First off, it was FUN. I'm a big nerd, in case you hadn't realized that. I guess it's just the way my brain works, but I LOVE to learn. And when I get a chance to learn about something I've no knowledge about, more the better for me. So when I got there, and Matt was presenting, I was really excited to hear what he had to say. And what was even nicer was that they didn't seem to mind the questions I had. See, I truly had no idea how getting trails built works - so I was starting from scratch. My mind went through things like how do we get the land, who controls the way the trails are built, what about the environmental impact, etc, etc. And every question I asked, either Brian, Stewart or Matt answered...and they weren't just short little "ha ha - what a silly question Jodey" answers. They were fully fleshed out, nicely formed answers. And those are the kinds of things I appreciate and that make me want to participate further in things like this.
Anyway, we listened to the presentation, which was an IMBA presentation that was shortened, I believe, and like I said, it was really informative. I surprised myself at how much information I actually retained. I usually need to take notes to retain info, but I think because I was also engaging my brain in taking pictures, I was able to get more. Don't ask...my brain works in weird ways. There was a lot of good discussion about trail building, good questions asked and great answers given.
Once the show was over, we went outside to do some actual hands on trail building. How cool was that? We got to use the clinos to determine the proper places to put our trail, so that we stayed, for the most part, within IMBA guidelines for trail building. Let me interject here that the land on which we were having this session was beautiful, the house was amazing and all the people there were so nice and a bunch of fun. The land/house is in rural Orange County, NC...somewhere past/near Chapel Hill/Carrboro, I think.
Back to the story...so we go out and "design" our trail on the land that Scott has designated for his trail. Yes...this is a REAL trail we are building. There were 2 groups of us and we met somewhere in the middle, I suppose. I didn't see what the other group designed, to be honest. But me, Maggie, Matt, Stewart and Dave all went out and designed our part of the trail, talked about the best places to put the corridor so that we were getting what we wanted as far as turns, incline and layout and used the clino to measure to make sure we were within standards and flagged the route. Then the real fun began.
Stewart gave us our weapo....er...um...tools so we could get out and start building the trail. He gave a great short lecture on how to carry the tools so as not to kill each other on the way in...let us know that how ever many tools we carried in were as many tools we were expected to carry out, etc. So in we walked. Not too far...we actually started at the top of where we had flagged our trail.
The first thing we did was clean the trail - Stewart went in with the leaf blower along the flagged trail so we could see where to clean, then lots and lots of loose rocks and yard yuck were removed. Trees and limbs that were in the way had to come down...and oh boy did they ever. That saw was incredible! Once that was done for a while, it was time to start taking the organic material off the trail face and making a clearer corridor. It actually went pretty quickly - I was surprised. And again, I was surprised at how much information I had retained and how much more I learned while out there actually doing it.
Maggie and I had to leave early, which was unfortunate as we were both having a blast doing this. During our conversation afterward, we both were saying how much we can't wait to do it again.
Oh - and Scott makes the most AMAZING habernero sauce/spread/whatever it's called. Holy shit - it was spicy...but damn...it was addictive almost. If you like REALLY spicy stuff, get him to give you some. It rocked. I had it spread on a burger.
So here are some pictures...lots of them, actually. I'll try to put them in order so you can figure out what's going on without me putting a blurb in right now...
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