Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz

The Last Post on this Blog

2011-03-07T22:14:00.000-08:00

.... and a new beginning for http://mbosc.org

Life is very busy in MBOSC land and one of the projects we have wanted for a long time to to revamp the old http://mbosc.org website. It was a static site so keeping it fresh was difficult. Also, having a separate blogspot site meant that we split our audience. We have been meaning to do something about the old MBOSC site for a long time with the primary goal of making it easier to update and to integrate the blog.

Along comes new mountain biker and web developer Jon Lucas who graciously donated his time to build us a new website based on WordPress. He did an amazing job on this site. I can't recommend Jon strongly enough for your web developer needs. He's very detail oriented, responsive and has a very strong work ethic.

If you are following posts in an RSS reader then please update your feed to http://www.mbosc.org/feed/. You can usually do this by adding http://www.mbosc.org to your RSS reader.

We are proud of this new site and we hope to update content more regularly. The lack of posts doesn't reflect a lack of activity. There has been a lot going on and we find it hard to get the word out.

The biggest project in MBOSC land is the Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival April 9-10, 2011 in Aptos Village. This is going to be a big event for the community which include many events like a dirt jump competition, pump track comp, short track race, bike demos, beer garden, skills clinics and more. We have quite a few sponsors lined up including the title sponsor: Fox Racing Shox, GoPro, Specialized, Black Market Bikes, CamelBak, NiteRider and many more!

Before the bike festival, we will host an IMBA Trail Care Crew visit March 26th, 2011 which includes trail building instruction and trail work at Wilder Ranch.

Also, we are working with Santa Cruz Bicycles on one of our biggest fundraisers to date. We are raffling off a complete carbon Nomad or Blur LT carbon (your choice) to raise funds for the Pogonip multi-use trail.

We are also working with our local State Parks district to advocate more legal mountain bike trails in the trail plan for Castle Rock State Park and asking for more loops and a legal way to ride from the skyline to the sea in the Big Basin General Plan.

Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz has been on an upward trajectory for the past few years. Membership, donations and volunteers are up. The local bike industry is healthy, growing and are willing to support our events and cause. Local land managers and politicians see the value in mountain biking and want to work with us. More people of all ages and demographics (young, old, male and female) are enjoying the great weather by riding on the local trails.

Despite the popularity of mountain biking among enthusiasts it is still invisible in the mainstream when folks think about activities in Santa Cruz. We think that 2011 may be the year that mountain biking in Santa Cruz comes out of the closet.

We hope you can join us and follow along at http://mbosc.org!

MBOSC Fundraiser at Mick's Automotive Sept 24th

2010-09-09T22:51:00.000-07:00

Tracy Cotten - the owner of Mick's Automotive - has offered to donate 100% of the profits from labor and parts from his business on Friday September 24th from 12:30 - 7 pm MBOSC. Mick's Automotive is an auto repair shop specializing in Japanese cars.

Tracy and his lead technician Brian are avid mountain bikers and have been active supporters of MBOSC. If you have ever spoken with Tracy you will soon learn that he is an expert on the subject of cars and he is very pragmatic on car maintenance. He and his staff are serious about learning new skills an they do a lot of research on new cars and maintenance. You can be assured that you will be getting top notch service at Mick's.

If you have a Japanese car and need service then please give Mick's a call and schedule your work for Friday September 24th.

Micks Automotive http://micksauto.com
1257 Thompson Ave. #D
Santa Cruz CA 95062
831-464-6855

We can raise a significant amount of money for MBOSC if we can get some big jobs scheduled rather than simple oil changes. If you need service on your Japanese vehicle then you can help MBOSC by having Mick's do your job on Sept 24 th.

MBOSC uses membership dues and other funds we raise to pay for basic overhead like web hosting, printing and insurance (our biggest expense). We also make donations to other non-profits and land conservation trusts which support mountain biking. We also use our funds to pay for event day use fees and permits like Carrotfest and Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day.

Recently, we have used various fundraisers and
member donations to pay for:

We are looking to fund other projects like to fix the Skyline trail Castle Rock State Park to support multi-use. We also want to help pay for the hard costs to open the Pogonip multi-use trail.

Thank you and please support MBOSC by scheduling your car maintenance at Mick's Automotive.

New Wilder Ranch Sign Installed

2010-07-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

Back in September MBOSC raised funds to pay for a new trail head sign at Wilder Ranch State Park. The mountain biking community was proud to donate $3,500 towards the design and construction of a new interpretive sign and map. I'm happy to announce that it was installed on July 19th and the results are stunning.

The sign is important to the mountain biking community and Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz. We start our all inclusive weekly Saturday ride at this sign and it's a great way to orient visitors to the park. Our local State Parks are suffering from difficult budgetary times and there is a backlog of maintenance projects. Mountain bikers enjoy and support our park system so we are happy to help in any way that we can.

Thank you all once again for supporting our fundraisers. Your donations help improve mountain biking facilities in Santa Cruz County.

Pogonip Multi-Use Trail Proposal Presented to City Council Tuesday July 27th

2010-07-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

The multi-use trail proposed by Parks and Recreation will go before the City Council this coming Tuesday July 27th at 3 pm. The proposal is item 19 on the agenda (11 MB). The proposal is from pages 210 - 220. I'm not sure what time it will be addressed but you may be able to come late and not miss the item.

The objective is to push out the negative use of the area and displace it with positive use. If this passes then this means a fun new 1.5 mile single track trail that connects Golf Club Drive to the U-Con trail could be one step closer to reality. For those of you downtown and in the east side and Seabright area this is a fun alternative to the railway tracks to U-Con.

This is a very big deal and we would love your support on this issue!

We hope that you can attend the meeting, call or write (or do all 3) the City Council in support of this issue.

You can write to all of the City Council by sending email here: citycouncil@cityofsantacruz.com. Messages to that address become part of the public record so please conduct your correspondence with civility in mind.

You may also contact individual council members:

Mayor Mike Rotkin

809 Center Street, Room 10

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

(831) 420-5020 City Hall

(831) 423-4209 Residence

(831) 459-4601 Office

Email: mrotkin@cityofsantacruz.com

Current Term Expires: November 2, 2010

Vice Mayor Ryan Coonerty

809 Center Street, Room 10

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

(831) 420-5027 City Hall

(831) 423-8939 Residence

Email: rcoonerty@cityofsantacruz.com

Current Term Expires: November 6, 2012

Katherine Beiers

809 Center Street, Room 10

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

(831) 420-5020 City Hall

(831) 426-6108 Residence

Email: kbeiers@cityofsantacruz.com

Current Term Expires: November 6, 2012

Don Lane

809 Center Street., Room 10

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

(831) 420-5020 City Hall

(831) 426-4272 Residence

Email: dlane@cityofsantacruz.com

Current Term Expires: November 6, 2012

Tony Madrigal

809 Center Street, Room 10

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

(831) 420-5020 City Hall

Email: tmadrigal@cityofsantacruz.com

Current Term Expires: November 6, 2012

Cynthia Mathews

809 Center Street, Room 10

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

(831) 420-5020 City Hall

Email: cmathews@cityofsantacruz.com

Current Term Expires: November 2, 2010

Lynn Robinson

809 Center Street, Room 10

Santa Cruz, CA 95060

(831) 420-5020 City Hall

Email: lrobinson@cityofsantacruz.com

Term Expires: November 2, 2010

You should try to include some personal story about your experience in Santa Cruz and how this trail will make it beter. Some of the points that you can include in your testimony, call or letter should include:

Re-iterate your support of the multi-use trail project. Your support of this proposal is the most important thing they want to hear.
Support the mountain biking community to design, build, raise funds (for environmental studies and signage) and maintain the trail. The cash strapped City would like the mountain biking community to take an active role in the stewardship of this trail. MBOSC will take the lead in organizing the trail work and maintenance but we want your support.
Provides an alternate route to the U-Con trail/UCSC from the City when combined with the San Lorenzo bike bridge and the tunnel under Hwy 1.
Provides a safe (but off road) eastern bike route into UCSC for commuters.
Provides additional recreational facilities for families and residents.
This proposal will eliminate the criminal activity from that area of the park. This was true when we put the U-Con trail in back in 1999. Think of I-5 Colonnade in Seattle or Highbridge Park in NYC. If you have any experience with other areas then please bring them up.

If you are going to attend the City Council we ask that you conduct yourselves professionally and respectfully.

Dress appropriately. Pants and shirts with buttons recommended.
No talking over or laughing at opponents
Take the higher ground

Our opponents are going to fight this every step of the way. They are organizing right now. Our opponents feel the people do not belong in open space and successfully excluded mountain bikes and equestrians from Pogonip back in 1998. These policies have created a safe haven for drug trafficking and transients. We can change this and we represent the new generation of Santa Cruz residents who believe in sustainable economic development and recreation. We want real solutions to our problems not just talk and block.

Please remember: we have a lot of allies but this is no guarantee of success. This proposal is endorsed by the Santa Cruz Police Department, the Fire Department, Take Back Santa Cruz, IMBA, the equestrian community (SCCHA), the local bike industry and local bike shops. We would love to have your support as well.

Is the future of our city heroin tourism or mountain bike tourism? We can make that choice by what we do and how we act over the next few months.

Pogonip: Healthy Choices to Clean up the Community

2010-07-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

The proposed multi-use trail through the east side of Pogonip is a win-win situation. Not only will we clean up the drug trafficking and illegal camping in that area but we will have an amazing new trail to connect Golf Club Road to the U-Con trail. The success of the project will depend on our community and the choices we make.

Drug Sanctuaries or Family Activities

Shooting Dens or Single Track

Wasted Youth or Healthy Youth

Track Marks or Tire Tracks

Sleeping Hovels or Happy Riders

Crash Pads or Knee Pads

Trash or Trails

Trails not Tracks: Access to Pogonip will Solve the Problems with Heroin Hill

2010-07-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

A 640 acre city park in Santa Cruz called Pogonip has an area known as Heroin Hill which is the place to score cheap heroin in Northern California. Heroin addicts come to Santa Cruz from all over Northern California (and beyond) and stick around - which may have increased the population of homeless. The incidence of petty and property crime has increased in the City over the past few years. The situation in the Pogonip has deteriorated so badly that many of the local residents have had enough. We saw opportunities to work with the city to bring in more positive use (i.e, mountain biking) to push out the bad use. We formed a sub-committee to focus on this issue. We were pleased to hear that the Parks and Recreation Department were crafting a multi-use trail plan right through Heroin Hill. If you are a mountain biker in Santa Cruz this multi-use trail will allow you a fun and scenic alternative to the train tracks to access the U-conn trail.

On Monday July 12th the multi-use trail proposal was introduced to the Parks and Recreation Commission at their monthly meeting. This proposal has the support of the Santa Cruz Police and Fire Departments, Parks and Recreation staff, the equestrians and Take Back Santa Cruz - a grassroots crime and public safety advocacy group. The mountain biking community fully supports this plan and offerred trail design, labor and fund raising to get this done.

We were really pleased that the Commission voted 7-0 to move it forward to City Council. The next step is that the Parks and Rec multi-use trail will be discussed and voted by City Council probably in September.

Right now we are shoring up our support within the mountain biking community, local bike shops and bike industry. We are also reaching out to community groups and local residents and visitors to Santa Cruz. Our opposition were not as prepared as we were for the Commission meeting but now they are starting to organize. We need to build a broad base of support for this plan to demonstrate that the community endorses this plan as a way of displacing the negative use of the park with positive use.

We think that opening up more of the park to legitimate use will prevent moving the illegal activity to another part of the park. 11 years ago mountain bikers and equestrians built the U-Conn multi-use trail in the northern part of Pogonip - which was also a refuge for illegal camping and drug activity. It was pushed out of that area after the trail was constructed and it was in use by the community. Mountain bikers love our community. We can provide positive solutions to displace the bad elements. Please support this plan!

Trails not Tracks!

Recreational Biking in Pogonip

2010-07-09T19:43:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time people had fun on bicycles in Pogonip. And it was good. Bikes weren't exclusively for transportation. These bikes were used for pure whimsical recreation. In Pogonip. And it was good. And people had fun. In Pogonip.

The image of bike polo was scanned from "Pogonip: Jewel of Santa Cruz" 2007 Joan Gilbert Martin & Colleen McInerney-Meager. ISBN 978-1-890625-08-5

Bike Station Aptos Grand Opening

2010-07-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

The bike business must be picking up in Santa Cruz County. This is the second grand opening notification I got recently.

Bike Station Aptos recently moved into the Aptos Rancho Del Mar Shopping Center. They will be having a party/celebration with events from July 9-11th

From Courtney:

I thought you might like to spread the word about a special amnesty program Endura will be running throughout our Grand Opening weekend here at Bike Station Aptos. It's pretty cool, so here's the scoop - basically, people can bring us/Tim (from Endura) a pair of their old/worn out/crappy lycra cycling or mtb shorts, and they get 50% OFF Endura's most popular Hummvee short. Its a sweet deal, and the supply is unlimited =). The Grand Opening will be July 9th - 11

We're also putting an an "underground' race together called the Top of the Incline Challenge in Nisene Marks, July 10th at 6:30 am that's going to be a real hoot! Endura is sponsoring the event, and going to give away some fun stuff at the top of the incline.

I really like that LBS's are putting on events and reaching out to the community. Help support the local bike shops and grow the scene!

Progress at the Epicenter Pump Track

2010-07-07T17:18:00.000-07:00

The pump track at Epicenter Cycling in Aptos was approved a couple of weeks ago. A volunteer party was organized and we got to work.

This is the plan. There are two tracks. The beginner track is on the left and the big kids track is on the right.

The overcast morning provided cool temps for digging. Shovels and barrows were the tools of choice for this work.

Building a berm

There were probably about 30 workers over the course of the day. A Bobcat arrived at 3 pm and it made the work simpler.

Bicycle Trip Grand Opening Celebration July 17th

2010-07-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

The Bicycle Trip is having a grand opening party on July 17th. Last winter they moved down the street to nicer digs.

Jeff Lenosky will be there and so will MBOSC. Come and check out the fun!!

Shuttle Smith: A Bike Shuttle from Aptos to SDSF/Nisene

2010-06-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

Dave Smith has been mountain biking for a long time and used to work in the construction industry. With the downturn in construction he started a new business to called "Shuttle Smith" which provides a service to shuttle riders from Aptos to Buzzard Lagoon road near the East entrance of Nisene Marks. Dave converted his cube van and can securely carry 9 bikes and riders.

The goal is to provide a way that riders can get to SDSF and upper Nisene Marks without driving. After a loop or two in SDSF then you can ride down the Nisene Marks fireroad back down to Aptos. Or you can ride over to Aptos to catch the shuttle and meet some friends at SDSF.

The service costs $15 and starts June 5th 2010 with pickup next to Epicenter Cycling in Aptos Station at 9:00 am, 11 am, 1:30 pm and 3:30 pm. See the Shuttle Smith flyer for more details.

Dave is quite flexible to provide shuttle services for other locations or you can rent Dave and his van for special events.

I applaud Dave's entrepreneurial spirit and he recognizes there is a market for mountain bike tourism and services.

Call Dave at 831-234-3383 to make a reservation.

New(er) Soquel Demo State Forest Map

2010-05-06T10:11:00.001-07:00

MBOSC has been working with the Santa Cruz County RTC to update the commuter bike map to show mountain biking trails in the local parks and forests. The map will not be adequate to navigate the trails but our goal is to show that mountain biking trails exists in these parks. The new edition of the commuter bike map should be available later this summer.

We have been passing a lot of documents by email and I was given a nice representation of the SDSF trails and roads. I also got a copy of the March 2010 SDSF brochure from CDF and we recognized that this is the same (official?) map.

Enjoy the map and we would like to remind people that there will be trail work at SDSF this Saturday. Sign up and we would love to meet you!

Soquel Demo State Forest Trailwork May 8th

2010-05-03T21:28:00.000-07:00

Hey all you trail riders and trail workers out there,

Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz is sponsoring the next trail work day at the Soquel Demonstration State Forest. We will be providing coffee and pastries, and FREE SCHWAG for those who sign up at www.trailworkers.com, a free raffle and post work snacks and beers!

Now, that’s an offer you just can’t refuse!

First, please sign up at www.trailworkers.com so we know how many tools and food and free stuff we will need to bring. Next show up on Saturday May 8 at the Demo parking lot by 9:00AM to get your free stuff and to sign in. We will be opening the parking lot for trail workers only so don’t be late if you want to park inside the gate. Bring a lunch with you because we won’t make it back to our vehicles until sometime between 2:30 and 3:30.

View Soquel Demo State Forest Parking Lot in a larger map

We will be working on Ridge and Corral so bring your gloves, comfy boots and your great attitude and let’s get’r done!

This could be one of the last trail work days of the season at Demo so let’s make it a good one!

MBOSC at the Sea Otter Classic 2010

2010-04-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz (MBOSC) was really busy at the Sea Otter Classic this year. I think it was the biggest year yet for us. The weather was the best I have ever experienced in the 13 years of attending the Sea Otter. Lots of fun was had by all of those who attended. How can you not have fun when in an immersive environment surrounded by shiny bikes, pro events and 20,000 of your closest friends?

The success of this organization is a testament to the volunteers and officers who make it happen. No one draws a salary and there are very little benefits to this type of work. At the end of the day it's people like you and I who want to improve mountain biking in Santa Cruz. We do it because of the passion for the sport and we love to ride in Santa Cruz County. There are a lot of people to thank and one concern about a note like this is that someone will be left behind.

MBOSC provided all the volunteer course marshals for the Dual Slalom races and they went off really smoothly. This is a testament to the organization of Megan Zemney who did an amazing job of co-ordinating the volunteers for the DS and the booth. Megan really stepped it up this year to lead many initiatives. She is an effective leader and really took ownership of many tasks and drove them to completion. Not only that but she managed to practice and race downhill and took 4th in her category! That's a podium folks! Thank you Megan for your passion and energy and driving MBOSC in a really fun direction. She also needed some downtime and went off the grid last weekend in Yosemite.

There were so many volunteers on the DS course who really stepped up and represented MBOSC in a very professional and courteous manner. There are too many to name but I would like to give a big shout out and thank you the guys who worked multiple shifts and on the long day on Sunday. This included Dwight Follien, Alan Strahsburg, Kevin Brouwers, Dan Abernethy, Rich Henthorn, Bob Walden, Buff and James Bradley. I would like to especially thank Tracy Cotten for all the shifts on the swaile and stepping up to lead the crew on Sunday when we wanted to give him the day off. That Sunday shift was pretty brutal and went 2.5 hours overtime. We'll make it up to you guys!

The raffle for the Titus El Guapo was held on the last day of the Otter and we successfully met our goals. We raised over $5500 - which is more than enough to pay for the SDSF parking lot project and managed to implement electronic memberships during the process. We are really happy to say that we signed up and/or renewed 27 memberships during this campaign. Thank you all for your generous support!

The raffle couldn't have been executed without the help of some very key people. First of all, Sebastien Praly developed the online payment system and web pages. Things were a little tense when PayPal shut us down for a while and we had to work out some bugs but he managed to get it back on track. Michelle Lamelin did all the posters and graphics and worked closely with Rick Graves at Cluch Couriers for doing all the printing. We highly recommend using Clutch Couriers services for fast, effective printing at a reasonable price.

Eve Davidson did a stellar job of doing the back office work of member, raffle fulfillment and accounting. She is the reason that MBOSC continues to run so smoothly and effectively and she ensures that the organization is compliant and efficient. I don't thank her enough for all that she does and she has managed to put up with my bike advocacy "hobby" for all these years.

There are so many who helped with the raffle in so many ways. Steven Gemelos, Bob Walden, Jo Rathbun and Daryl Breuninger for their work in promoting and supporting the raffle. I would also like to thank our shop partners Lars Thompsen at Trail Head Cyclery in San Jose and Wade Hall and Matt Potter at The Spokesman Bicycles for selling tickets and hosting the El Guapo for all to see. Thanks to Michele Lamelin, Alan Strahsburg, Josh Moore, Jo Mutch, Daniel Abernethy, Marty Abaurrea and especially the man in the top hat Steve Cooper ("Cooper"!) for driving ticket sales during the Sea Otter. It was phenomenal and impressive how much raffle tickets we sold in the last 2 days of the Sea Otter.

A very special thanks to Jason, Jeff and Mike at Titus Bikes who believe in what we are doing and support our goals. We really appreciate your partnership and look forward to the next event where we can work together.

Camping at the Sea Otter was a blast and it was great to get to know our fellow mountain bikers. Initially MBOSC bought 3 campsites and offered free spots to members and volunteers. Camping was pretty sparse this year so we managed to spread out (take over?) 2 additional sites. We must have had at least 35-40 members and affiliates of MBOSC camping with us. I think we have firmly cemented the reputation of Santa Cruz mountain bikers as ones who have the most fun at the Sea Otter campsites. It was quite a party. Firewalking, bonfires, and propane fireballs. Beer and fire probably don't mix but there was never any concerns about safety. Needless to say the cops seem to think that we had the funnest campsites because they kept visiting us... at least charges weren't laid and no one got hurt.

We would like to thank Charlie Meehan, Jason the brewmaster the crew at Seabright Brewery for making sure that at the end of a hard day at work we had enough delicious IPA to make things right again. Charlie has been a loyal supporter of MBOSC over the year and we really appreciate his patronage. The fuel of bike advocacy is great beer and Seabright Brewery delivers the goods.

Finally, there were numerous people who dropped by the booth to say hello, buy raffle tickets and have renewed your membership over the past month. The MBOSC officers and volunteers appreciate your expression of support and we thank you, thank you, thank you! Together we have accomplished a lot of great things to improve mountain biking in this County. We are starting to get some momentum and it's building into something big. There are so many people who are passionate about mountain biking in Santa Cruz and MBOSC represents a small fraction of those enthusiasts. Imagine what we can accomplish if we represented all the mountain bikers who enjoy Santa Cruz County? Tell your friends about us! Encourage them to get informed on the issues. There is so much to grow and there is so much potential. Collectively we can turn Santa Cruz County in a world class mountain bike playground.

Thank you all for making MBOSC a stronger club! Whew! I'm glad that's over. I can't wait until next year.

--Mark

President, MBOSC

Titus El Guapo Raffle at the Sea Otter Classic

2010-04-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

The raffle for the Titus El Guapo was held on the last day of the Sea Otter. It was a very successful campaign. We managed to raise about $5500 with raffle sales and we also used this bike raffle as a motivation to do online memberships - which is something we have been wanting to do for a few of years.

We had an amusing way of conducting the raffle at the MBOSC Sea Otter booth. Cooper was a great barker/host who really drew the crowd in and pumped them up. I gave a pitch for MBOSC, thanked the audience, Sea Otter and Titus and mentioned why we are raising funds. Then I held my blindfolded 7 year old daughter upside down in the raffle bin. She shuffled the tickets and the crowd told her when to pick the winner. There should be no doubt in anyone's mind about the randomness of the drawing.

The winner was Mark Woodhead - a Santa Cruz local and one of the founding members of MBOSC. Mark is no longer active with MBOSC leadership but he does lead the weekly ride. Winning the bike was good karma for him and he has promised to be more active in the future. I wasn't surprised that a good friend won the bike (since a lot of my good friends bought multiple raffle tickets) but I'm pretty impressed at how many tickets we sold at the Sea Otter. Titus has a great reputation and a strong enthusiast base. Many bought tickets to support MBOSC and the cause. But many out of towners bought tickets because they love Titus and wanted to win the El Guapo.

Thank you all for participating. We raised about enough money to fully fund the SDSF parking lot environmental mitigation project. We're golden. All mountain bikers of Santa Cruz County and the visitors to Soquel Demo State Forest are winners!

May 15th Jump Jam at Depot Park in Santa Cruz

2010-04-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

The City of Santa Cruz, The Bicycle Trip and Barry Swenson Builders are hosting a Jump Jam at Depot Park in Santa Cruz with a cash purse.

Come celebrate Bike Week Santa Cruz and rail and trail day. There will be booths (including MBOSC) and food and drinks and bike valet parking provided by People Power.

DATE: Saturday, .May 15th 2010

TIME: 11am – 2pm

WHERE: Depot Bicycle Trip Jump Park Santa Cruz (Big Bike festival, post rail trail road ride)

ENTRY PRO JAM DEMO ADMISSION: free for demo (invitation only)

COMBINED CLASS PRIZE MONEY: 1^st place = $ 500.00, 2^nd place = $ 300.00, 3^rd place = $ 200.00,

CLASSES: small wheel 20” BMX and big wheel 26” mt. bike (invite only)

EVENT JUDGES: general Public Voting (ballots and pens and pencils)

PRE-EVENT SET UP: Saturday, May 15th 8:00 to 11:00

SATURDAY EVENT SCHEDULE / 26” WHEEL (24” wheel are OK)

8:00am to 11:00	Set up: contest + Sound Equipment
10 – 11:00am	Registration + Safety Check + practice schedule
10:00 to 10:30	Bicycle group Leaving Depot park on the train
11:00am to 12:00	Start practice schedule
11:00 to 10:30	Bicycle group Leaving Roaring camp ride down
11:30 to 12:00	Bicycle group rolls in to the park
12:30 – 1:00pm	26” big wheel Pro demo (1/2 hr)
1:00 – 1:30pm	20” big wheel Pro demo (1/2 hr)
1:30 pm -2:00 pm	Combination Pro jump competition (1/2 hr)
2:00 to 3:00	Breakdown and clean up

Your Donations at Work: Wilder Ranch Trailhead Sign

2010-04-26T21:07:00.000-07:00

Back in September MBOSC held a showing of Freedom Riders to raise funds to pay for a new trail head sign at Wilder Ranch State Park. The mountain biking community was proud to donate $3,500 towards the design and construction of this interpretive sign.

The sign is important to the mountain biking community and mountain bikers of Santa Cruz. We start our all inclusive weekly Saturday ride at this sign and it's a great way to orient visitors to the park. The old sign didn't reflect the current status of the trails or the park boundaries. Also, this new sign was falling apart and was an embarrassment. It was not up to the high standards of a California State Park.

We are happy to preview one of the latest layout for the new sign. This was a collaborative process which involved many members of the State Parks and interpretive community. One of the pending changes is to replace the road biker and child with renderings of mountain bikers. We hope that the sign will be installed by the end of May.

Thank you all once again for supporting our fundraisers. Your donations help improve mountain biking facilities in Santa Cruz County.

Your Donations at Work: Soquel Demonstration State Forest Parking Lot

2010-04-11T22:16:00.000-07:00

Soquel Demonstration State Forest (a.k.a Demo, SDF or SDSF) has some of the most legal technical trails in the Bay Area and is managed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (a.k.a Cal Fire or CDF). The forest manager, Ed Orre, is supportive of mountain biking so it's a place where a lot of mountain bikers and advocates like to invest their time and efforts to make the trails first rate. Unfortunately, CDF is a state agency and is impacted by the same dysfunctional budgeting process that all state agencies must face.

Back in November we learned there was a lot of pressure on SDSF from a variety of sources.

The budget had been severely cut and staffing levels had been reduced by at least 80% since 2006
The parking lot has been the site of a lot of weekend raves and parties
Fish and Game had concerns about sediment runoff from the parking lot entering Soquel creek
Redwood Empire owns the parking lot (SDSF has an easement) and are indifferent to the needs of mountain bikers.
Both Redwood Empire and CDF will be doing timer harvesting this spring and summer and will use the parking lot as a staging area.

Mountain bikers have enjoyed the use of the Redwood Empire parking lot as a safe and secure way to get ready for a ride and enjoy a post ride beverage with friends. The parking lot is also the scene of great bike demos hosted by local shops like Trail Head Cyclery which include beer and BBQs. Unfortunately, due to some of the issues outlined above the parking lot is currently closed and we must take our chances by parking along Highland Way.

Fortunately, the mountain biking community are doing things to mitigate some of these problem. We held the first Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival featuring the California premier of Women of Dirt to raise money for the parking lot environmental mitigation project.

We are happy to say that we are putting your money to work in order to address the parking lot issues. MBOSC Vice-President Daryl Breuninger, Forest Manager Ed Orre and Erosion Control Professional Steve Butler met in January to assess the scope of the environmental mitigation project. MBOSC member and volunteer Drew Perkins provided detailed topographic maps of the parking lot based on elevation data using a very precise GPS in an airplane shooting a laser at the ground many tens of thousands of times a second. These topo maps were created by Drew and donated to the erosion control specialist. Thanks Drew!

The contractor Steve Butler came up with an erosion control plan and submitted it to Ed, Stewards of Soquel Forest and MBOSC. The solution includes re-graveling the surface, installing parking control logs to prevent "wild driving" (which creates sedimentation), constraining parking areas and adding culverts to direct the runoff. Your donations from the Bike Festival allowed us to make a down payment on the plan and the work.

Unfortunately, we didn't raise enough funds from the Bike Festival to cover the costs of this project. We still regard the Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival a huge success since we met a lot of our social and organizational goals. We made a profit and met our minimum fundraising goals but we could have made a lot more given the value of the donated goods. Our expenses for the festival were high yet we didn't charge anyone for participating. All the Festival income came from movie ticket sales and the raffle. We had a lot of people and companies donate goods and we offered complementary tickets to these companies and the Pro riders who participated. In all we comped over 100 tickets ($1000!!) and we also handicapped ourselves by not allowing the MBOSC officers and event organizers to participate in the raffle (good for about $500-700). We had a lot of fun and brought the community together and established the reputation of MBOSC to run logistically complicated event in very little time (it was 6 weeks from inception to execution!). However, a movie and raffle is not the most effective mechanism to raise funds. We are still learning about effective fund raising. We will probably use a silent auction to raise money from some of the big ticket donations so we can raise more funds next time. Anyway, I digress...

MBOSC is committed to fund the environmental mitigation project for the parking lot regardless of the funding source. This can be through increased memberships or by donations. Titus has generously donated a Titus El Guapo (a ~$4700 bike!) to help us raise funds for the SDSF parking lot project.

Please support SDSF by becoming a member or donating to MBOSC and the El Guapo raffle. You can donate to MBOSC at http://mbosc.org/join.html. We will do the drawing for the bike at the MBOSC Booth #239 at the Sea Otter Classic.

Thank you for supporting mountain biking in Santa Cruz County! We love mountain biking and we love Santa Cruz. Mountain biking in Santa Cruz is the best and it's up to the mountain biking community to keep it that way.

Monthly Soquel Demo ride with Titus bikes on Saturday

2010-04-08T13:43:00.000-07:00

The 2010 Sea Otter Classic is around the corner (hope for sun!) and the big bike companies are coming to our area full of demo vans of nice shiny bikes.

Titus has been an awesome supporter of MBOSC and will be at our monthly SDSF ride this Saturday April 10th at 10 am. You should probably show up at 9:15 - 9:30 to get a bike. Let me know if you want to reserve one of these bikes and I will put it in the spreadsheet:

X Carbon Medium Black
X Carbon Medium Black/Yellow
X Aluminum Medium Red
X Aluminum Large Red
Rockstar Medium White
FTM Carbon Small Black/Red
FTM Carbon Medium Blue/Silver
FTM Carbon Large Black/Red
FTM Aluminum X Small Blue
FTM Aluminum Small Blue
FTM Aluminum Medium Blue
FTM Aluminum Large Blue
FTM Aluminum Large Blue
El Guapo Small Orange
El Guapo Medium Orange
El Guapo Large Orange

You can learn more about these bikes by checking out the Titus website

Titus has graciously donated an Orange El Guapo (a $4700 value) to MBOSC as a fund raiser. The bike is currently on display in the front window of Trail Head Cyclery. We are raising funds to pay for the parking lot environmental mitigation project at SDSF. If you want to support demo as a place to ride with a safe place to park then please support MBOSC and our fundraiser!

Raffle tickets for the El Guapo can be purchased online or at Trail Head Cyclery in San Jose or The Spokesman in Santa Cruz. You can buy raffle tickets online at http://mbosc.org/join.html.

We will also be selling raffle tickets at the demo at Demo on Sunday at the MBOSC booth and at the MBOSC booth #239 at the Sea Otter Classic.

Come out and buy lots of raffle tickets! Support MBOSC, SDSF and bike advocacy in Santa Cruz County!

Get to know the "El Guapo": An MBOSC membership drive

2010-03-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

Folks have been requesting electronic memberships for many years and we have finally delivered. We are proud to introduce a method for doing online memberships using PayPal at: http://mbosc.org/join.html. In celebration of online memberships we have a special offer until April 17th.

Titus has graciously donated an El Guapo all mountain bike (in orange) to MBOSC to help promote memberships and fund raising. This fine machine is worth about $4,700 and is is a great machine for navigating the trails of SDSF.

You have a chance to get to know the El Guapo better and take it home if you are the lucky ticket holder in a drawing. You can sign up for memberships online and make a donation to be part of the El Guapo drawing. For every $5 over the basic annual membership of $25 you can get a ticket for the drawing. If you are already a member (or don't want to be a member) then you can buy tickets for the drawing at $5 each. We will draw the wining ticket at the MBOSC/MORCA booth 239 at the Sea Otter expo on Sun April 18th at 1 pm. Full rules and conditions are at http://mbosc.org/join.html.

If you want to be part of the El Guapo drawing but don't want to do electronic payment then you can purchase tickets for the drawing at The Spokesman Bicycles in downtown Santa Cruz or at Trail Head Cyclery in San Jose. You can check out the orange MBOSC El Guapo currently on display at The Spokesman Bicycles in downtown Santa Cruz. It will be moved to Trail Head Cyclery in San Jose later this week.

All membership funds and donations help with our costs for events, operations and we donate to organizations and projects which support the expansion of mountain biking in Santa Cruz County.

Recently, your donations have been put to great use. In the past 6 months we have donated $3,500 to Wilder Ranch State Park to update their back country trail head sign. We have been involved in the design of this sign and it should be completed in May. We have also written a check for $2,000 as a down payment for the environmental mitigation project for the SDSF parking lot. The initial survey and work assessment and estimate has been submitted and the parking lot project should be completed in Sept/Oct.

Thanks for your support of expanding mountain biking in Santa Cruz county!

Castle Rock Trail Plan Meeting Monday March 8th

2010-03-07T10:35:00.000-08:00

A meeting between California State Parks officials and mountain bikers concerning the Castle Rock Trail Plan is scheduled for 7 pm Monday March 8th at the Zayante Fire Station located at: 7700 E Zayante Rd, Felton, CA 95018-8704. No preparation needed. Just show up.

View Larger Map

The Castle Rock Trail Plan and the Big Basin General Plan are VERY positive for mountain biking and - if successful - they will result in the expansion of legal mountain biking trails in these parks. Expanding mountain biking in both of these parks essentially gives us a legal skyline to sea trail in the North part of the County.

However, there is no guarantee of success. There are a lot of groups who are opposed to mountain biking in Santa Cruz County and they are better funded and more organized than us.

We need to have community support for mountain biking in both of these plans. It is important to get these comments into the public record. It can be easy as firing off a quick email, making a phone call or showing up and asking questions. It's a small commitment on your time which can pay off big in the long term.

The meeting in Felton is between the mountain biking community and State Parks planning officials, trail gurus, mountain sector superintendent and perhaps the district superintendent. All the big guns. They will give a presentation on the Castle Rock Trail Plan and will engage us with a discussion.

Castle Rock State Park will never be seen as a "destination" State Park for mountain biking along the lines of Wilder or Coe State Parks. (This is largely because most of the interior of the park is a State Natural Preserve, and also because most - if not all - new trails opened to bikes there will be fireroads, rather than singletrack).

Nonetheless, Castle Rock State Park is very important to us because of its connectivity to Sanborn County Park, MROSD (Saratoga Gap and Long Ridge OSPs), and especially Big Basin State Park. In particular:

1. The Skyline Trail (which runs parallel to Highway 35, on its northern side) passes through not only Castle Rock State Park, but also Sanborn County Park and MROSD Saratoga Gap OSP. This trail has been designated part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, and it's important that it - like most of the rest of the Bay Area Ridge Trail - be opened to bikes.

2. The Saratoga Toll Road is a long, scenic trail that runs from Saratoga Gap down (southwards) to Waterman Gap, roughly parallel to Highway 9. (Although it is fireroad-width, it is actually (IMHO) much more scenic and more pleasant than the corresponding section of the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail, which runs very close to Highway 9 in several places.

The Castle Rock Trail Plan allows for (but - because of the anti-bike members of the committee - does not specifically call for) bike access to the Saratoga Toll Road, along with a connecting trail that would connect to the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail in Big Basin (near Highway 236). Bike access to the Saratoga Toll Road (plus connecting trail) would make possible a scenic, off-road route from Saratoga Gap through to Big Basin (and hopefully from there to the ocean eventually).

There is no rational reason - beyond historical exclusion, hiker/equestrian fear and NIMBYism - for the Saratoga Toll Road to be closed to our use. It is very important that we correct this, by making clear to State Parks - at Monday's meeting - that we want and expect access to the Saratoga Toll Road (and Skyline Trail).

I would like to emphasize that this meeting is between State Parks officials and mountain bikers. We represent a significant user group in this process. We don't have to defend ourselves from other user groups in this meeting. This is a great opportunity for mountain bikers to engage these officials on our issues and concerns within State Parks.

The meeting room at the Zayante Fire Station has a capacity for at least 100 so lets try to pack the meeting with mountain bikers!

Comments for Big Basin General Plan Due Soon

2010-03-03T22:23:00.000-08:00

Big Basin is the oldest state park in the system yet it doesn't have a general plan. After starts and stops the Big Basin General Plan process is starting up again.

We have a great opportunity to expand mountain bike access in Big Basin. You may view drafts of some planning concepts. Alternative #1 seems to be the most friendly to expanding access for bikes.

This version of the plan proposes: "Provide a continuous trail from the ridge tops to the coast (outside of the wilderness) for bicycle access to natural areas and scenic points of interest". We submitted a proposal to our State Parks District a few years ago which requests bicycle access to a number of equestrian/hiker only trails. We intend
to continue to ask that the trails we propose be addressed during the general plan process.

Please write comments Comments in support of mountain biking for the Big Basin General Plan are due Saturday March 6th. Please write, phone, email your comments to the following places:

California State Parks
Planning Division
P.O. Box 942896
Sacramento, CA
94296-0001

Stuart Hong, Manager
General Plans Section
(916) 653-9644
shong@parks.ca.gov

Here are a few talking points that can help you craft your comments:

We support Alternative #1 of the plan to expand more recreation in the park
We wish to have legal access from skyline road (from Castle Rock) to the coast
We are willing to share trail access on alternating days (mitigate trail conflict concerns)
Mountain biking is a fun activity for kids and an alternative to electronic entertainment good and mitigates childhood obesity.
Mountain biking is a healthy activity. May be easier on the knees and feet than hiking for some people.
Women's participation in mountain biking has been steadily growing.
Brings more people out to the parks, can increase tourism revenue and create more park advocates.
Mountain bikers are willing to help with trail design, trail construction and maintenance.
Mountain biking is a global activity and brings people from all over the world to enjoy our natural resources. This provide economic opportunities for local businesses.

You may wish to relate your own personal experiences with mountain biking and why you want more access for legal mountain biking in these parks.

Both the Castle Rock Trail Plan and the Big Basin General Plan are very positive for mountain biking and if successful - they will result in the expansion of legal mountain biking trails in these parks. Expanding mountain biking in both of these parks essentially gives us a legal skyline to sea trail in the North part of the County.

However, there is no guarantee of success. There are a lot of groups who are opposed to mountain biking in Santa Cruz County and they are better funded and more organized than us.

We need to have comments and attendance from the community which support mountain biking in both of these plans. It is important to get these comments into the public record. It can be easy as firing off a quick email, making a phone call or showing up and asking questions. It's a small commitment on your time which can pay off big in the long term.

Thank you for your support of mountain biking in Santa Cruz County!

Titus El Guapo Group Ride Saturday is CANCELLED

2010-02-25T14:35:00.000-08:00

We regret to inform that we have decided to cancel the SDSF group ride and BBQ on Saturday Feb 27th.

There was a significant rain storm which rolled into the area on Tuesday which dumped 3" of rain in the Santa Cruz mountains. The event planning committee looked at the existing trail conditions today and the weather forecast over the next couple of days calls for an additional 1.5-3" of rain and high winds for Friday continuing into Saturday. We feel that the trail conditions are way too saturated to hold a mountain biking event.

We recognize that planning an outdoor event in February is a gamble with the weather and we rolled the dice and lost.

The great news is that the weather is looking good for Sunday so the Jump Jam at Depot Park is still a go! Also, make sure to come out to the California premier of Women of Dirt on Sunday Feb 28th at 7 pm. For details about the events on Sunday please see the Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz home page.

For those planning to attend, we thank you for your support. We hope to present a similar ride and festival in the future - perhaps when the weather is more consistent.

We would like to thank all the volunteers who signed up to help with the BBQ and act as ride leaders and sweeps. You now have your Saturday back!

We would also like to thank Mike and Jason from Titus Bikes for hauling the demo trailer all the way to Santa Cruz. They recognize that planning a winter event in California is dependent on the weather. Titus will still have a booth and their bikes on display at the Jump Jam in Depot Park on Sunday.

Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival Raffle is growing and growing...

2010-02-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

The raffle after the Women of Dirt film premier on Feb 28th is gathering steam. We have OVER $15,000 in raffle donations to giveaway. Yes, that's right. We will be giving away over $15,000 of merchandise on Sunday Feb 28th - all for $1/ticket. This does NOT include the ~$4,700 El Guapo that Titus has donated for a separate raffle (we will draw for the bike at the Sea Otter). Most of the proceeds from the film and raffle will go towards an environmental mitigation project at Soquel Demonstration State Forest.

The big ticket items include an Intense 5.5 EVP frame donated by Trailhead Cyclery. A Fox 36 Talas RC2 donated by Fox Racing Shox. A Black Market MOB frame (Chrome) donated by Black Market Bikes.

Thank you to the bike industry, local bike shops and local businesses for your generosity. I would love to call out the following companies and businesses for being above and beyond supporters:

A special mention to:

Thank you for supporting our event for your support of mountain biking in Santa Cruz County. We hope the membership will consider supporting these companies and local businesses.

Please come out to the film premier on Feb 28th and buy raffle tickets so you can be a part of all this goodness. Tickets can be bought at the best bike shops in the Santa Cruz area. Look for our event poster with the bright "Tickets Sold Here" stickers.

10% off BlkMrkt Products for Delivery at Santa Cruz MTB Festival

2010-02-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

Our good friends from BlkMrkt Bikes are offering a 10% off in stock items purchased from their online store for delivery in Santa Cruz at the Jump Jam on Feb 28th. This is a special deal for participants in the Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival.

BlkMrkt will have few bikes to demo at the Jump Jam held at Depot Park and they have also graciously donated a Chrome Mob Frame for the event raffle after the premier of "Awesome Land: Women of Dirt".

Introducing the Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival!

2010-02-02T21:09:00.000-08:00

Two-Day Mountain Bike Festival in Santa Cruz Brings Professional Female Mountain Bike Riders Including Lisa Myklak, Emily Johnston, Tammy Donahugh and Kathy Pruitt.

Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz has teamed up with Bones Over Metal to host the California Premier of Awesome Land: Women of Dirt. The event is scheduled to take place on Feb 28, 2010, at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz at 7 pm. This unique film spotlights some of the most talented women on knobby tires and the lifestyles that allow them to ride. Tickets can be purchased at the door or most local bike shops in Santa Cruz.

The film Awesome Land: Women Of Dirt looks through the eyes of the wondrous women that have helped grow the sports of gravity mountain biking, downhill racing, dirt jumping and free riding. Featured riders Lisa Myklak, Emily Johnston, Tammy Donahugh and Kathy Pruitt will be present at the premier, along with the filmmaker Mark Brent. There will be a Q&A session with the guests moderated Karen Kefauver, a freelance sports and travel journalist who authors the cycling column, Spin City for the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

"Our goal is to support local riding groups like MBoSC and cycling non-profits to host regional shows and share the 'awesomeness' the mountain bike has to offer. We want to give back to the community, and we want to do this in a way that the local organizations and promoters get to keep all the funds raised," said film producer Mark Brent.

The film premier is just one event tied to a greater two-day Mountain Bike Festival, sponsored by MBoSC and several others, including Fox Racing Shox, Black Market Racing, Gamut USA, Lights and Motion, Barry Swenson Builder, Trailhead Cycleryand a number of local bike shops including Bike Station Aptos, Epicenter Cycling and The Bicycle Trip.

Pending good weather, events held in conjunction with the premier include an open group ride through the Soquel Demonstration Forest and Demo Day at Bike Station Aptos on Feb. 27, and a Jump Jam with the pro ladies on Feb 28th.

Proceeds from the festivities will go directly toward efforts to rebuild and reopen the SDF parking lot, which has been closed due to environmental issues.

You will be able to get tickets before the show at local bike shops. Details later....

Summary of 2009 and a look ahead to 2010

2010-01-06T11:55:00.000-08:00

2009 was an odd year but MBOSC knocked it out of the park. It was a year of growth and opportunity for us even in a collapsing and stagnant economy. When times are tough we can look to our trusty metal/aluminum/titanium/carbon steeds to give us perspective about the most important things in our lives: friends, family and health.

We had a very active year and accomplished quite a bit. It started with a "crisis" which threatened to take away the riding areas that we hold dear but it's ending with a better organization and more engaged volunteers and officers.

UC/Henry Cowell enforcement crisis was turned into opportunity. We negotiated with the District State Parks leadership to change their enforcement program to education.
Introduced the inclusive monthly slow ride in February. This ride as has been a huge hit and has been a great way to welcome women and beginners to mountain biking.
The District State Parks are finally moving forward with addressing our trail conversion proposal. Our trail proposal is the highest priority of the Mountain Sector Superintendent
MBOSC represented Santa Cruz and mountain biking at the Bike Summit in Washington, DC.
MBOSC went to Sacramento for Park Advocacy Day to support our local State Parks.
Provided Dual Slalom course marshals for the Sea Otter
All active MBOSC officers attended the IMBA California summit at the Sea Otter
We donated $1000 to IMBA California
MBOSC was part of a bunch of NorCal clubs who went to Lake Tahoe to ride, ride, ride... and build trail. 70-80 trail builders (26 from MBOSC) helped to build 860 ft of full bench cut single track on the Donner Lake Rim trail
Our first film presentation: We presented Freedom Riders at the Rio Theatre.
Raised over $4500 through 3 fundraisers: Freedom Riders, Micks Automotive, Surfrider Cafe
We donated $3500 to Wilder Ranch for a new trail head sign.
Helped to facilitate the re-engagement of the mountain biking community to Soquel Demo Forest
MBOSC had a build team for Turning Wheels for Kids and built about 26 out of 2,300 new bikes which were given to needy kids as Christmas gifts.
Membership: we gained 53 new paid members and 45 renewed memberships. This despite the hassle of printing a form, writing a check, finding a stamp and mailing an envelope. Thank you all!
96 people joined our email list this year. Our email list now has 345 members.

Some projects we will be working on for 2010

Will be hosting the California premier of Awesome Land: Women of Dirt on Feb 28th. You will be hearing more about this in the next couple of months.
Signature gathering for ballot measure to support State Parks funding initiative
Coast Dairies: We have a subcommittee of very engaged people who will help push TPL and BLM towards conveyance and transference.
Sea Otter: We will be providing the DS course marshals, will have a booth in the grassy area of the expo (next to the IMBA booth) and will be camping.
Bike Festival. The city of Santa Cruz would like to have a bike festival in May to co-incide with the Santa Cruz stage of the Amgen Tour of California.
New Wilder Ranch sign: Should be completed and installed by May
Annual Tahoe trip: Will be in August again. Perhaps south shore.
Electronic online memberships and payments via PayPal. Membership database conversion to FileMaker.

I would personally like to thank all the active officers of MBOSC: Daryl Breuninger (Vice-President), Eve Davidson (Treasurer), Sebastien Praly (Equestrian Relations, Brewmaster), Johauna Rathbun (Secretary), Megan Zemny (Social Coordinator), Steven Gemeolos (Event Coordinator). It was wonderful working with you all this year. You all really stepped up and helped develop the capacity of the club to get things done.

We would also like to thank the local bike industry, the local bike shops and other local businesses for supporting our events and members. We are really blessed to have such a concentration of world class industries in the playgrounds of our backyards.

Finally I would like to thank our membership. We are a volunteer organization and many of you supported our events and volunteered to help out. It's been a pleasure to meet many of you at rides and meetings and I'm proud of the quality of people within this mountain biking community.

2010 looks like it will be another good year for MBOSC and I hope you be there with us!

Suspension Rebuild Benefit for MBOSC

2009-12-31T16:22:00.000-08:00

Our good friends at Epicenter Cycling at the foot of Nisene Marks is the newest bike shop in the Santa Cruz area. They have generously offered a suspension rebuild program which will benefit MBOSC for the month of January 2010.

Here is a summary of the program:

* $70 for fork rebuild, $40 for the rear shock

* $10 of each rebuild will be donated to MBOSC

* Oil is included in the rebuilt but parts are extra (seals, etc...).

* Card carrying members of MBOSC get a 10% discount on parts

Epicenter Cycling

8035 Soquel Dr, Aptos, CA 95003

(831) 662-8100

Suspension is an important part of the modern mountain biking experience. Improperly tuned and maintained suspension system could lead to high expenses later on. At the very least it could make your riding sub-optimal and at it's worse it could be dangerous.

Make it your New Years' resolution to let Epicenter Cycling maintain your fork and help benefit local mountain bike advocacy. Please call 831-662-8100 to book your suspension rebuild appointment.

The Word on Soquel Demo Forest Issues

2009-11-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

This summary about the state of SDF was written by Patty Ciesla which was sent on the Passion Trail Bikes mailing list.

The Passion mailing list is an excellent source of information about mountain bike advocacy in the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California. Definitely not spam.

A number of email lists and web forums have posted stories on one or more variations of the theme "Soquel Forest is Threatened!" Well, here's the word on Soquel Forest. Soquel Demonstration State Forest is owned by the State of California, and managed by CDF, aka CalFire, as a working, timber producing forest. It is not a park and not subject to the use and management restrictions found in California State Parks. Unfortunately, as CDF is a state agency, its operations are heavily impacted by the awful state of the CA Budget process.

Soquel Forest has experienced some of the worst reductions in funding in its history in recent months, and after several years of budget cuts, this is a real blow. Longtime Forest Manager Thom Sutfin retired, and his position is being left unfilled. Their seasonal forestry aids are being let go for the winter and perhaps indefinitely. This leaves CDF with one full time Assistant Forest Manager (Ed Orre), and a half-time Office Assistant. So they basically are having to deal with something like an 80% staff reduction from their 2006 levels.

Ed Orre cuts an angled edge into a future technical trail feature, Feb 21, 2009

Recently, the parking lot has been the scene of raves, drunken slob fests, vehicular breakings and other unsavory behavior. The porta potty was recently knocked over and damaged, right before a senior CDF forester came to inspect a timber harvest area planned for the Redwood Empire land next door to the forest. The porta potty, incidentally, has been 100% paid for by Specialized in Morgan Hill for something like 10 years now. At any rate, it got knocked over by the gate, and its tank contents spilled right next to a small tributary to Soquel Creek. The parking lot doesn't belong to CDF, it belongs to Redwood Empire. CDF has a deeded road easement through it for access to the forest, but use as a parking lot has been negotiated. And Redwood Empire wants to do a small harvest in the area uphill of the parking lot, and use the lot for its trucks during timber harvest operations. Hence, the inspectors.

So now they are talking about closing the lot and chaining off the road at the bridge, which would require visitors to park on the side of Highland Way. Not in itself such a huge deal, but with all the break-ins, the road is a lot less secure. And the inspectors also have concerns about the sediment runoff from the parking lot, which has become of increased concern since Coho Salmon fry have been found for the first time in Soquel Creek this spring, in addition to the established Steelhead Trout populations, making the creek health super important for these threatened and endangered species. One possible way to address this is to build in some bio-swales to collect runoff and allow silt to settle out before the water drains into the creek.

Ed and Stewards of Soquel Forest volunteer crew leader Scott Robinson inspect the approach to the finished log ride

CDF has also been planning a timber harvest for the north side of Soquel Creek, in an area called Fern Gulch, and after almost 10 years of planning it is nearly ready to be approved. It is likely they will start harvesting operations in the Spring. In addition, they are doing the preliminary work for a harvest on the south side of Hihn's Mill Road, probably involving trees on either side of Tractor Trail. Tractor Trail is actually an old road, and the road bed is in moderate to good condition, with the singletrack snaking down the center of it. While the plan is not complete, it may involve re-establishing the road, which would destroy the singletrack characteristics of this trail. Ed believes that they can incorporate a new parallel trail with true singletrack qualities (like the upper parts of Corral and Sawpit) into the post-harvest site remediation plan, but it seems likely that we would lose access to Tractor Trail during the harvest, and kiss its long-known narrow feeling curves and dips goodbye. Since many of us are just really unhappy with these kinds of changes, this news is fairly disturbing. And we don't know what this new trail would really be like.

One other thing related to the timber harvests is that CDF will be conducting tours of the harvest operations. Our trail use and trail impacts will be more closely observed than usual, and by people with strong environmental interests. Keeping the trails in really good shape will be imperative so that our use of the forest will not create any concerns that could impact our access.

The Stewards of Soquel Forest is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was formed in 2000 during the effort to prevent the closure of the illegally-built Braille Trail. This organization is responsible for maintaining the trails in Soquel Forest, and has been working closely with CDF over the years to put in many of the improvements you've seen on the trails of this amazing riding destination. Well, like many other non-profits, it's seen varying levels of commitment and enthusiasm, and right now could really use an infusion of new blood and leadership to help it fulfill its role in keeping Soquel Forest and awesome place to ride. We are looking for people who could help lead trail maintenance crews, help with patrolling the forest through the NMBP program, and help with other functions, such as updating and managing its website, renewing memberships, and planning the annual year-end volunteer appreciation party and shuttle fest.

Patty and Charles, along with Daryl, Scott, Shane, Nigel, and others, are very active in the Stewards. If you would like to get involved, please shoot an email to Patty at patty@passiontrailbikes.com, and ask to be put on the Stewards list for future notifications. Also, stay tuned for trailwork dates that are being set now for this fall and winter.

MBOSC donates $3,500 to Wilder Ranch State Park

2009-10-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

I am really pleased to announce that MBOSC has donated $3,500 to Wilder Ranch State Park. Due to the success of our recent fund raising efforts we decided to increase our donation from $2,000 to $3,500. We really appreciate the generosity of the mountain biking community in supporting our efforts to help our local State Parks during these
difficult budgetary times.

The funds will be earmarked for a new sign at the entrance to the Wilder Ranch back country near the Cowboy Coral. There are a lot of out of town visitors to Wilder Ranch so we feel that good signage is valuable to help orient our guests in the park. A high quality sign is also a visible demonstration that the facilities are well kept. The old sign was dated, faded, falling apart - and a bit of an embarrassment (see image).

The new sign will be built by Wildways Illustrated. You have probably seen their work all over the Monterey Bay area. We will be starting the design process soon and a representative from MBOSC will be on the committee to help oversee the design. We hope to have the sign completed by next spring.

We are also interested in funding two more park signs at Wilder: one at 4 Corners (where Enchanted Loop meets Eucalyptus Loop) and another near Empire Grade.

Mountain bikers have been volunteering our labor to help maintain the local trails for decades. This financial contribution represents another avenue for which the mountain biking community contributes to the maintenance of our parks resources.

Thank you all very much for helping us make a generous contribution to our local parks!

November 18th is MBOSC night at the Surfrider Cafe

2009-10-26T19:52:00.000-07:00

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The Surfrider Cafe is a relatively new restaurant in downtown Santa Cruz. They have a weekly community night on Wednesdays and they have graciously offered to devote Wednesday November 18th as a community night for MBOSC.

Mark your calendars: MBOSC Community night at the Surfrider Cafe Wednesday November 18th. 429 Front St. at Cathcart

15% of the gross sales from the day of business will benefit MBOSC. Having lunch or dinner at the Surfrider Cafe on November 18th will benefit MBOSC.

There is a patio/courtyard in plain sight, so bikes can be easily locked and watched.

The Surfrider Cafe also has a daily happy hour from 4-6pm. All microbrew pints are $2

Going to a restaurant to have a meal and some drinks with your fellow mountain bikers is a great way to support MBOSC and your local small business.

I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

Mick's Automotive fundraiser for MBOSC Saturday Oct 10

2009-09-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

Tracy Cotten - the owner of Mick's Automotive - has offered to donate the profits from his business on Saturday October 10 to MBOSC. Mick's Automotive is an auto repair shop specializing in Japanese cars.

Tracy and his lead technician Brian are avid mountain bikers and have been active supporters of MBOSC. If you have ever spoken with Tracy you will soon learn that he is an expert on the subject of cars and he is very pragmatic on car maintenance. He and his staff are serious about learning new skills an they do a lot of research on new cars and maintenance. You can be assured that you will be getting top notch service at Mick's.

If you have a Japanese car and need service then please give Mick's a call and schedule your work for Saturday Oct 10.

Micks Automotive http://micksauto.com
1257 Thompson Ave. #D
Santa Cruz CA 95062
831-464-6855

We can raise a significant amount of money for MBOSC if we can get some big jobs scheduled rather than simple oil changes. If you need service on your Japanese vehicle then you can help MBOSC by having Mick's do your job on Oct 10.

MBOSC uses membership dues and other funds we raise to pay for basic overhead like web hosting, printing and insurance (our biggest expense). We also make donations to other non-profits and land conservation trusts which support mountain biking. We also use our funds to pay for event day use fees and permits like Carrotfest and Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day. We also buy food, drinks and beer (usually discounted) for events and provide it free to attendees. Some of these funds go back into the membership since we pay for the Sea Otter and Tahoe camp sites and offer free camping and beer to members who attend.

Thank you and please support MBOSC by scheduling your car maintenance at Mick's Automotive.

Freedom Riders Showing Raised Money for State Parks District

2009-09-27T20:02:00.000-07:00

MBOSC presented the Santa Cruz premier of "Freedom Riders" at the Rio Theatre on Sept 17. This presentation was a fund raiser for the local state parks and I'm happy to announce that it was a success. We had 196 paid attendees and sold about $1400 in raffle tickets for a total of about $2000 raised for state parks.

An event like this takes a lot of work and many people donated their time and goods to make this event a success.

Thanks to Megan Zemny, Steve Gemelos, Sebastien Praly, Eve Davidson and Mark Woodhead for the planning, logistics and doing the legwork for this event. Thanks to Jesse Nickel for soliciting, acquiring and donating raffle items.

A big thanks to the event volunteers Tim and Shannon Park, James B, Chris, Tracy Cotten, Johauna Rathbun, Melissa Cline, Buel Proffit and Amiel Sagpao.

Thanks to Michael Horn for providing the short films before the main feature and spending time in the projection booth to ensure that the films ran smoothly.

Thanks to Charlie and Jason at Seabright Brewery for the after party (film attendees were treated to Happy Hour pricing). Thanks to Austin Sprague for working with Seabright on the after party.

We would like to thank some of the people and businesses who donated to make our raffle a success.

Alex Stover from Kali Protectives
Andrew Cavaletto from Scotts Valley Cycle Sport
Danettee Shoemaker from the City of Santa Cruz
Elayna Caldwell from Fox Racing Shox
Eric Richter from Giro
Jesse Nickell from Barry Swenson Builders
John Caletti from Caletti Cycles
Juan Graziosi from Gamut USA
Lars Thomson from Trailhead Cyclery
Patti Bonnet from IMBA
Patty Ciesla and Charles Jalgunas from Passion Trail Bikes

These vendors have demonstrated their support for mountain bike advocacy and they deserve our support as well.

This event raised money to replace the trail head sign at the entrance of the Wilder Ranch back country.

Thanks again for your support!

Freedom Riders Showing Thursday Sept 17th

2009-09-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

MBOSC presents the Santa Cruz showing of Freedom Riders 7 pm Thursday September 17th at the Rio Theatre.

This film is a benefit to raise money for our local State Parks district to replace the sign at the entrance of the Wilder Ranch back country.

Tickets are $10 available at the following locations (cash only):

Another Bikeshop

Bicycletrip

Spokesman

Scotts Valley Cycle Sport

Aptos Bike Station

Sprockets

Family Cycling Center

Trailhead Cyclery (San Jose)

Passion Trail Bikes(Belmont)

Tickets are also available at the door and will include a raffle ticket. We will also sell additional raffle tickets in the theater.

Freedom Riders is the story of a core group of riders who evolved from covertly building rough and unsustainable trails, to creating a precedent setting relationship with the Forest Service and creating some of the best Freeride trails in the country.

This is a great way to raise money for our local state parks

Hope to see you there!

Why we are supporting State Parks for "Freedom Riders" showing

2009-09-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

Our showing of "Freedom Riders" this Thursday is a fund raiser for our local State Parks District. I'm a mountain biker and parks supporter. Not only do the parks provide great trails for riding but they also provide other recreational/educational opportunities for local residents and visitors.

The main reason why MBOSC as a mountain bike club is raising money for our State Parks district is we appreciate that they are serious in finding more legal mountain biking opportunities. We have made a lot of progress with State Parks this summer.

Here is a summary of the story so far.

History: back in Nov 2006, we submitted a trail conversion proposal which asked to convert 24 mi of single track and 12 miles of fireroad to multi-use from limited use in Castle Rock, Big Basin and Fall Creek State Parks. We focused on trails which are currently open to hikers and equestrians only. This proposal has been met with stale mate. We met with the parks staff many times and have been stonewalled.... until this year.
More history: There has been a change in leadership in the district. Senior management - mostly conservation oriented - have retired and been replaced by newer leaders who are sympathetic to active recreation. They have also filled a role of a District Trails and Road Superintendent - a key position required to address our proposal and other change in use for existing/future trails.
Back in February, there was a change in strategy to deal with unauthorized riding at Henry Cowell Park. The Rangers would be issuing warnings then citations to enforce the bike ban on the west part of the park adjoining UC - incorrectly referred to as "UCSC" (ie. Campers, Carpet, Sick & Twisted, etc...). This was seen as those handouts on car windshields in the lot.
MBOSC successfully negotiated a change in tactics from enforcement to education. In response, we ask that mountain bikers try to limit their activity in that area.
Sensing growing negative sentiment towards the local parks by mountain bikers, the State Parks District Superintendent made creating more legitimate mountain biking opportunities the highest priority for the new Mountain Sector Superintendent (to be hired). He suggested that addressing our submitted proposal is where the new Sector Super will start.
Karl Tallman was hired as the Sector Superintendent earlier this summer. In June, MBOSC members and Tom Ward from IMBA CA met with him and the District Trails and Roads Supervisor to restart the trail proposal process. Karl demonstrated the commitment of the District to find more legitimate mountain biking opportunities. We spent most of the meeting looking at maps and discussing the trails in the proposal. There was a definite "can do" attitude within the State Parks Staff. We made more progress in a 2 hour meeting than we made in the past 2.5 years. I want to emphasize that last point: We made more progress in a 2 hour meeting than we made in the past 2.5 years.
The senior trails specialist from Sacramento has been visiting Santa Cruz this summer (at least twice) to move this process forward. The sector super has been giving me progress updates all summer. This demonstrates the commitment from the District AND Sacramento to provide more legal mountain bike trails.
The Sacramento trails specialist will be in town on Sept 15th to meet with the District Trails and Roads supervisor to do a construction estimate on the first trail (3 segments) in our proposal to get addressed: The Skyline trail in Castle Rock - which is part of the Bay Area Ridge trail.

The biggest impact has been the change in attitude towards mountain biking in top management in the District. Our local State Parks are willing and honest partners for mountain biking. This means that we have a bright future for legal mountain bike access in Santa Cruz.

We want to demonstrate our appreciation for the district by raising money to help pay for some hard costs of maintaing the district. We hope you agree and support more legitimate mountain biking in Santa Cruz County by attending our showing of "Freedom Riders" this Thursday at the Rio.

MBOSC Presents Freedom Riders at the Rio Sept 17

2009-08-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

MBOSC presents the Santa Cruz showing of Freedom Riders 7 pm Thursday September 17th at the Rio Theatre on This film is a benefit to raise money for our local State Parks district to replace the sign at the entrance of the Wilder Ranch back country.

Tickets will be $10 at the door and will include a raffle ticket. We will also sell additional raffle tickets in the theater.

Freedom Riders is the story of a core group of riders who evolved from covertly building rough and unsustainable trails, to creating a precedent setting relationship with the Forest Service and creating some of the best Freeride trails in the country.

MBOSC is presenting this film because we feel it’s a story that could resonate in this community and it could lead to some wonderful future possibilities in our local scene. The current state fiscal crisis and the change in leadership in the local district is creating more dialog between land managers and the local mountain bike advocates. They are looking for allies and partners. Since February, we have been actively working with our local State Parks district to create more legitimate mountain biking opportunities. We are inviting local land managers to the showing of this film and hope that they can see how co-operation between downhill/freeride mountain bikers and land managers has worked in another part of the country.

Hope to see you there!

Tahoe Trip 2009 was a success!

2009-08-17T20:47:00.000-07:00

We had about 70-80 riders from 5 northern California clubs: MBOSC, ROMP, BTCEB, BONC and FATRAC. We had a movie night, a raffle and lots of beer. The location was great except for the late night construction on the first 2 nights.

There were about 26 riders/campers/trail workers from MBOSC and we had a lot of fun. Lots of beer was consumed, many rides were done and the trail building day was successful. There were many ride options this year for different abilities. The highlight for me was riding up to Armstrong Pass and down Mr Toads. An awesome and epic-y ride! Another highlight was sharing the Tahoe Rim Trail from Tahoe Meadows to Tunnel creek with my daughter. I was so happy to be able to show her those majestic views.

We had about 70-80 trail volunteers construct 860 ft of full bench cut trail for the Donner Lake rim trail. Many rocks were moved to build retaining walls, stumps removed, manzinita hacked, dozens of wheel barrows full of dirt were moved and about 6 large fallen trees were

moved off the path of the trail. Be proud of yourselves, folks. The finished trail was really impressive!

I would like to thank Linda George for being the lead organizer of this event. Dave George for baking 2 apple pies and cookies for Eve's birthday party. Sebastien Praly for brewing 2 kegs of great beer over the course of this summer for this trip. New Belgium Brewing company for donating many cases of beer (the cold brew after trail work was the best!) Tracey Cotten for volunteering the use of his truck for shuttling mountain bikers, tools and beer - and for sharing a bottle of high quality Tequila! Many others deserve thanks including all of you participants. I'm glad to have got to know so many cool people a lot better.

I would especially like to thank Steve Gemelos for organizing the MBOSC participants. Steve's organization and communications made the event run really smoothly for MBOSC.

Trip Report: Park Advocacy Day in Sacramento

2009-03-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

People at work think I'm a really sick puppy since I spend my well deserved vacation time to wear a suit so that I can attend meetings with politicians. Somewhere along the way I got lost. Where is that guy who would go snowboarding in Whistler or Tahoe? The guy who would go to Utah or Colorado to go mountain biking? What happened to that guy and when did this political junkie replace him?

I attended Park Advocacy Day (PAD) in Sacramento on Monday. This is a way to engage State Assembly members and Senators to support California State Parks. It was a really intense but fulfilling experience. I think we made a lot of progress and got our message of supporting Parks across. There were about 20 of us from Santa Cruz so I joined a group of advocates who focused on districts in Southern California. I was pretty fresh from my Washington, DC week of bike advocacy so I was definitely a seasoned pro speaking with politicians. I also look pretty suave in an Italian suit ;-)

Our basic themes were:

1. Development threats to State Parks. I'm not sure how applicable they are to this district but Parks in Southern California are regarded as fair game when infrastructure or utilities need land to be built. The basic message is that Parks resources are not "the path of least resistance" when it comes to finding land for infrastructure. There were a couple of Senate bills which increase park protection.

2. Mitigating the impacts from the bond freeze. While restarting the freeze would be good there were a couple of bills that we were asked support to mitigate the negative impacts from the freeze. Chet gave me an anecdote that bond freeze may require dropping a couple of scheduled maintenance projects that I used to relate this issue to my local district.

3. Role of State Parks in the Federal economic stimulus. We asked for a portion of the discretionary portion of the stimulus funding to be directed towards the $1.2B maintenance backlog of "shovel ready" maintenance projects within State Parks. If you have a list of projects in the local district then I would be happy to follow up on this ask.

The most interesting anecdote that happened was that I was talking with Assembly member Mary Salas and she picked up that I was from Santa Cruz. She insisted that I speak with former Assembly member John Laird and thank him for the work he did on waste issue in her district. I mentioned that I will mentioned it the next time I spoke with him feeling that this will be an unfulfilled promise. About 15 minutes later I saw John Laird and thanked him on Mary's behalf. I had a great conversation with him and I he is still very much engaged in solving problems. Great man.

The second most interesting anecdote is that I finally met Mike Vandeman. The Santa Cruz park advocates knew I was a also a mountain bike advocate so when this extremist was spewing hatred about mountain bikes they directed him to talk with me. I didn't know it was Mike but after about 5 minutes he started to call me a liar and I realized that I read this script before. He also didn't accept the fact that hiking boots or horses cause any impact to the trails so I knew it was Mike. I was having a very civil discourse with him but I also realized that I was getting nowhere (and neither was he) so our conversation was futile. I thanked him for his support of California State Parks and left him.

I attended Park Advocacy Day as a favor to our District Superintendent who encouraged me to go. I was waffling since I had recently returned from DC. However, I was really interested to learn more about State government. I learned more than I wanted to know about the California

budget crisis and I have to try hard to stop myself from wanting to be an advocate for fiscal responsibility and budget reform. Perhaps I'll take on this cause once we get wicked, sweet (and legal) mountain bike trails in Santa Cruz County.

Trip Report: Washington, DC National Bike Summit

2009-03-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Washington, DC as part of the National Bike Summit. I was a California mountain bike delegate and advocated on behalf of issues which help mountain biking and bicycle transportation.

My experience in Washington was intense and positive. This was the 9th year of the bike summit and attendance was a record breaking 550 delegates from 47 states (including 60+ mtb advocates) - which is great in this recessionary economy. I think the high attendance was attributed to the general optimism of the Obama administration and that we would have a government who are sympathetic to cycling issues. It was a pretty wired conference and summit. We twittered a lot.

I met with Anna Eschoo (CA-14) and Sam Farr's (C-17) legislative assistant and central coast representatives are friendly towards cycling issues. They are also supporters of Wilderness bills so we have some work to ensure that we achieve the goals of land protection without removing recreational opportunities for mountain bikes. The other mtb related issue we had was to ask to renew the Recreational Trails Program (RTP) to $550M over 5 years (this is part of the transportation bill). The RTP is an important program which will fund trail projects at Coast Dairies - which will be an important place for the future of mountain biking in Santa Cruz County.

This is the second time I have attended the national bike summit and I felt better prepared this time. I had a couple of local asks (support for the rail trail and a BLM trail head project at Fort Ord). I have been following up on these issues since I got back home.

Socially, I managed to hang our with the communications director of the Evergreen Mountain bike alliance based in Seattle. These are the folks that developed and built the Colannade

urban bike park (under the I-5) to Seattle. I also had dinner and drinks with the Hawaiian delegation one evening. It was very cool to hang out with politically minded bike geeks. It great to learn what works and lessons learned in getting more mountain bike trails/resources in other parts of the country. Good stuff. I am doing my best to put this knowledge to work in raising the profile and resources for mountain biking in Santa Cruz County.

Mountain Bike Trails in Santa Cruz State Parks are a Priority

2009-03-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

I had a great conversation with Karl Tallman - the interim Sector Superintendent which covers Big Basin, Fall Creek and Henry Cowell. Most of the discussion focused on a letter that I would later receive that acted as a response to our open dialog request.

I just want to say that our conversation was really positive. If you read no further I would just like to mention the major outcome: the number one priority of the permanent sector superintendent is to create more trail opportunities for mountain bikes. Let me repeat that: THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY OF THE MOUNTAIN SECTOR IS TO CREATE MORE MOUNTAIN BIKE TRAILS. We have started this process and there will be meetings and follow up.

This is a huge concession to the mountain biking community and the recognition that mountain biking has been increasing throughout the parks. This is not going to be a quick or easy process and be prepared for setbacks and push back from other community members. However, there is definitely a new level of reaching out to the mountain biking community from our State Parks District so future access looks positive.

Our District State Parks has been filling their vacant positions recently and they have a new trail and roads co-ordinator, an environmental scientist and a couple of part time resource ecologists. You also know that they have filled all their vacant Ranger positions and are actively seeking a maintenance chief. Most importantly, they are actively looking for a permanent Sector Superintendent and they anticipate that the position will be filled sometime in April. These are the people we will be working with in order to create more legitimate riding opportunities.

What they don’t have is funding and the mountain biking community can help make up for that shortfall with donations, labor and trail design and building expertise. The local riders and bike industry should partner with our land managers to create a legitimate network of trails throughout the county.

We are looking at a very bright future for mountain biking in Santa Cruz County. The BLM Coast Dairies properties and our local state parks have land managers who are friendly to mountain biking. There has been some great work by Jesse Nickel with the jump/skills community. The local bike industry is world renowned. The Amgen Tour of California has shown the City, Visitors Center and Chamber of Commerce that cycling and events is a huge economic opportunity and are looking for ways to capitalize on it. It’s a good time to be a cyclist in Santa Cruz County.

And now for a plea...

A large part of the reason we got such generous concessions from our District State Parks is because you have supported the efforts of MBOSC. I’m just the tip of the arrow who can poke the beast but you are the wood behind the arrow to help me fully penetrate the belly of the beast. I speak for all of you and when we have more representation then we become a much higher priority for our local land managers.

If you are not current member of MBOSC then I ask that you join. We would like to make a donation to IMBA California - who has been instrumental in gaining these concessions - and we would like to fund future bike related projects in the Santa Cruz area.

In the past month or so since the UC/9 enforcement program started I have received many messages of support and we have many new memberships. I would like to thank all of you for keeping me motivated and fighting for your right to ride. Mountain bike advocacy is a frustrating and lonely job but I am proud to represent all of you and you have inspired me to work for the rights of mountain bikers in Santa Cruz County.

Thanks again for your support.

Our Open Dialog Request with our District State Parks

2009-03-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

I had a conversation with the District Superintendent Chet Bardo for the Santa Cruz area State Parks to follow up on the open dialog request that we submitted to him and his two superiors. We made a request for an open dialog between Chet and the mountain biking community so that he can hear our concerns for additional access. The objective of the open dialog was to see movement on our existing proposals. This letter was really effective in getting his attention and he gladly took my call. We had an amiable conversation for about an hour.

The bottom line was that Chet said NO to an open dialog. However, I’m pleased to announce that we have achieved our objective without having to rent a space and rally a critical mass of 100-200 mountain bikers. Chet has agreed to move forward with some of our existing proposals to open new trails to mountain bikers. The letter accomplished two things:

1. He finally read and is currently responding to our trail conversion request. He has asked the Mountain Sector Superintendent to contact me (more later).

2. He actually pulled and read the Gray Whale file. The issues are complicated but he has a broad understanding of the issues associated with opening the trails on Gray Whale.

There were a lot of constructive discussion points and most of them sounded favorable to mountain biking (given his audience) but there are three specific points that he wanted to make to the mountain biking community:

1. Chet is one of our better recreation advocates within this State Parks District in many, many years. I agree and so other bike advocates who have worked with Chet while he was at previous position. He seemed slighted from the letter and he took it personally that the tone of the letter implies that this district is unsympathetic to mountain biking - which was true under previous District Superintendents.

2. His number one priority is to keep the park operations functioning. Very challenging in this economic climate so don’t expect quick progress.

3. There are a lot of new people in the district and there has been some promotions. There is a great opportunity to create positive working relationships with the staff. The new staff is going to try different ways to manage the properties. Enforcement is one such action (as we are all aware).

Some other points which were made:

The Big Basin general plan is starting up again. Mountain bikers should be engaged in this process to ensure that we are not excluded from the property and we may be able to make inroads on future trails and re-designations of existing trails.

Chet belongs to a group of local park professionals (Mid-Pen, POST, etc...) who regularly hold “what have you got” meetings and try to pool resources and strategies. They all agree that multi-use trails should be used to connect adjoining properties.

He thinks that mountain bikers are going to be important allies and recognizes the importance of the mountain biking community.

I will be working with the Sector Super to find common ground, look at the role of mountain biking and see what projects he is willing to staff which will be beneficial to mountain bikers. I will be discussing the existing enforcement program, converting limited use trails to multi-use (as per our proposal) and get an understanding of the status of trail reclamation.

This is good news. A little bit of progress.

Status of Coast Dairies

2009-03-16T20:41:00.000-07:00

Recently, I had a conversation with the Field Manager for the BLM office in Holister. This office is responsible for the management of the Fort Ord properties (Sea Otter back country) and Coast Dairies. The Coast Dairies property is going to play an important role in the future of Santa Cruz mountain biking. The BLM is open minded to events and are willing to create the challenging, sustainable trails that mountain bikers enjoy. The BLM has a great partnership with mountain bikers across the nation.

The objective of my call was to get the status of the Coast Dairies conveyance and see how I can help him out when I visit our congressional representatives in Washington, DC this week (more in a separate message). Here is what I found out:

Many of the “hard” issues have been resolved like the CEMEX land swap and lot line adjustment. The only thing pending is to do the title process and other minutiae of doing a large real estate transation. He mentioned that he has a full time title lawyer working on this.
Conveyance is as far along as it ever has. All previous obstacles to land transfer has been addressed.
The “ball is in the court of the Trust for Public Land (TPL)” - who are the current land holders. Just a question of focus and resources. Due diligence needs to be done like title exception and the easement language is in place.
BLM has some funds for managing the property after conveyance. They are already drafting trail and recreation plans.
There are some concerns from local conversationalists about the BLM’s intentions with this land. The BLM has a national reputation of resource exploitation on the lands they manage and articles such as this one contribute to the suspicion. The local BLM has the same conservation values as other local land agencies and the Field Manager is sincere in honoring the existing deed restrictions.
When conveyance takes place the BLM can tap into the Recreational Trails Program (RTP) to get funding for trails and trail head improvements. We are well situated to utilize these programs since the BLM Trail and Recreation Planner has had RTP grants training and MBOSC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit who can partner with the BLM and provide volunteers for the work. This is the type of partnership in which the RTP grantors are looking for.
The BLM will not commit to a date when conveyance will occur. They have been burned way too many times in coming up with a date. I’m hoping/guessing that it will be within the year and we may be able to accelerate the process.

Now that we have a little more clarity, how can we move this process forward?

We should contact the TPL and ask them to move forward with the conveyance. It is in their best interests to absolve themselves of the ownership and management of this land. The TPL still has issues with moving the Ag lands to a trust but this doesn’t preclude the conveyance to BLM.
We should ask Congress to give Coast Dairies have an Outstanding Natural Area designation. This designation ensures that the land is valued for a set of attributes like scenic, educational and recreational. This designation becomes the primary use and is the framework for any underlying plan. Arguably this restricts the flexibility of the land manager (and successive land managers) but it will mitigate the concerns of those who don’t trust the BLM to adhere to the deed restrictions.
In light of the CEMEX plant closure (starting Monday for 6 months... and beyond?), we should get the town of Davenport to buy into the idea of diversifying their economy by promoting the recreational and economic value of Coast Dairies.
We should follow up the BLM Trail and Recreation planner about the interim access plan and the draft of the trail plan. We should volunteer our input, resources and expertise.

The Coast Dairies property will be an amazing mountain bike destination with high marine terraces, a 700 acre second growth redwood forests and incredible ocean views. It will only become this reality though a lot of help and support from the community. Please contact me if you want to help out with this initiative.

Announcing the joint MBOSC/Mere Mortals 4th Saturday ride at Wilder Ranch

2009-02-27T09:31:00.000-08:00

Many local and remote riders have enjoyed our regular Saturday ride at Wilder Ranch for years. One recurring theme that comes up is that the pace is too fast. For years we have also tried to figure out how to make beginner or leisurely riders welcome on the ride. I am pleased to announce that we are going to address the issue with a regular slow ride.

Starting tomorrow and continuing on every 4th Saturday of the month, MBOSC in partnership with Mere Mortals will have a “slow” ride option. This ride will be at a more leisurely pace. We may not cover as many miles but it will be a ride which is friendly for beginners. There will probably be an intermediate/advanced group for the regulars and fast people as well.

Meet at 10 am on the 4th Saturday of the month at the park sign that leads into the back country at Wilder Ranch State Park.

We would like to welcome beginner or slower mountain bikers to the sport we would like them to feel welcome on our group rides.

Please attend the Santa Cruz City Council Meeting to Support the Jump Park

2009-02-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month the Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Commission voted unanimously to move forward with the relocation of the Fun Spot bike park. We would like to thank the SC Parks and Rec Commission for your support for recreational cycling.

The next phase of this project is to attend the City Council meeting at the Santa Cruz City Council on Tuesday Feb 24th at 3 pm to support the relocation of the bike park. Note the time has changed from Jesse’s earlier messages.

The current plan is to relocate the park around the corner to a permanent location at Depot Park. Your comments should be in support of the relocation plan and you should also express your support for a public jump park in general.

Please attend and show your support for our kids and gravity brothers. If you cannot attend the meeting in person then please email, phone or write the council members in support of relocating the bike park:

Mayor, Cynthia Mathews  420-5020 City Hall Email - cmathews@ci.santa-cruz.ca.us
Vice Mayor, Mike Rotkin  420-5020 City Hall mrotkin@ci.santa-cruz.ca.us
Katherine Beiers  420-5020 City Hall  Email - kbeiers@ci.santa-cruz.ca.us 
Ryan Coonerty 420-5027 City Hall  Email - rcoonerty@ci.santa-cruz.ca.us
Don Lane  420-5020 City Hall  Email - dlane@ci.santa-cruz.ca.us
Tony Madrigal 420-5020 City Hall Email - tmadrigal@ci.santa-cruz.ca.us
Lynn Robinson 420-5020 City Hall  Email – lrobinson@ci.santa-cruz.ca.us

IBIS has officially moved to Santa Cruz

2009-02-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

Another iconic bike company has relocated to Santa Cruz. I got an email newsletter from Ibis Cycles in which they mention their move to Santa Cruz (from nearby Scotts Valley). Ibis is located in the old Wrigley building on Delaware Avenue. They are close to the trails.

Here is the tidbit that I saw on their newsletter.

We've Moved!
Eagle eyed readers who noticed we mentioned Santa Cruz as our home city in the first paragraph. That wasn't a typo, part of the reason that there isn't a ton of news to report right now is that we've been moving and that has been taking a lot of our energy. Our new top secret location (top secret unless you look at our contact page) is only a block from the beach and a few feet away from an amazing network of mountain bike trails. We couldn't be happier with our new location. Other bonuses include many good restaurants nearby, a couple of wineries and a brewery (the last two for after work only of course).
We would like to welcome our friends at Ibis to the city of Santa Cruz!

MBOSC meeting with Ranger Gary Brennan

2009-02-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

On Monday, February 9th, Concerned mountain bikers in the Santa Cruz area met with Ranger Gary Brennan to discuss the new Henry Cowell UC9 enforcement program.

Attendees

Ranger Gary Brennan, Henry Cowell State Park
Tom Ward, IMBA CA http://imba.com
A few dozen concerned mountain bikers

Henry Cowell State Park enforcement program

Ranger Gary Brennan presents the background and justification for the new enforcement program.

Citations for riding in Henry Cowell State Park between UC and Hwy 9 will start Sunday February 15th. Not February 18th in an older flyer.
Rangers staffing levels have been filled, issues of biker rescues, complaints from neighbors about noise and garbage.
Gary received a lot of messages and phone calls against the implication that mountain bikers were responsible for the garbage. Call us poachers but not litterers.
Resource ecologists and archeologists will be evaluating the area this spring to do an inventory and an environmental assessment.
The enforcement program in Pogonip by the City had the effect of moving homeless and drug dealing into the Rincon parking lot. This is a real issue.

Many questions and much discussion from the audience. Recanting of history of riding in Santa Cruz goes back to 1983 when there were no bike policies. Established order of politically savvy hikers, conservationists and equestrians changed the rules to exclude bikes. Worked with the system and the process over the years to change the policies and were invited to the table when new lands are acquired. Progress was made.

Frustration with the slow process, lack of State resources, staff turnover and lack of partners within the State Parks system. Frustration with the ease at which opposition groups has shut down these initiatives has created a sense of disillusionment within the responsible mountain biking community. Lack of enforcement in open space created a culture of riders who create their own reality and know how to mange sustainable trails. Responsible mountain bikers willing to accept the fact that mountain biking is an underground activity in Santa Cruz.

Secret stash becomes too popular with interlopers who do not have the same respect for the community and open space. Trails proliferate. No guidance or management. Trails are ad hoc and everywhere. Anything goes. Concussions, impaling, helicopters, neighbor complaints. Rangers.

Tom Ward leads a discussion on the future

This is a golden opportunity since the attention of the mountain biking community is energized. What should we do about it?
Despite the horrible economic climate that the State is in District Superintendents are faced with making decisions on where to focus scarce resources.
A decision was made to staff ranger positions over a trail co-ordinator or resource ecologist. So enforcement became a higher priority over opening new trails. The challenge is to make the recreational needs of mountain biking a high priority to warrant State Parks resources.
Legalizing the Cowell/UC9 trails is a hard battle. Perhaps a trail or two (or three). Long term goal.
Short term: There is an existing proposal on submitted to District back in November 2006. The trail conversion proposal is the most expedient way to get legitimate trails in the local State Parks. 24 miles of single track and 12 miles of fire road in Big Basin, Castle Rock and Fall Creek.
Medium term, opening the Wilder/Gray Whale trails will take a little more effort and funding.
Medium term, the inland of Coast Dairies represents the best opportunity for the future of Santa Cruz mountain biking.

Action Items

We request that District Superintendent Chet Bardo have an open dialog with mountain bikers. As a public servant and accountable to state taxpayers and local constituents we ask that you listen to the concerns of the mountain biking community.

We are willing to become partners and offer our trail building expertise and labour. We can create sustainable trails which are ecologically feasible, enjoyable and safe. We are willing to negotiate for shared access to trails to mitigate other trail user concerns.

You may choose the time and place for the dialog but we request that you address this in a timely manner and where the community can reasonably attend. A Sunday afternoon in the park would work.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Ranger Gary Brennan for attending and subjecting himself to the barbs and arrows and handling the situation with grace.

Thanks to Tom Ward for making the trek from Sacramento to attend the meeting.

Thanks for Daryl B for providing the amp and wireless mics.

Thanks to Charlie Meehan and the staff of Seabright Brewery for the venue, the beer and the great hospitality.

Thanks to all of you in the community that showed up to support of mountain biking in Santa Cruz!

Thanks to Sebasien’s IPA for getting me though these minutes.

New Enforcement Program at Henry Cowell

2009-02-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

Starting Sunday, February 15, 2009 Rangers at Henry Cowell park will be handing out citations for riders caught in Henry Cowell State Parks the area bounded by UCSC at the top and Hwy 9 at the bottom. The patrol area will cover Hwy 9 from the Rincon parking lot to the “Poop chute”.

The education portion of the program started February 1st and the Rangers were patrolling the area informing the riders of the new enforcement program. They were handing out flyers and placing them on windshields.

This area of Santa Cruz has been a favorite place for riding in the local community. The trail have always been off limits to bikes but that has not stopped locals, riders from the Bay Area, Northern California and all over the world including pros and industry folks have been enjoying these trails for decades with very little threat of citation.

There are several reasons for the crack down:

Ranger staffing levels have increased since October. These aren’t new positions. Cowell has been understaffed for many years.
There were a few mountain biker rescues by State Parks Rangers in recent months including a concussion and an impaling on a tree.
Neighbors from Felton have been complaining about the large number of shuttles.

I’m not going to get into detail about this. There is a thread on the forums at mtbr.com which discuss this topic at length. There is another thread which discusses the recent meeting we had with Ranger Gary Brennan.

This new enforcement program has engaged the mountain bike community. MBOSC will be working with State Parks and IMBA to create more legitimate riding opportunities in the Santa Cruz area.

MBOSC and IMBA are working hard to create new legitimate trails for mountain biking in the Santa Cruz area. Please support these two organizations and stay informed about the campaigns we will be launching in the coming months.

The Classic Wilder Ranch Loop

2008-11-19T09:52:00.000-08:00

MBOSC has partnered with Bicycling Magazine online to produce a series of GPS based maps of popular rides in Santa Cruz County.

We are proud to introduce our first map: The Classic Wilder Ranch Loop

Please let us know what you think.

Announcing the Aptos Jump Jam Oct 11th 2008

2008-09-30T21:40:00.001-07:00

The jump community is having a Amateur jump jam (26” & 24” Wheels) at the Aptos Post Park Saturday Oct. 11th, 9:00AM to 4:00PM. Here is a link to the entry form and waiver and the info sheet.
Below are just some of the prizes that will be given away!!!!

Santa Cruz Bikes

2- Jackal frames (SRP $1,100 total)

30- T Shirts (SRP $480 total)

10 - Hats (SRP $200 total)

10 - Hoodies (SRP $400)

Specialized

1- 09 P3 complete Bike

1- 09 P3 frame.

misc tires and pedals

Park Tools

1- Pro tool box set

Black market bikes

1- Riot Frame

1- bars

1- stem

1-seat post

1-seat

Bicycle trip

The Day event Insurance and Misc bike accessories

X-fusion

1 velvet "R" fork

Many Shirts and Hats

Fox

1 fork

Giro helmets

6-dirt jump helmets (3 medium, 3 small),

6- pairs of their instigator sunglasses in black (the cool casual style

glasses),

12- t-shirts (6 large, 6 medium)

Product from the Red Bull Girls

Mark Reynolds Memorial Fund

2008-05-02T09:44:00.001-07:00

Mark Reynolds was a family man, tech guy and avid mountain biker in the Bay Area. His passion for the sport inspired him to create his company Wicked Racin to create high quality products for gravity riders. He was racing Downhill at the Sea Otter on April 19th and he never made it to the finish line.

While I did not know Mark personally, his life, career path and passion for mountain biking is similar to my own and describes the many mountain bikers that I have the privilege of knowing in the Bay Area. I have been contacted by close friends and family of Mark and I have learned so much about his life in these past few weeks. I feel saddened by the fact that I may have ridden with him in the past but I never really got to know him.

Mark was passionate about mountain biking and wanted to bring more people into the sport. He was generous with his time, teaching his friends how to jump and be better riders. Mark's family have set up a memorial fund to honor his memory. The fund will raise money towards a freeride/jump park/pump track that will be named after Mark so that people of all levels can enjoy the sport of mountain biking.

There will be raffle at the CCCX DH season finale in June which will benefit the memorial fund. Raffle tickets will be sold at the races and other locations.

To contribute to the Mark Reynolds memorial fund, please visit the Wicked Racin site: http://www.wickedracin.com

As a friend and mountain biker I'm asking you to contribute to the Mark Reynolds Memorial fund. I believe that his generosity to the sport will benefit all Northern Californian mountain bikers and visitors to our region. A thriving mountain biking community, great trails and parks is an honorable legacy to Mark.

Thank you for your support.

--Mark

Mark Davidson - President
Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz
http://www.mbosc.org

Kranked 7 at the Rio May 1st

2008-04-16T21:11:00.001-07:00

... and another event from the Bike Trip...

Kranked 7 “The Cackle Factor”

GET KRANKED!

We’re hosting the Santa Cruz premiere of Kranked 7 “The Cackle Factor”, a Radical Films production featuring epic riding sets from top riders like Jamie Goldman, Nathan Rennie, Steve Romaniuk, Mike Kinrade and Eric Porter… filmed in Alaska, British Columbia, California, Vermont, Switzerland and France.

7 PM on Thursday, May 1^st, 2008 (doors open at 6:30 PM)

Rio Theatre,
1205 Soquel Ave in Santa Cruz, CA

Event proceeds will benefit non-profit community bicycle education programs Bike Smart and Bike Shop At School.

The Bike Fest Jump Jam May 10-11

2008-04-16T20:38:00.001-07:00

Sweet Bike Week festivities... Oh yea, baby got hang time.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

20th Anniversary of Seabright Brewery

2008-04-11T09:54:00.001-07:00

May 14th represents the 20th anniversary of Seabright Brewery. Seabright has been an incredible sponsor and host for the MBOSC meetings for many years. Happy Anniversary!

Speaking of Seabright...

MBOSC will have a meeting this 7 pm Monday April 14th at Seabright Brewery.
The Sea Otter is a week away (where did the last 3 weeks go?!) and we arein the thick of preparations. MBOSC will have a booth at the Sea Otter and will be co-ordinating the volunteer course marshals on the Dual Slalom course. The agenda for the meeting on Monday is to discuss the Sea Otter and drink some great beer.

We could use some additional help with the DS course on Thursday and Friday. We would appreciate it if you could help out. If you want to work on the weekend then we may be able to accommodate that as well.
Booth duty. If you are interested in hanging out at the MBOSC booth and telling people about the wonderful world of mountain biking then please contact me or come to the meeting. I could use a hand. It's pretty low key work, flexible hours. We're sharing the booth with MORCA.

Hope to see you on Monday 7pm at Seabright!

We have free beer at our meetings courtesy of Seabright.

Jacquie Phelan at Seabright Brewery Sunday April 6th

2008-04-03T09:39:00.001-07:00

Life gets in the way

2008-01-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

I'm not dead yet. Just resting.

I can't believe that it has been over 2 months since I last posted to this blog. A lot has happened over the past 2 months in my life. The biggest thing is that I got a job which requires me to travel over the hill to Santa Clara 5 days a week. I barely have time to ride my bike much less advocate for more trails and do good things for the community. I really enjoy my work but it is pretty demanding and exhausting. My evenings are quiet and I spend my time with my family and retire early.

The good news is that bike advocacy in Santa Cruz is bigger than me and many people have been stepping up. There have been progress on many fronts. Here are some initiatives that we are working on for 2008:

State Parks Trail conversion with IMBA California: Opening trails in local state parks to mountain bike use. Tom Ward our man in Sacramento has been making significant progress.
Opening Coast Dairies: Still waiting for BLM to get the land. Some snags but some progress as well. We'll be ready when they need us.
Creating a sustainable organization: We got a couple of fresh new faces on our board.
Bike and Beer fest 2008: Look for the celebration of the mountain bike - Santa Cruz style - this fall!

We are all looking forward to a great 2008!

ROMP Christmas Party with guest Joe Breeze

2007-11-04T17:57:00.000-08:00

The ROMP Christmas party will be Friday November 30th in Mountain View, California. The special guest this year will be Joe Breeze. Details for the party:

This year's party will be at Michael's at Shoreline Park in Mountain View. Dinner will be served banquet style around 7:30, starting with drinks and appetizers at 6 PM. This year Joe Breeze will be our guest of honor.

Joe Breeze was one of the central figures in the development of mountain biking. He's probably best known as the designer-builder of the first successful modern mountain bikes. Joe became a leading designer and proponent of a sport that has gotten more people on bikes in the western world than at any time since the 1890s. Joe attributes his successes with mountain biking to his passion for bicycling, evident in his oft-quoted line, "We were just havin' fun." Joe has made bicycles his life's work--as rider, racer, designer, builder, and advocate.

More details can be found at http://www.romp.org.

