: Maurice indicated he'd be willing to pitch in, perhaps him and someone else could coodinate some/all of the trail days and another one handle the interface to the park). Sean, Steve and Brad are working as a pseudo chapter through Morris Trails Partnership to take on Mahlon. It doesn't matter the 3 of them split the work, I'm happy that they're taking it on and are obviously passionate about MD. Bob A and Kirt work in a similar way with WVP as well.

The last thing we want however is someone to take on the stewardship of a park that is not committed for the full season. So if you want to help with a TM or two we want you involved (and you can be and you can make a difference!) but leading a chapter of JORBA and taking on a park requires much more time and sacrifice. I am still amazed that the guys running chapters with JORBA have time to work, ride, and keep their parks in top shape. Its a sight to behold.

On a related note, coverage of more of the heavily mtb-used parks is one of my '07 goals for JORBA, and Round Valley, among others, is totally on the radar for that task. I'm still working on a "Chapter Startup" page that will spell all of this out. I'll have it done in early '07.
 
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Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Good post Mergs.

Have you approached Rip for this? From the hints on MTBR it seems he has been trying to work with the park(s) to make changes. I don't know if not being official hurts, or maybe he's doesn't put in the time, or maybe it's an impossible situation...or I guess I should just say I have no idea what the deal is there. But he seems certainly to want to make things happen. But then, any public offers of help (by at least 3 of us) have been met with public silence.

So anyway I caught the early train but of course NJ Transit sucks ass and I only got home 45 minutes earlier than normal. So it goes.
 

Kirt

JORBA: Chimney Rock, Team MTBNJ.COM
JORBA.ORG
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Well how did it go?


It was brutal! I wasn't really feeling it today though Maurice will do that to you no matter how good a condition you’re in. He rode over to meet us so he was already warmed up & we started out at what I would call race pace. I warmed up pretty quickly as you would expect at that pace. They had to wait for me a bit but overall the ride was fun.
 
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