This weekend left me feeling optimistic for the plight of the Syllamo Trails.
When I originally filled out the contact form on the IMBA website and basically pleaded for help with the damaged/overgrown parts of the trail system, I never expected the entire town to get involved. However, the city of Mountain View basically exists in its current form because of tourism (it’s known for not only great trout fishing, but also for being the Folk Music Capital of the World). So, when you tell the locals that any of the tourism draws to the area are in danger of no longer being draws, they want to help… their livelihood depends on it.
We basically hit a tipping point. The handful of us (Wes Wright, Denny Hess, Frank Webber, and others in the “Syllamo Trail Cleaners” FB page) who were trying our best to fix things ourselves were entirely overfaced with the task- essentially, out of the 50 miles of singletrack, somewhere close to 20 of it is subject to severe overgrowth every summer as a direct result of logging the trees from around the trail. There’s also the basic upkeep of removing deadfall as well as the relatively new problem of wild hogs rooting through extensive sections of bench-cut trail, turning them in to frighteningly off-camber and loose piles of rock and leaves.
Enter IMBA and our regional representative, Steve Schneider. He and his wife, Margie, came in and immediately hit the bricks of downtown Mountain View to spread the word about the floundering of one of the towns most unknown tourist attractions. They came back last weekend, and, with the help of Wes and Denny, finalized/organized the locals’ donations of food, lodging, discounts, and all other manners of assistance for an official IMBA Trailbuilding School and extensive work weekend that’s going down a little over two weeks from now…
I’m excited.
In other news, I’m going in for an MRI today and will find out tomorrow if my toe & foot pain is a result of a herniated disc in my back. I’ll know by noon tomorrow if that’s the case.
In other, other news, MMA class is fun as all getout. We practiced jiu-jitsu last night, and, I managed a successful (albeit slightly rough around the edges) rear naked choke on a training partner when we were rolling (we won’t talk about the number of times the much more experienced guy made me tap out, but it was more than once, probably less than 5 times). I guess you can say, things are getting pretty serious…
You know, because…
This is basically how things go around the house on most days:
