Try Again...........

Yesterday I decided to head out for a ride. Yep it was cold and yep it rained the day before. But it was frozen! The ground was solid as a rock!

So I went to Beatty Park, it's a short trail and it weathers pretty good. Plus it's the closest one to the house. I get there and head out, I have my new Pogies to try out. That was the main reason I went.

They are these hand covers for really cold weather.

So the trail is solid and I am moving along. The Pogies work great! I do one lap and head to the truck. One lap that's it. We used to race the summer series there every year. I used to like this trail, I liked it because I won my class there several times! Plus it was close and it used to be fun.

Now it sucks! It's only like 6 miles long and you need to ride like 3 laps to get a good workout. The only problem is the place is as rough as I have ever seen it. About a year or so ago a new group of people took over the trail maintenance.

For the last year they have done a lot of work there. The only problem is they have only done work on this one little half mile section. I guess that's not true, they have added a few bridges here and there in some low areas but overall the root count is just way to high.

On top of that the new guy is a syco. He thinks he owns the place. A public park, and he is like crazy over it. He has confronted people when they showed up to ride and he thought the trail should be closed, plus he will post videos of people being there when he felt they shouldn't. That's just wrong!

We have a local website where you can go to see if the trails are open or not and we have a general rule of "wait 24 hours after a rain". Not everybody knows about the site, yet he will post you up on there and talk smack about you. I wonder how people would feel if they knew he did that. What a great ambassador for the club.

Now granted I haven't always been the best at respecting the rule but I am really making an effort to be more courteous and respectful of the work the club does. Plus I like one of the guys who really goes above and beyond for the Charlotte trail scene, and he's like the president of the club now.

He writes a blog too. Check it out.       http://b-43.blogspot.com/

OK back to the new guy. He actually will tell you "he opened the trail" when it's open. Some where along the way I think we have crossed a line as far as trail coordinator and a weirdo! Yesterday all this just seemed to be on my mind as I rode.

The ground was frozen and it was early. The website even said it was open till 2:30pm. He posted that, now we have time limits on when you can ride the trail. So anyhow as I rode every time I meet someone walking or running I wondered if I was gonna get confronted for being there. It was just a weird feeling!

We had other trail coordinators posting up telling people to go ride while it was frozen and that's what I was doing. Yet I felt like I was doing something wrong.

I am gonna miss Beatty, I have a lot of fond memories from the place. It's actually the first trail I rode 6 years ago when I started riding again. I still remember that ride! Every last minute of it!

Yet now it's changed.... I miss gramps! He used to take care of the place and we had no drama, none at all.....

Maybe I will "Try Again" at some point but for now I think I will move along........

The reason for this post is two things. First I work in Matthews and I had a customer come in recently who rides very little and he was confronted one day recently by this individual. My customer had no ideal about the website you can check. He knows I ride and he brought this up. Asking me if I knew the guy. He said he was considering calling the park service and complaining.

That's not good for the club!

Second the forum section of the clubs website is the last place you could bring this up. The attitude on there can be really hateful! It's full of keyboard cowboys! I can post here because it's my blog, if I don't like the comments I get I can delete them................