My wife and I have been attending the past few ROMP Xmas parties and have always had a great time. Great attendees, good food and the guests are always interesting. It's a good time in the for Bay Area mountain bikers and an opportunity to dress up, look sharp and party with the legends of mountain biking.

Summary: IMBA Trail Care Crew Visits Santa Cruz

2007-10-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

Ryan and Kristin from the IMBA Trail Care Crew visited Santa Cruz last Thursday through Sunday and it was quite an amazing experience. We hosted the crew at our house and it was a real pleasure to get to know them better.

Some of the highlights include:

IMBA Club Care Session at Giro. We learn how to build a sustainable club.
Group Ride at Wilder Ranch. Well attended by regulars, newbies, kids, gray haired guys and women.
10th Anniversary Party at Seabright Brewery
$3000 Donation to IMBA California. Good for trail karma.

It was an intense 4 days of BBQs, bike porn and non-stop beer. The BBQ, firepit, chairs and ice chests full of beer were utilized by the myriad of wandering bikers just dropping in throughout the weekend. There were 4 waves of attendees showing up at the "after party" following the Seabright party. Some pictures of the festivities are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.davidson.sc/IMBAClubCareVisit.

Having Ryan and Kristin stay allowed us to immerse ourselves in the introspective process of determining the direction of the club. Eve is the treasurer and Daryl (the interim VP) stayed at our house for a night. Having many of the club officers present for the many of the breakfast, lunch and dinner sessions created valuable opportunities for discussion.

Slow speed Sunday morning came and the weather was nice and sunny but a huge mental fog wafted over my brain from all the alcohol the day before. Ryan and Kristin were planning to hang out on some beach for a few hours before heading up the coast to San Francisco for their next visit. A few days later Kristin sent me the following email:

Howdy Mark,

I just wanted to thank you for organizing such a great weekend and for your work over the past several years. We had a fantastic time meeting so many different types of folks from the Santa Cruz community, everyone from industry folks, a huge female turnout at the group ride, to the smoking rider. Oh, we even got to see Umbrella Man on our way out of town. We officially heart Santa Cruz.

And a big thanks to Eve for the best home cooking we've had in the past two years and to Jade for fully appreciating the undeniable awesomeness of the Pegacorn.

-Kristin

It was fun hosting Ryan and Kristin of the IMBA Trail Care Crew. They are a fun couple and great ambassadors of mountain biking. Ryan and Kristin turned their passion for advocacy and riding into a career. They spread the goodness of mountain biking to communities all over North America like Johnny Appleseed. Mountain biking is awesome not just for the cool bikes and the great places to ride but also for the great people you meet. I'm hoping to see them again soon.

Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz donates $3000 to support IMBA California

2007-10-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

Tom Ward from IMBA California attended the MBOSC 10th Anniversary party last Saturday.

Tom retired as the manager of recreation at California State Parks in Sacramento a few years ago. His position as California policy analyst for IMBA was originally underwritten by Specialized in early 2006.

He is working on policy issues which impact mountain bikers in all of California including Wilderness designation boundaries which will maintain existing and future mtb trail networks, lowering the red tape for trail projects, lobbying State Parks for more trail access and building coalitions with equestrian groups. He has a lot of connections in Sacramento and he's a guy who can get the meetings with decision makers and push the mountain biking agenda. He is great at articulating the mountain bikers point of view and he has an Teflon coated bull s**t detector. He is the best thing to happen to mountain biking in California since the Marin County Repack races in the 70's.

During the announcements, MBOSC issued a donation of $3,000 to support Tom's efforts in Sacramento. The future of MBOSC and other clubs will leverage the great work done by IMBA California. We recognize the importance of Tom Ward and IMBA to create more riding opportunities for mountain biking which will benefit all riders in California. We support IMBA California and so should you.

MBOSC's 10th Anniversary Party at Seabright Brewery

2007-10-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

MBOSC celebrated it's 10th anniversary at Seabright Brewery last Saturday. It was an excellent celebration on the patio with great weather, great friends, the old Santa Cruz advocates, the IMBA Trail Care Crew and some equestrians, special guests from the trail building community and Tom Ward from IMBA California.

Everyone had a good time. Charlie Meehan - the owner of Seabright - was on the BBQ grill and offering free BBQ appetizers. He also gave party attendees $5 pitchers of fine beer which was brewed on the premises. The Oatmeal Stout was fresh this week and was a huge hit. The Double Wide Ale was tasty and packed a punch of 8.5% alcohol. I stayed away from the Double Wide. I wanted my speech to be coherent.

It was great to see so many people passionate about advocacy and beer. Charlie made the comment later that this group provided a lot of interesting conversation and were very appreciative and polite to him and his staff.

I gave a speech which recognized the early founders of MBOSC which included Keith Kelsen, Geoff Smith, David Baskin, Doug Landaur, Don Carol, Mark Woodhead, Dawn Weathersbee and Caroline Murphy. Local trail building legends Bud and Emma McCreary graced us with their presence. Bud and Emma are responsible for most of the best legal single track trails in many of the area parks including Wilder Ranch and the U-con trail. We publicly thanked them for their work over the past few decades in building the trails that we all enjoy.

I discussed the future of the club and asked for communityy support to achieve big projects like Coast Dairies. The importance of the work of Tom Ward and IMBA California was emphasized and we gave him a $3,000 check from MBOSC to support his efforts. Finally, I thanked the existing pool of volunteers who help with current events and initiatives in MBOSC.

The party lasted for a while. Lots of beer was drank and many good conversations were had. We went back to our house for the after party where waves of mountain bikers arrived to hang out around the fire pit, drink more beer and talk about the direction and organization of the club.

More pictures from the party here.

We would like to thank Charlie Meehan and his staff at Seabright Brewery for hosting our party. Charlie is an awesome supporter of mountain biking in Santa Cruz and we support him too. Thank you for an awesome venue to hang out, the appetizers and the great beer. Beer is the fuel of mountain bike advocacy.

The future of mbosc is looking pretty good. Stay tuned for the 20th anniversary party...

Saturday Group Ride with the IMBA Club Care Crew

2007-10-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

Kristin from the IMBA Trail/Club Care Crew joined us on the MBOSC Saturday Club Ride at Wilder Ranch. There were about 20-25 attendees including a great representation of first time attendees and many women cyclists.

It was a great day for a ride. Conditions were perfect. There were a few guys on the ride who have never ridden at Wilder before. I rode with my daughter on the trail-a-bike.

The whole group rode together to the vista at the top of Zane Gray cutoff and then we split into a few groups. A bunch headed up to upper campus, most of the women riders did a few loops within Wilder and Jade and I cut out early to play at the Ranch. I heard that others joined the group but met up from different entrances to the park.

Many of the attendees also came out to party with us at Seabright later. Another fine day in mountain biker paradise.

IMBA Club Care Session

2007-10-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

On Oct 18th the IMBA Trail Care Crew hosted a club care session at Giro/Bell Sports in Santa Cruz. The focus of the meeting was to revitalize the local club (mbosc) but most of the attendees wanted to hear about the new opportunities in Santa Cruz County. The meeting was well attended by high profile people in the local mountain bike community. Some of the attendees included Mike Ferentino from Santa Cruz Bikes, Jesse Nickell from Barry Swenson Builder, a few employees of Fox Racing Shox, some local bike shop owners and the core MBOSC Lieutenants. MBOSC provided beer and snacks.

There was a short presentation on the potential of mountain biking and events at Coast Dairies and then the Ryan and Kristin from the Trail Care Crew did a presentation on building sustainable clubs. The presentation was valuable and we definitely learned a lot about how to build and run a sustainable club. One of the most interesting parts was the identification of the 3 distinct roles of the club: Political, Physical and Social. The political includes advocacy and outreach work. Physical is represented as trail work which builds political capital in the form of sweat equity. Finally, the social component include events and is the means at which new people join the club and feel the connectedness of the community.

Ryan and Kristin also presented a model for sustainable volunteer organizations. At the top, you must have a board of directors who set the direction of the club, help raise funds and has outside contacts in the community. Followed next is an executive level overseen by the board and includes President, Secretary, Treasurer and other roles. Finally, there are committees which represents small working groups of people with common interests within the club. The committees are where the real work for the club is done. They do all the planning, brainstorming and create task (or "wish") lists. The wish lists seems to be a key component for maintaining the sustainability of the club which are published on the web site and mailing lists. The idea is that members can look at the wish lists and accomplish a task that is within their interest, energy and commitment level. The idea is that this will broaden participation beyond the "core group". Wish lists provide the means for which the membership can contribute to the success of the club without having to take on a permanent role or a large open ended commitment. This type of organizational structure is not new but it does seem like an effective way to organize a volunteer non-profit group.

After the presentation, the Ryan and Kristin handed out index cards in which each participant listed his top 3 priorities. The cool thing is that most of the people in the room were united in the fact that there is a desire for more legal single track. The idea of a jump park/freeride/pump track type experiences in Santa Cruz scored really high. Surprisingly, the desire for more family and kid friendly places for kids to ride scored high but event venues were not so prominent. This survey was not scientific and just reflected the goals of the people in the room.

Many of the people who came to the meeting wanted to hear about South Park rather than hear how to rebuild mbosc. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of news on that front. I seriously doubt that South Park is going to happen. Perhaps I'll blog about the reasons in a separate post.

In any case, the Club Care Session at Bell Sports was very informative and inspiring. We will be applying most of these core principles to mbosc to transform us into a more sustainable organization. We're starting from the top and will be remaking our board of directors.

More on this later as we make progress...

South Park: More fun than a 5 assed monkey

2007-10-12T10:22:00.000-07:00

Do you like dirt jumps, pump tracks, downhill, built stunts and gravity riding? Are you fed up with land managers plowing your favorite jumps and destroying your ladder bridges? Do you want to have a place you can hold races and events in Santa Cruz County?

We have an opportunity for creating a mountain bike park in south Santa Cruz county on 2,500 acres of private land south of the city of Watsonville. It would be great to have this place developed as an IMBA ride center. California needs a ride center and it would be great if it were located in Santa Cruz County near the bike industry and within a short driving distance of 10's of thousands of mountain bike enthusiasts.

This piece of land has the potential for XC, cyclo-cross, dirt jump, DH and DS type riding experiences. We could also have product demos, video and photo shoots, events and races. There could be partnerships between local riders, bike shops, event promoters, the economic development agency of Watsonville and local bike companies. It could be our little mountain bike playground where we can dictate the terms of use we won't have to share our trails with motos, hikers or equestrians.

Will there be events at South Park? How about construction? Rentals? Will there be permits or pay by day entry? Who knows? It's really up to us to built it and figure out how it could work.

Next Thursday we will have stakeholders including IMBA reps, local bike industry, local bike shops, racers, race supporters and active members of the community together in the same room . If the community feels that this is a worthwhile project to pursue then we should do this. It will be a lot of work to develop South Park but it would be a valuable asset to the mountain bike community.

I want to emphasize that it is really up to us to make it happen. No one is going to build a mountain bike park in Santa Cruz County except for the mountain bike community. We have all the resources in this community to get it done: money, expertise and volunteer labor - but we need the initiative. I'll definitely volunteer my money, time and expertise to help make this happen.

Come out to the IMBA Presentation and workshop at Bell Sports/Giro next Thursday Oct 18th from 7 pm - 9:30 pm to learn more about "South Park".

Lets make this happen!

3rd Annual Santa Cruz "Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day" was a big success!

2007-10-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

The third annual Santa Cruz Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day was held at DeLaveaga Park this year and it was a great success. The kids had a lot of fun.

After registration and bike and helmet check, the kids went on the skills course to learn braking, bike control and balance. We would observe the kids on the challenging terrain and adjust their bikes to fit them better for off road riding. After a safety talk and a group picture, the kids split into two groups and rode the trails at DeLaveaga.

The kids got a real redwood forest single track mountain biking adventure. The little kids rode the fireroad uphill to the quarry, played and then did a gentle fireroad downhill back to the picnic area. The bigger kids did the more challenging lower loop trail. After getting familiar with the trail on the first lap, they did another loop with more confidence and control. After the ride, the kids and parents came back to the picnic area for snacks, drinks and schwag.

MBOSC would like to thank the Elayna at Fox Racing Shox and Mike and Juli at Santa Cruz Bikes for donating hats, T-shirts and stickers. Saskia at BikeSmart for letting us use the cones/pylons. Piet and Bonnie at Bike2Work for donating orange juice, bagels and strawberries. Also, we would like to thank IMBA for promoting this event nationally and ClifBar for the energy bars.

We would also like to thank our volunteers for helping to build the skills course, leading the rides and encouraging the kids: Rich, Dan,Daryl, Sebastien, Becky and Matt. I would really like to give a special thanks to my wife Eve who picked up so many pieces and details and ensured that all the mundane stuff like waivers, insurance, first aid and other logistical minutiae were properly dealt with.

Finally, I would like to thank the parents and the kids for showing up at our little event. I'm very pleased that you brought your kids to experience real mountain biking. Mountain biking brings kids into nature and challenges them physically and mentally - which builds self confidence in their abilities. It offers them a really fun outdoor adventure while giving them an effective workout. We believe that mountain biking is good for the mind, body and soul and it was nice to share with your kids this very positive activity that we all love to do.

Pictures of the event can be seen here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mark.davidson.sc/TakeAKidMtbDay2007

IMBA Club (Trail) Care Crew will be coming to Santa Cruz Oct 18-21

2007-10-05T09:40:00.000-07:00

The IMBA Trail Care Crew will be coming to Santa Cruz on the weekend of Oct 18-21st, 2007.

The IMBA Trail Care Crews are sponsored by Subaru and travel year-round throughout North America and beyond.

Kristin Butcher and Ryan Schutz will be the crew who will be visiting us and they will be working with MBOSC and the community to help build the club and improve mountain biking opportunities.

We have a few events that week:

IMBA TCC Presentation and workshop
Thursday Oct 18th 7:00 - 9:30 pm
Bell Sports/ Giro 380 Encinal Street, Santa Cruz

The IMBA Trail Care Crew will give a presentation and workshop and share techniques that will grow the mountain bike community. Refreshments will be served.

Group Ride for all skill levels
Saturday Oct 20th 10 am
Wilder Ranch State Park

Come out and ride some some of the trails in the local parks.

MBOSC 10th Anniversary Party
Saturday Oct 20th 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Seabright Brewery, Santa Cruz

Come and celebrate the 10th anniversary of MBOSC with a BBQ and some great Seabright Beers.

IMBA CCC Visit Flier

It should be a great week to hang out with the mountain biking community and create some common goals. How about a venue for 24 hour racing, high school racing and cyclocross within a 20 minute ride from westside Santa Cruz? We can make it happen.

Seabright Beer in Dirt Rag

2007-09-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

I got the latest issue (#131) of Dirt Rag in the mail today. I was really happy to see that they covered the Blur IPA and the Oatmeal Stout in the "Beer Me" column.

Maurice is an IPA fan and he waxes poetically about the Blur: "Blur starts with a burst of malty sweetness, followed by a dry, hoppy twang, and finishes with an aftertaste that lingers as long as you carry on. Nothing like a nice burp ten minutes later to see how the hops are sticking with you. It's a party in your mouth!".

He describes the Oatmeal Stout as: "Toasty, with much of the caramel-y quality of the Blur; I think they are doing something special with the malt in the process. Another word that came to mind was clean."

I guess the Kenny wasn't his bag: "All I remember was, whoa, that's a lotta hops. Anyway, I hear it's a local favorite". It is indeed my favorite.

It's really interesting to see him write about beers that I'm very familiar with. They also give a plug for MBOSC. Thanks Dirt Rag!

When in Santa Cruz come down and experience these great beers yourself. There is nothing better than a killer ride in the redwood forests of Wilder/Gray Whale and upper campus. Finish the ride with a spin back back into town on the bike path. Down Shafer and through Natural Bridges to ride along the ocean's edge along Westclif Drive. Take in the ocean views and watch the surfers, the sea birds and maybe an otter or two. Ride across the Beach Boardwalk to check out the babes in bikinis playing beach volley ball. Over the railway trestle, down a couple blocks to the patio of Seabright Brewery where you can hang out and get a pint of Kenny brewed on premises and a salmon fish and chips. Ah California! Life is good.

Elevated Trails for Kids

2007-09-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

I spent some time on Sunday helping out the Monterey Off Road Cycling Association (MORCA) folks. I saw a bunch of pictures of the skills course that they built for their spring kids day and I was really impressed with the quality of the stunts. It would great to provide a similar experience for our local kids so I decided to drive down the coast to help with the construction and learn how to build these platforms.

Ken is a master builder of elevated trails. He built a little elevated riding area in his backyard which formed the basic design of the MORCA platforms. He gathered scrap wood in the area- which included palettes - and we tore them apart to salvage the good pieces. He used new 2x4s for the framing and cut lengths of 12" and 16" for ladders and spaced them apart. It helps that he has a pneumatic stapler and nail gun to put them together quite quickly.

These kids are going to have a blast riding this stuff. MORCA's "Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day" Monterey will be at Toro Park this year. Check out this page for details: http://www.morcamtb.org/content.php?id=34

The Santa Cruz skills course will not be as ambitious as MORCA's. The focus of our skills course is to prepare the kids to ride the single track trails of DeLaveaga. We just want them to practice their braking, challenge their ability to ride over rough terrain including bumps, rocks and roots and to navigate through narrow single track. We also want to include aspects of trail etiquette so that the kids know to "go slow, say hello" when encountering other trail users.

Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day will be on Saturday October 6th. The events in the Monterey Bay area will be held:

Come out and bring a kid. Better yet, come out and volunteer and show a kid how fun and cool mountain biking can be!

David Vincent, California State Parks

2007-09-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

David Vincent has been the District Superintendent of Santa Cruz area State Parks for the entire time that I have been living in Santa Cruz and involved in bike advocacy. Dave is retiring at the end of this month and it represents the end of his 32 year career at State Parks. I remember meeting David Vincent at a Coast Dairies public meeting back in 2003 and he seemed like a great listener. More recently, I have been meeting with him and talking to him on the phone about mountain bike access issues and he is always fair and reasonable in his dealings with user groups.

The old timers in MBOSC gave me a couple of nice anecdotes about Dave Vincent:

Dave was introduced to MBOSC on the first week of the job. Grey Whale was about to be opened and there was a problem with the fire road known as "Woodcutters". It needed repair otherwise it would not be approved as an "open trail" by the California Coastal Commission. Dave authorized Bob Culberson and MBOSC crew that Saturday to go in and fix all of the problems on Woodcutters before the approval the following week by the Coastal Commission. Thanks to Dave we got it opened!

Dave has always been a proponent of one trail-multi use. This concept has driven his support of continuing mulit-use trails in Wilder. He used to say: "There just is not enough land to support two trail systems". He has always appreciated the support that the mountain biking community has done over the years to develop and maintain the local trails.

This State Parks district has the most public land out of any land management agency in Santa Cruz county. There are a lot of people in Santa Cruz who are passionate about the environment. Dave had a pretty tough job as the District Superintendent and he was always in the cross hairs of mountain bikers, environmentalists and dog walkers. Everyone wanted something from State Parks and Dave was the one they went to. Dave had a tough job balancing the needs for recreational access and resource protection. He has to weigh all of these competing influences and do it with budgets which have been sliced to pieces in the past decade.

MBOSC would like to thank Dave for his many years of service to Santa Cruz County and managing our amazing public parks. We wish Dave Vincent the best of luck in his future endeavors. Thanks Dave for all your great work!

