You'll Never See a Dissatisfied SCV

Yesterday Austin and I volunteered with the BBTC to do some trail building out at Tiger Mountain. Out of an impressive group of 60 a smaller group of 10 or so, including us, went to the highest, and gnarliest, trail to build a "water stop". When finished this construct of ours would push flowing water off the trail and toward the tributaries nearby, thereby eliminating sitting water on the trail. With our hands and wits alone, we command mighty rivers.

If you have never built a water stop (and why would you?) the process consists of the movement of ponderous rock from diaspora to one point in the middle of an active mountain bike trail. Several of the rocks required 4 men to life and move. It was exhausting. After collecting 25-30 of these rocks you shovel out a 6'x4' pit to put them in. After spending hours carefully placing these constituent rocks in their proper place, you fill gaps with smaller and smaller rocks, eventually burying all but the largest rock completely in dirt. The end result looks like nothing more than a 6 inch drop in the trail that is fun to jump off of, a passing biker would give it perhaps a fleeting half-second of thought.

Still, the trail will survive that biker and thousands more because of the 'armoring' we provided. The movement of a few tons of rock over 7 hours by a crew of 10 was important if not noticeable.

We make extensive use of those trials and it gave me the warm fuzzies to give a little back. Also now I have this sense of part ownership of the Preston RR Trail. I don't know what effect it will have but it is there and feels as though it might prove profound one day. If you ever join us on Preston rest assured that we will stop so that I might show you the rock, where we got the rock, and why the rock is awesome.

Along with my warm fuzzies comes a sandwich, two oatmeal cookies, a muffin, a 16oz can of Coke and a really nice tech shirt from the fine folks are REI. This shirt is /really/ nice! It's one of those fancy "I-work-out-and-have-money-so-my-shirt-is-not-cotton" shirts. I've always wanted one. It says "Get Dirty" on the back and the front has some other stuff including the REI insignia. Also it is green and lets face it people, I pop in green.

Those warm fuzzies came at a high, sinister cost. I hurt all over. I pulled something in my knee, stretched my fingers to exhaustion, made sore my back, and in an event that is very hard to put into words I threw a tree at myself, bruising my right quad severely. These ingredient aches are mounted with a buerre of general muscle pain, simmered, and brought to an exquisite finish that kept me out of the gym today. At this point my body is merely a vehicle to punish me for poor decision making. It is a pain that only a day of hard labor can bring and it is wonderful.

It was also nice to finally get a toe into the 'Community'. I gotta tell you, MTBers are a solid set of folk. Not only did 60 folks come to give a Sunday to trail work, but with almost no exception every biker that passed while we were working thanked us for the work, some even volunteered to be guinea pigs.

I'll definitely be doing more of these.