2008 IMBA World Summit will be in Park City

Park City, Utah will be the location of the next world summit. This sounds like a great place to ride and host a summit.

When I was at the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC I saw a great presentation by the Park City Mountain Trails Foundation about the economic benefits of a trail system. The presentation was inspiring and showed how a community could come together around a common goal of building and promoting trails to bring in tourists during the off-ski season. The organization seemed to have built a broad coalition of stake holders - not just mountain bikers and shops - to help realize the goal. Since then I have been very intrigued and want to visit Park City to experience these trails and talk to these folks. I would love to see that type of a trails culture in Santa Cruz county.

Getting back to the IMBA summit, it sounds like the agenda will be awesome:

The 2008 IMBA Summit will be open to the public, and will feature advocacy seminars, trailbuilding workshops, networking, great food, parties, celebrity guest speakers and some big surprises. Topics will include the economic power of trails, sustainable trailbuilding, liability and risk management, urban trail networks, building club capacity and much more.

Trips for Kids will have a chapter meeting at the summit with the goal of inspiring IMBA clubs to create youth mountain bike programs. There will also be an epic ride at the end of the summit.

The 2008 IMBA World Summit sounds like it will be a great event. I'm already looking forward to it.

Old Skool Off Roadies

I was looking for information on the Last Chance properties near Big Basin and I came across this gem of a website from Ray Hosler. There are quite a few pages which document these legendary "Jobst" rides from the early 1980's. A bunch of riders including Tom Richey would do epic all day fire and dirt road explorations in the Santa Cruz mountains with their road bikes.

Check out the slide show which documents 26 years of riding in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's neat to see some of the vistas and places that these guys took their road bikes. There are all sorts of neat nuggets of history if you poke around the site including the train tunnels in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

No helmets, CamelBaks or suspension. Definitely old school. These guys were the pioneers of the sport.

Looking for Volunteers/Racers for 24 hour race

The 24 hours of Adrenalin world solo and team championships will be held in Monterey/Fort Ord on Sept 1-2. The race organizers have offered a complementary 10 person corporate team to mbosc in exchange for volunteering at the event. So far I have 4-6 people who are willing to commit and I'm looking for a few more. Here are the details of the event and commitments from the race organizers:

Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz to provide:

♣ Two volunteers at the checkpoint at all times. One volunteer must accurately record bib number and the other one must hand out water and Gatorade, properly handle canceled laps, and assist with emergency situations
♣ Must have three volunteers for the start and finish of race. For example, you need three volunteers on Saturday from 11:30am to 3:00pm and on Sunday from 9:00am to 1:00pm.
♣ Minimum age of 18 for all volunteers
♣ Personal belongings that would attribute to a more enjoyable time at the checkpoint – blankets, small heater, flashlights, lamp, lots of warm clothes etc.
♣ Must ensure ALL team riders sign a waiver – VERY IMPORTANT
♣ Clean up of checkpoint during and after race – please ensure there is no garbage left behind.
♣ Provide own transport to checkpoint for shift changes
♣ Meet with twenty4sports on Wednesday to discuss weekend plan of attack
♣ Be responsible for the well being of the two-way radio

TWENTY4 SPORTS to provide:

♣ Complimentary Corporate team (10 people) – will provide web registration coupon
♣ Complimentary Premium Campsite near the Expo area
♣ Complimentary 10 x 10 booth space in the Expo to promote MBOSC
♣ T-Shirts for all volunteers
♣ Free Entry Pass for all the volunteers for the weekend
♣ 2 Sweatshirts to the “Best Volys” of the weekend.
♣ 1- 10 x 10 tent
♣ 4 Foldable Chairs
♣ 2 – 8 foot tables
♣ Gatorade and Water
♣ Responsible for transporting the Gatorade and water to the checkpoint as needed
♣ 1-Two Way radio for communication to base and the trail crew.
♣ Garbage bags for Clean up of GU Wrappers and other miscellaneous items.

The mbosc corporate team will not be a competitive team. We aim to have fun, camp, volunteer and party.

If you have thought about or are interested in a 24 hour team then this corporate team should be a great introduction to the venue and format. A 10 person corporate team means that you would probably "race" 2 laps in 24 hours so it would be a gentle introduction with very little obligation other than to volunteer at a check point and hand out GU and Gatorade to the racers.

Please contact me if you are interested in joining our team.