Take a Kid to DeLaveaga Oct 6th

2007-09-23T22:27:00.000-07:00

My family and I went to Delaveaga Park today to do a test run for the young kids ride as part of Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day. We wanted to put kids under 7, trail-a-bikes, trailers and child seat riders on an out-and-back along the fireroad. We were concerned that it may be too much climbing for kids on training wheels and recent 2 wheeler riders.

Jade, our five year old, just learned to ride on 2 wheels earlier this summer so she's a great test pilot. We helped her with some of the climbing but the ride back was a fairly gentle grade and she could ride it herself. In fact she had a blast riding back down! I shot some video of her ride and it turned out so well that I decided to cut it into a promotional video.

Jade is no ordinary 5 year old. She kicks ass! She got riding tips from Chris Duncan and her parents - who are excellent mountain bikers - have been riding with her and taking her to bike events all her life. I'm really proud of the fact that she picked up mountain biking so quickly. She understands how to pedal, shift gears, pick lines and how to go over rough terrain. She has been mountain biking since she was a year old so she has probably absorbed a lot over the years. Yes, I'm a proud parent.

Jade really enjoyed the ride so we decided that this would be the right ride for the young kids. The route will be along the fireroad from the Lone Tree picnic area to the dirt jump quarry and back. The bigger kids will do the lower loop single track trails. Perhaps in the afternoon, we'll take the more advanced kids and mountain biking parents to "Top of the World". DeLaveaga is a small park but there are a lot of fun trails in there. All of the trails are redwood forested technical single track. All of them are open to bikes.

Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day is Saturday Oct 6 this year. TAKMTBD is a national event and there will be events all over the world. MBOSC will be hosting Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day at Delaveaga Park, Santa Cruz. There are numerous ride options at DeLaveaga and we'll have a skills course. We will have snacks and drinks and a free raffle for the kids. Santa Cruz Bikes have been very generous and donated some soft goods for the kids (Thanks Mike and Juli!).

Bear Mountain Cycling Adventure at Roaring Camp

2007-09-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

The Bear Mountain Cycling A dventure program is a new program which will be offered by Roaring Camp in 2008. It's a shining example of a great eco-tourism experience which combines learning about the local history of Roaring Camp and the biological species which inhabit the old growth forest. On top of that it's an enjoyable ride thought the woods.

My wife, child and I were on the inaugural intermediate program run to give feedback on the experience. I have been interested in this program since it combines a docent led outdoor educational experience with mountain biking - a challenging physical activity.

Paul Nakamoto - the Director of Business Development at Roaring Camp and a mountain biker - helped to develop the program. Our guide and docent was a Cabrillo College student Eric Lynberg. I was really impressed with Eric's knowledge of the forest. He grew up in the San Lorenzo Valley and learned about the forest and plants from his parents - who were passionate about nature and the outdoors. This job represents an amazing opportunity for him to combine his passion and knowledge of the forest with his love of mountain biking.

The adventure starts with a fire road climb to the top of Bear Mountain with stops along the way so that Eric could discuss some interesting historical and biological points of interest. This breaks up the climb so that you can savor and learn about the forest - and take a breather if you aren't physically up for the climb.

The Roaring Camp property was spared the logging that took place in the Felton/Henry Cowell properties. Many of the old growth redwoods and douglas fir are still standing. Eric identified and pointed out interesting examples of redwood (with spurs which are characteristic of old growth), manzinita, madrone, ponderosa pine, coffee berry, douglas fir, tanoak and bay trees. He knows how the indigenous Ohlone Indians used the local plants for food, customs and medicine. He also discussed the local history of Roaring Camp railroad and Felton.

At the top, we would rendezvous with the tour train at Bear Mountain to hear the conductor discuss the cathedral grove fairy ring. After the train left, we headed for a thrilling and swoopy downhill single track run back to the Roaring Camp grounds. My daughter was laughing and enjoying the ride down from the back of a trail-a-bike. Weeeee!!

It was a great adventure and it was the first time that my wife and daughter had ridden in this part of the forest. Eric was impressed that I managed to clear all the logs and A-frames pulling a trail-a-bike. I've had a lot of practice.

The Roaring Camp folks really figured out how to do eco-tourism safely. Eric has first aid training and carried a kit and a radio. He was in steady communication with operations and understood the train schedule so that the ride doesn't interfere with the running of the trains. He carried a GPS device that contained a map with way points that showed his exact location. The way points were co-ordinated with emergency services so that response time would be very quick if an accident were to occur.

I have been looking for a program like this to promote as a great activity for middle and high schools. Not only could it satisfy criteria for outdoor education (they are working on expanding the program to satisfy educational curriculum) and it could instill a love of nature in students (Eric's enthusiasm is infectious) but it could also help to mitigate the effects of a sedentary lifestyle by providing a physically challenging mountain bike ride.

Roaring Camp offers several outdoor adventure programs including the Bear Mountain Cycling Adventure. Pricing is reasonable at $25 (if you have your own bike) for a great interpretive ride through the amazing biodiversity of the old growth forest. The downhill run is pretty cool as well. A great value for sure.

Consider checking out the Roaring Camp Outdoor Adventure program if you come to the Santa Cruz area and are looking for an interpretive experience combined with a guided ride though awesome forested single track. You'll love it!

Nat and Rachael Lopes of Hilride

2007-09-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

Nat and Rachael Lopes were part of the IMBA Trail Care Crew for 3 years and in that time had traveled across 46 states and 9 Canadian provinces. Soon after "retiring" from the TCC, they came home to California to form Hilride Progression Development Group. Hilride is dedicated to realizing the potential of the global mountain biking movement by helping with community planning and assisting with the creation of the facilities and trails to realize the full economic potential of mountain biking. Hilride has also assisted in running events like the IMBA California Ales and Trails in Marin County earlier this summer. Currently, Hilride is helping to develop mountain bike tourism in Croatia.

MBOSC hired Hilride to attend a meeting with our District State Parks office and help us do a trail assessment in Castle Rock. This assessment helped the District determine the multi-use suitability of the Castle Rock portion of the Bay Area Ridge trail. They also attended the MBOSC meeting that evening and entertained us with movies and stories of mountain biking in far away places.

I really admired their professionalism and experience. On the trail in Castle Rock they would immediately recognize issues and prescribe solutions. They educated the State Parks staff about trail issues which related to mountain biking which included safety, mitigating trail use conflict, maintenance, environmental sustainability and providing a great user experience. Nat and Rachael work really well as a team. Their experience and backgrounds perfectly complement each other. They produced a high quality trail assessment very soon after the walk.

I really enjoyed working with Hilride and I would highly recommend their services. If your community needs experienced mountain bike advocate/trail/tourism consultants then consider hiring them. MBOSC would gladly hire them again and we hope to work with them again in the near future.

Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day will be Oct 6th @ DeLaveaga

2007-09-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

Come join Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz for a fun day at DeLaveaga park on Saturday Oct 6th. Take this opportunity to introduce a kid to the great sport of mountain biking and the forested trails in DeLaveaga park. Participants will also learn about bike safety, trail etiquette and bike handling skills.

There will be snacks and drinks after the ride and many items given away after the ride. There will also be a skills course where kids can work on their balance and bike handling skills. So come out and make a day of it!

See this page for more details.

This will be the third year that MBOSC has hosted this event. These events are a great way to get kids excited about mountain biking. The first time we did this event it exceeded my expectations. The kids really loved it. You can read about the 2005 event and the 2006 event.

The previous Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day events were held at Wilder Ranch. We wanted to move the venue to DeLaveaga park in central Santa Cruz because it's a family friendly venue and we wanted the kids to experience the joy of riding in redwood forested single track. Wilder Ranch is a great place to ride but it is too far for little legs to pedal to get to the forests.

I'm looking for volunteers to help out. Please contact me if you're interested.

Laird Knight of Granny Gear Productions

2007-09-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about being involved in bike advocacy has been the great people that I have met. I'll be writing a bit more about the people I have met over the past couple of years as a result of my advocacy efforts.

Laird Knight is the pioneer of the 24 hour racing format and the man behind the Granny Gear Productions. He is a gentleman and has been honored by his peers by being inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.

I met Laird in Washington, DC during the Bike Summit earlier this year. I was really interested in his talk about the economic impact of his 24 hour event on a local community and how these races provide memorable lifetime experiences for the participants. During an evening walk to a DC restaurant for Tapas and beer, I talked to him about bringing a 24 hour race to Santa Cruz and discussed the possibility of using the Coast Dairies property as a future venue. Laird was interested in this proposition and we have kept up correspondence.

He flew out in August and stayed with us for a few days for a BLM meeting and a peek at the Coast Dairies property. He was a great asset in the BLM meeting since he has a long term relationship with the BLM near Moab. He is a articulate advocate of mountain biking on public lands and he made a great impression with the Field Manager.

He has the curious mind of an engineer/scientist despite the fact that he has no formal education as an engineer. He is interested in science and keeps tabs on technology and knows how to leverage technology to improve the race experience. Laird is the inventor of the 24 hour race format - which has been copied by many race promoters. However, he doesn't seem resentful about the fact that others have stolen his ideas. He seems amused and flattered. Having more promoters do the 24 hour race format increases the market (and racers) for 24 hour racing and that can only benefit all the promoters. The competition doesn't stop him from innovating. He continues to dream up new ways to improve the experience of Granny Gear races.

Laird is an amazing guy to know. I am really happy to have him as an ally partner and friend in advocacy.

Public Service Announcement

2007-09-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Saw this on a ride the other day...

Shame on you, hippie for f**cking up UCSC's sign!

Anyway, as a mountain biker, I'm not ashamed. I practice sustainable recreation and I know that the forest is a resilient ecosystem. Besides, the upper campus is hardly a wilderness area. The winter runoff from the roads and the parking lots are funneled into the creeks and cause more erosion in a good storm than thousands of bikes over several decades.

Debating about the impact on the forest becomes moot when UCSC implements their Long-Range Development Plan. The supreme irony is that the forest surrounding this gate will be completely developed with student housing and academic buildings by 2020 according to the UCSC plan (see Figure 20 p. 66). Most of this forest (and the trails) will be gone. Pipedream, Ridge Trail, Rock and Roll, Garden of Weeden, Geoff's trail, Swamp trail, Mr. Twisty, RV Park will be a memory.

Heed the words of Jim Morrison: "I wanna have my kicks before the whole sh**house goes up in flames". Get it while you can but be nice out there. Ride slow, say hello and smile like you love the forest. Because you do. You're a mountain biker.

Mountain Bike Friendly Restaurants and Hotels

2007-09-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

What attributes does a hotel and a restaurant have before you would consider it to be a mountain biker friendly establishment? The following is a partial list of properties that I look for when looking for hotels/motels and restaurants when I do a mountain bike road trip.

Accommodations

Secure places to lock/store bikes

A lot of mountain bike tourists will travel with their bikes - which may be worth up to $5K. Leaving these bikes locked outside or on a car is not an option. Some of the better hotels I have stayed in will have a secure bike storage locker in the hotel near the entrance with the concierge escorting the cyclist to the locker. For motels, I have always brought my bike into the room. This tends to be tricky when you have 4 riders in a room. It's not unusual for mountain bike tourist to bring more than one bike. I'll usually take 2 bikes on a solo road trip but 1 bike if I fly. On one road trip to Vancouver/Whistler a few years ago, 2 of my friends packed a mini-van with 5 bikes - 2 bikes each and a spare.

Convenient place to wash/work on bikes

More often than not, we may work on our bikes before or after a ride. This could be as simple as lubricating a chain or more complex maintenance which involves tools and a bike stand. When we do a road trip we prefer to stay in motels rather than hotels. We usually prefer a ground floor unit. The room is close to the car (where we store tools and bike stand) and it's easier to put the bike in the room.

Close proximity to trails and nice restaurants

I'm a cyclist so when I get to a destination I don't really want to drive everywhere. Riding to the trail head is ideal. Walking/riding to restaurants is also favorable. Added bonus is to be close to local bike shops for trail knowledge and local maps and wares.

Camping

Camping is always a favorite activity of mountain bikers. Bikers travel with a lot of gear so car camping is preferable. I really don't know of any great places for car camping which is close to riding areas in Santa Cruz. I know that there are campsites at Henry Cowell but I haven't seen them nor have I heard of any mountain bikers who use them.

Restaurants

Secure place to lock the bike

Finding a safe place to lock the bike outside of the restaurant is essential. Santa Cruz is notorious for the bike theft. I hear about a sweet ride being pinched from downtown Santa Cruz on weekly basis. Sometimes they will cut the cable lock while the bike is still on the car. I like 99 Bottles and Seabright Brewery since they have bike racks in front of the patios. It's not unusual to see pricey rigs in these racks.

Good beer and hearty food

Mountain bikers are (mostly) athletic and they do pay attention to the type of fuel they put in their bodies. Beer and hearty road house food - burgers, pasta and Mexican food - are great to refuel after a long ride. There seems to be a cultural aspect of good beer and mountain biking. Brew pubs are a huge hit with mountain bikers.

Social atmosphere

Many of the big group rides I have attended during the week usually end at some pub/restaurant where there is a recounting of the ride around beer and finger foods. A pub type atmosphere is good here since people will be moving around.

Willingness to put up with dirty, stinky and potentially bloody people

Very often, mountain bikers will ride to a restaurant after the ride since they are pretty hungry. They may be covered in grime and trail dirt but at least they don't smoke (unless they're European). Again, the patio is a good thing.

Some examples of Bike Friendly Places

Whister, BC, Canada - the ultimate mountain biker destination - have hotels which specifically cater to the mountain bike tourist. Not only do all these hotels and lodges have secure storage for bikes but they also have cameras and motion detectors. They also bring up another good feature: laundry facilities.

This Forest Freeride Bunkhouse in Wales sounds like a great place to stay. Not only is this place near trails but there is a BBQ area outside. Wales is a place that really "gets" mountain bike tourism. Scotland is another great mountain biking destination that has made the effort to make mountain bike tourists feel welcome. This impressive listing of accommodations breaks it down into categories like hotels, B&Bs, camping and bunk houses.

In Santa Cruz, my favorite bike friendly restaurants are the above mentioned 99 Bottles and Seabright Brewery. For faster food, I like Taqueria Santa Cruz (although I hear that Taqueria La Cabana - across from ABS - is definitely worth checking out) and the Summit Store for a post ride snack after riding at Soquel Demo Forest.

Do you have any other features that you like to see in accommodations and restaurants when you travel with your bike? Can you recommend places to stay and eat in Santa Cruz which you deem to be mountain bike friendly? Please post some comments and share them.

Cloud Nine Design

2007-09-11T09:21:00.001-07:00

I had a great visit and conversation with John Caletti and Cloud Nine Design custom bikes at his very clean shop. Cloud Nine is Santa Cruz's newest independent frame builder and they make steel frames which include cyclocross, road, mountain and 29er frames. Cloud Nine bikes have been featured in the 24 hour race at Laguna Seca in June and at the Hand Made Bike show in Santa Jose earlier this spring. John and his wife Cory are active in the local cycling community and they recently became supporters of mbosc.

A couple of weeks ago I rode my friends 29" single speed at De Laveaga and I really enjoyed the experience. I've been very interested to try a 29 er for an extended time and the Calettis had offered to loan me Cory's 29 er for a couple of weeks. I paid a visit to Cloud Nine to pick up the bike. Buckethead (one of my favorite artists) was playing on the speakers and provided a great soundtrack to his small but very clean and organized shop. He is passionate about cycling and advocacy and he is meticulous in the detail at which he constructs the bikes. We had a great conversation about all things bike, Buckethead and the riding potential of the Coast Dairies properties. I'll be taking this bike for a spin this afternoon:

Santa Cruz is lucky to have a lot of great custom frame builders which include Rock Lobster, Hunter Cycles and Calfee Design (which has a bamboo and hemp mountain bike). If you are interested in a new hand build steel hardtail frame then consider supporting some of the crafts people who build frames in Santa Cruz county. These frames are race proven and tested in the wild and wooly local trails of Santa Cruz.

2008 IMBA World Summit will be in Park City

2007-08-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

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.

Mountain Biking and Outdoor Education

2007-07-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

I was notified of an interesting program offered by Roaring Camp which combines family mountain biking with outdoor education:

It is with much excitement that "we" share with you the beginnings of our NEW family cycling program through the California Redwoods at Roaring Camp Railroads in Felton, California (Santa Cruz Mountains/San Lorenzo Valley) . We have launched the exploratory inquiry and informational page on the Roaring Camp Dot Com Website, inviting our guests to submit their suggestions and sign up if they would like to become part of the focus group that assists in the launch of the new program and we would like to invite you to join us and share your interests as well. If you go to www.roaringcamp.com and scroll down to the photo of the cyclist it will take you to the new cycle page.

We have selected local cyclist - Eric Lynberg to serve as in the position of "Outdoor Specialist." Eric's enthusiasm and ideas of creating a fun and educational guided cycle program has been very refreshing as he shares the place he calls "home" the scenic and beautiful San Lorenzo Valley. Eric is discovering unique things about the forest including many "natural" and odd shape trees (trees growing out of trees) and did you know many things that grow in the forest naturally glow in the dark?

In the first day of our website launch we received over 20 inquires from media and tour operators from around the world so we are extremely pleased.

If you would like to join us on a test run of the program this fall, please complete the inquiry form on the website and we will add your name to our list. More details to follow soon.

Paul Nakamoto
Roaring Camp Railroads

More information and a web form can be found at:

http://www.roaringcamp.com/outdooradventure.html

I have already contacted them and have offered to help with this program in any way possible. Please fill in the web form if you have any feedback or want to participate in the focus and test groups.

This looks like the start of a great program.

Lance loves Santa Cruz Trails!

2007-07-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

When I went to Washington a few months ago, the American Airways in-flight magazine had a one page fitness article on Lance Armstrong. The sidebar had a bit on "Top Cycling Spots" and I was overjoyed to see that he mentions Santa Cruz as an "absolutely great place for mountain biking" and "frankly, for my money, you can't go wrong."

I had heard rumors of Lance's visit to our town so I contacted a friend at Giro to get the story. A couple of years ago, Lance visited San Francisco to meet with some corporate partners. He paid a visit to Santa Cruz and brought along his mountain bike. He was doing a for an autograph and meet and greet session with Giro employees - who were a major sponsor of Lance. Then he snuck off for a ride with the Senior VP of Marketing at Giro and a couple of other people. According to my source, the pace was brisk on the climbs and Lance was flying on the descents as well.

Lance Armstrong is one of the only nationally recognized cyclists in mainstream America. Having him mention Santa Cruz as a "Top Cycling Spot" for mountain biking is a huge PR win. This little statement from a world renowned cycling champion in a throw away magazine is pure gold.

Update on Coast Dairies: BLM conveyance soon(ish)

2007-07-12T22:53:00.001-07:00

The Coast Dairies property is a 7000 acre parcel of land north of Santa Cruz which was purchased by the Trust for Public Land to be protected as public open space. The details of the deal and the natural features of the land was well documented in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

A year ago, the 400 acres of the coastal side of the Coast Dairies property had been conveyed to State Parks. The remaining 5,700 acres of inland property was supposed to be transfered to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) but there have been some setbacks. Over the past couple of weeks I have had conversations with officials at the BLM about the status of the Coast Dairies Property.

One of the major problems which held up conveyance was a minor contamination issue from the CEMEX mining operations above the property. A canyon in the Coast Dairies property was used for waste rock and it was covering some pipes. There were concerns about leakage and BLM didn't want to take this area due to the potential long term liability of cleaning it up. We should note that there is no known contamination issue on the land. One proposal would be to sell the waste rock area back to CEMEX. However, the TPL and the County didn't really like this idea so it languished for a while. More recently TPL, the County, BLM and CEMEX finally came to an agreement to sell this portion of the land to CEMEX so the last major hurdle has been resolved.

All that needs to be done before conveyance to BLM is to do a new survey to draw up the lot lines and take care of other bureaucratic minutiae. The Field Manager felt that BLM will take possession of the property in October at the earliest or January at the latest. An interim public access plan will be in place soon after conveyance.

BLM has a mandate to protect and restore the natural habitat but the agency has traditionally been very recreation friendly. A trails plan will be drafted according to Chapter 7 in the Coast Dairies Long-Term Resource and Access Plan:

The Trails Plan will provide for a more extensive trail network on the Property than is described for the Interim Access Stage. It is likely that most of the trails specified in the Trails Plan will use the alignments of existing farm, ranch, and mining roads. However, not all of the existing roads on the Property are appropriate or desirable as recreational trails, and some trail alignments may use new routes or the alignments of old, abandoned roads.

The Trails Plan will include trail alignments, allowable uses for each trail, and targeted use levels. The Trails Plan will seek to balance the goal of allowing recreational access to the interior of the property with the goal of resource protection by specifying appropriate trail densities, uses, and design standards.

MBOSC is looking forward to a partnership with the BLM and will be participating in the trails planning process. We will be active participants in the stewardship of the Coast Dairies lands so that we can protect and enjoy this treasure of public land for many generations.

Yuppies are the target market

2007-07-12T22:08:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago the New York Times travel section had a great article on mountain biking in Fruita, Colorado. This article is practically a brochure for mountain bike tourism in Fruita and sounds like it could have been written by the chamber of commerce. It's also notable that this article appears in the New York Times - which is not your typical mountain bike rag. Fruita is targeting yuppies who are looking for an adventure vacation. These types of tourists would go on active eco-vacations like skiing, white water rafting, hiking and mountain biking. These are the same people we would love to bring to enjoy the trails of Santa Cruz County.

The inspiration for Fruita embracing mountain bike tourism is mentioned in the article:

Just over 10 years ago, Fruita was a depressed agricultural town with an oil refinery being shut down by the Environmental Protection Agency. Then, Troy Rarick, a 44-year-old cyclist from nearby Grand Junction, conceived a plan to transform Fruita by giving it a new identity: ecotourism hub.

Fruita has several hundred miles of single-track and is widely recognized as one of the premiere mountain bike destinations in the world. That town does a great job of attracting mountain bike tourists. They have an amazing Fat Tire Festival that continues to bring in a lot of revenue. I know of a lot of mountain bikers who have made the trek to Fruita in the past few years and they have all enjoyed their stay. Mountain biking is a source of civic pride for Fruita and they have bike murals and sculptures on the main street.

The town of Fruita inspires me that Santa Cruz can similarly embrace this brand of eco-tourism and we can all grow the global market for mountain bike tourism. Perhaps some day the New York Times will be writing about Santa Cruz and the swoopy single track dancing in and out of the redwood trees with blades of sun piercing though the morning fog.

That would be sweet!

Kenny!

2007-07-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

It's beer o'clock and I want to do a shout out to one of our supporters.

Seabright brewery is an awesome supporter of mountain biking. The brewery is practically across the street from Santa Cruz Bicycles. The owner Charlie Meehan is an avid mountain biker and a supporter of MBOSC. We have our monthly meetings on the patio at Seabright and Charlie comps us the beer! This makes the meetings fun, lively and increases participation.

One of the best benefits of the holding the MBOSC meetings at Seabright Brewery is that we get to drink the fine beer that they brew on the premises. That would be fine in any establishment but Seabright is a brew pub and it also makes my favorite beer: Kenny!

The "Resolution Red Ale" a.k.a. "Kenny" or "Ken-nay!" is my favorite beer in the world. It's so good that it's always in short supply at the brewery. The story behind the nickname of the Red is really interesting. Charlie sez:

The face on the label is one of our security guys named Kenny Kahn. One of the staff took that picture of him at last years Xmas party and posted it at the Pub. Our graphics guy made a label as a joke and we went with it. (My idea dammit). At the pub the Resolution has become known as simply Kenny! I'll have a pitcher of Kenny!!! BTW, Kenny digs being on the label.

The "Blur" is a delicious Indian Pale Ale named after the Santa Cruz bike. It doesn't need to be very cold to taste great so it's perfect for camping. This was the official beer for the MBOSC road trip to Utica Reservoir.

The Blur, Kenny and Oatmeal Stout are available in 22 oz bottles in selected stores in Santa Cruz County and the Bay Area of California. I know for a fact that Seabright Beers are available at Mission Liquors in Santa Cruz and at the Summit Store up on Skyline Road - convenient location to find a tasty snack and beverage after riding at Demo.

A warning: all these beers have over 7% alcohol so it's not for kids.

MBOSC has it's monthly meeting at Seabright on the second Wednesday of the month. Come out and learn about our advocacy efforts and taste these delectable beers.

Thanks for the support, Charlie!

10th Anniversary of MBOSC

2007-06-26T16:31:00.000-07:00

This year marks the 10th anniversary of MBOSC. In honor of the 10th anniversary, I would like to share this article by Keith Kelsen (the founder of MBOSC and the first President) on the beginning of MBOSC.

Enjoy!

MBOSC - ITS TIME HAS COME

KEITH KELSEN

The headline in the newspaper I was reading was bold and unexpected - "Gray Whale Ranch Bought by Save-the-Redwoods League". Right away I thought, "Wow,this is great!"

Gray Whale Ranch is adjacent to Wilder Ranch State Park. A riding haven on the west coast near Santa Cruz, it had been a favorite of mine to ride for years before it was purchased and trespassing laws enforced five years earlier. But now Save-the-Redwoods League had just purchased the 2,500 acre property with coastal vistas, redwoods, long meadows and chaparral for some 12 million dollars. Save-the-Redwoods League, a nonprofit, has been purchasing land for state parks since it's inception in 1920's. In exchange, they were asking the community to repay $600,000 of the purchase price.

The article also stated that the open space alliance was involved in putting on an auction to help raise some funds. Well, I called some of my riding compadres and told them I would put in $100 if they would put up the same. In no time we had a $1,000, so I raised the anti to $200. So we had $2,000. Not bad, but hey, we could do better than that.

I called the local paper and told them that local mountain bikers... uh... Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz... were pitching in to raise money for the purchase of Gray Whale. They printed the article and a couple of weeks later we had raised close to $7,000.00 and Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz was born.

To raise a portion of the $600K we decided to hold a raffle - the "WIN A BIKE and a Place To Ride Raffle". Our goal was to have our name on a grove ($20K) and more if possible.

We went to manufactures and local bike shops. They were very supportive and gave us over $23,000.00 (retail) worth of donations, including 9 bikes (3 full suspension). And I would like thank them all for the incredible response.

We received media support through co-sponsors for print, TV and radio. We produced commercials for both TV and radio and created ads for print. Along with the commercials we produced a 9 minute documentary on Gray Whale which aired on the local cable channel.

We selected two dates to hold the raffle and distributed tickets to bike shops, who agreed to sell the raffle tickets. The idea was to advertise and bring people into their shops to buy tickets. I was told it was an impossible task. But we kept up on the media and articles in the paper and Gray Whale became a visible movement in the community.

We were also very fortunate to link up with ROMP in the Bay Area to get their help with ticket sales. Also, ROMP donated $1,350 on behalf of its members. IMBA was a great help as well. They published an article in DIRT and IMBA members mailed in their money for the raffle tickets and support. One IMBA member, Tom Shepard, won 5 out of 20 times including a front suspension VOODOO.

For each raffle we opened up Gray Whale just for the day for biking, hiking, and horseback riding. Over 400 mountain bikers showed up for the first raffle and 200 for the second. We finished with $20,000 from the raffle. The total we raised with donations from riders and a Giro donation of $5,000 was $31,000. Not bad for a challenge between friends.

The side benefits to all this were incredible. We have a full-fledged club, we do trail work, a news letter (qtrly), group rides, brochures and actively present a positive image for mountain bikers in the community. We actively seek trail use in other parks. This organization is an idea who's time has come. The work is actually just beginning!

The Big Picture

2007-06-26T15:34:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a lot of time in Google Earth these days. For years I have wanted to catalog every mountain bike trail and large land parcels in GE so I can plan for new trails systems and look at the entire inventory of large public and private land holdings to seek opportunities for more access. I seem to have a lot of time these days so I've been listening to a lot of internet radio and clicking, clicking, clicking...

The image above captures the state of legitimate mountain bike trails in Santa Cruz county that I'm aware of. If you know if any other legal mountain bike trails in Santa Cruz County then please contact me. The orange and yellow lines represent dirt roads and single track respectively. The white lines represent paved roads which act as connectors within and between parks. Technically, Butano State Park is in San Mateo county but I count it as part of the Big Basin trail system.

There is a lot of opportunity for more mountain bike access in the land holdings which do not have any trails open to bikes. We are currently working on initiatives and projects to expand legitimate access for mountain bikes. If you want to help out then please contact me at http://www.mbosc.org/about.html

Old MBOSC newsletters are online

2007-06-26T14:56:00.000-07:00

This year is the 10th anniversary of the founding of Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz so I have been going through the archives to get a sense of history.

I got a new scanner a couple of weeks ago and I have been scanning and cleaning up the old newsletters. I've put the online as pdf files here:

http://www.mbosc.org/about.html

We no longer produce a Quarterly newsletter (does anyone want to do this?) but it has been really enjoyable to look back at the archives and see some familiar names.

It's amazing how many of the issues that we were discussing back in '97 are like Gray Whale are still unresolved. 10 years later, there are probably many more mountain bikers in Santa Cruz but local mountain bike advocacy doesn't seem to reflect it.

The Gray Whale and Nisene Marks issues seemed to have soured the riding community from getting involved with advocacy. Many riders feel that we have a great collection of unauthorized trails and can't see why they should invest time and energy into expanding the legitimate trail network. The answer is that it could be much better. There is a lot of public and private land in Santa Cruz county that could be potential riding areas. Open up Google Earth and look at the area bounded by Big Basin, Empire Grade, the Coast and the Santa Cruz city limits. There are existing trails, road and other off road goodness that is utilized by locals only. This is our playground. With effort and persistence we can open this up to the global mountain biking community and create new economic opportunities for our residents.

Sea to Sky Mountain Biking Economic Impact Study

2007-06-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

About 6 months ago, I blogged about the Yukon Study about the economic potential of mountain bike tourism. That study analyzed the potential and demographics of the global mountain bike tourism market. It was a great document which used market research to identify the mountain bike tourist and contained case studies of communities which embraced mountain bike tourism. It was a great document to introduce a community to the potential of mountain bike tourism and want to know more about the market.

Earlier this year the Western Canada Mountain Bike Tourism Association (MBTA) released a study which illustrates the economic benefits of a mature mountain bike tourism industry. This study complements the Yukon study in that it shows the economic results for Whistler, BC - a community which embraced mountain bike tourism.

The economic impact study gives credible data on the economic benefits of mountain bike tourism. The executive summary states (all numbers in Canadian dollars (1 US$ = 0.93 CD$) ):

"Total visitor spending in Whistler attributable to mountain biking exceeded $34.3 million over the period June 4 to September 17, 2006 supporting an estimated $39.1 million in new economic activity (GDP)."

Not a bad summer season! Whistler continues to be a positive draw of the global mountain bike tourism market. This study discusses the survey methodology, breaks down visitor origin, size of the party, number of nights stayed and spending per visitor. The benefits of out of town visitors to a community can not be overstated:

"The study found that mountain biking draws visitors to Sea to Sky communities and generates significant overnight stays. Overall, 20% of non-resident riders stayed overnight in Sea to Sky communities, staying an average of 4.8 nights and having an average party size of 2.8 people."

It emphasizes the need for authorized trails in order for the tourism economy to succeed:

"The authorized trail system in the Whistler Valley generates considerably more economic activity than the trail systems in Squamish and the North Shore where few authorized trails exist. Whistler has been able to capture higher visitor expenditure in part by having the ability to promote its municipal trails and associated services (bike rentals, guides, camps, etc) directly to visitors both within the Resort and externally."

The bottom line of the study is something that should please local business and government:

"In total, mountain biking has a sizable impact on the summer economy of Whistler and British Columbia, with total expenditures totaling more than $34.3 million between the valley trails, the Bike Park, and Crankworx. This spending generated more than $39.1 million in economic activity, and supported more than $26.5 million in wages and salaries and 798 jobs throughout the Province. Mountain biking in Whistler also supported considerable tax revenues, with over $8.5 million and $7.3 million in government taxes paid at the federal and provincial levels, respectively; while municipal revenues throughout the province exceeded $2.1 million."

These numbers only shows the direct economic impact of tourism. However, I'm sure there are further benefits to the BC bike industry due to the world class mystique of the free ride style of riding. Rocky Mountain, Norco, Cove Bikes and Brody have probably benefited from being part of the BC bike culture which exploding onto the public consciousness around 1998. Many visitors were introduced to the local bikes and may consider taking a bit of BC's finest back with them.

10-15 years ago I lived in Vancouver and rode the Whistler and North Shore trail systems when they were unauthorized. Back then only the locals rode the trails and there were very few tourists (friends of friends). In 10 years, revenue from mountain bike tourism in the Sea to Sky area has gone from immeasurable to CD$39 million.

These are impressive numbers and I really believe that Santa Cruz County has the potential to realize a similar level of mountain bike tourism economic activity.

Mitigating Risk for Private Land Owners

2007-06-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

There are many advantages of allowing mountain bike access on private land. The trail design can be more "creative" and trail networks on private land are generally not subjected to the same level of scrutiny as trails on public land.

One of the biggest obstacles to gaining access to private land are the land owner's concerns of exposure to liability. There are a number of tools that we can use to engage private land holders to allow mountain bike access.

The following page at IMBA has a great discussion on the issues of liability for land owners.

The relevant section for private land owners concerns "Recreational Use Statutes". There are a few important points to note:

"Recreational Use Statute" is a term given to legislation generally intended to promote public recreational use of privately owned land. The statute does this by granting landowners broad immunity from liability for personal injuries or property damage suffered by land users pursuing recreational activities on the owner's land."

Justification for the RUS policy:

"The underlying policy of a Recreational Use Statute is that the publics need for recreational land has outpaced the ability of local, state, and federal governments to provide such areas and that owners of large acreages of land should be encouraged to help meet this need."

How it works:

"Under prior common law (law made by precedent), the landowner had different duties of care depending on whether a person was on the land as an invitee, licensee, or a trespasser. The greatest duty of care was owed to an invitee and no duty was owed to an unknown, adult trespasser. Under an R.U.S., recreational users are treated in the same manner as trespassers and thus the landowner owes them no duty of care. The protection of the statute is lost, however, if the landowner charges for the use of the land or if the landowner is guilty of malicious conduct."

Generally, a land owner is not liable for recreational use on the land if they do not charge for access and there is no malicious conduct on the part of the land owner to create a dangerous situation.

How this may manifest itself as challenging trails on private land:

"If a landowner has no knowledge of a dangerous condition, he or she is under no duty to investigate the land for dangerous conditions."

The full text of the California Recreational Use Statute is here. A summary brochure can be found here.

Be nice out there!

2007-06-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

I just got an earful from an angry hiker who read the Good Times article. She saw that the article mentioned "jittery horses" but she wanted to know if we were doing something about 'jittery hikers".

She then went on a rant about how all the mountain bikers she has encountered while hiking race by her at high speed. I tried to get her to talk about a specific incident and location but she just vented. I can sympathize at how frustrated she was needed an outlet.

I can't claim to represent all mountain bikers who ride in Santa Cruz but I think her assessment is unfair. Most mountain bikers are conscientious trail users and respect other trail users. However, I recognize that there are minority of cyclists on the trails who do not yield to other trail users. These riders spoil it for the rest of us.

She wanted to know what I was doing to solve this and didn't come up with anything practical other than that we emphasize the multiple use trail guidelines: mountain bikes should yield to hikers and equestrians. User education is the one avenue that we have been pursuing. Biker only trails is another novel solution. What else could be done? The IMBA book Managing Mountain Biking has a lot of practical solutions which include strategies for education and trail system design.

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to be good trail citizens. We should all get along with other trail users and ride responsibly. Trail user conflict and the perception of conflict is our biggest issue in gaining access to trails.

Please be nice out there.

Mountain Bike Tourism in Santa Cruz County

2007-06-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

The Santa Cruz weekly newspaper Good Times has an article about MBOSC this week. This article makes it public that the focus of our organization is the promotion of mountain bike tourism as a sustainable economic activity for Santa Cruz County. We have been developing a tourism initiative for a while now among ourselves so we may as well explain our strategy.

Mountain bike tourism is a global market and a sustainable economic activity. Communities from all over the world are recognizing the economic potential of this form of eco-tourism and have been embracing it to revitalize their local economies.

Santa Cruz has so many natural advantages for the development of mountain bike tourism including:

A tourism based infrastructure already in place
Nearby greenbelt areas and parks within riding distance of hotels and motels
Spectacular redwood single track and coastal views
Alternative activities for non-biking guests and family members
Supportive bike industry and bike culture
World-class destinations including San Francisco, Monterey and Silicon Valley less than 2 hours away

We believe that there are a number of benefits of mountain bike tourism which could benefit the community of Santa Cruz County including:

City of Santa Cruz: More hotel and sales tax revenue.
Local bike industry: increased sales and opportunities for new businesses.
Local businesses: hotels, restaurants and tourism.

We wish to engage the local business community, visitors center and city council to recognize the economic potential of mountain bike tourism. These partnerships with civic leaders could help us cut through the red tape and get the resources to open more legitimate trails and promote Santa Cruz County as a destination. More legitimate trails and embracing mountain bike tourism could create opportunities for mountain bike events like 24 hour races, fat tire festivals and the development of new businesses to support mountain bike tourism like shuttle and guide services.

Mountain biking is a healthy, eco-friendly, and fun form of outdoor recreation and it should be encouraged for its low-cost, low impact use of public and private land. Santa Cruz is well known as a mountain biking destination to active mountain bikers in Northern California. The city and county can market Santa Cruz as a world-class mountain bike destination with very little investment and effort.

IMBA Trail Care Crew is comming to Santa Cruz this Fall

2007-05-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

Mark your calendars! The IMBA Trail Care Crew will be coming to Santa Cruz on the weekend of Oct 20-21st, 2007.

The IMBA Trail Care Crews are sponsored by Subaru and travel year-round throughout North America and beyond. They lead trailwork sessions, meet with land managers, and working with IMBA-affiliated clubs and members to improve mountain biking opportunities. The Trail Care Crew experts will also lead a series of popular two-day IMBA Trailbuilding Schools.

Kristin Butcher and Ryan Schutz will be the crew who will be visiting us. From their bio on the IMBA TCC site:

Kristin Butcher and Ryan Schutz hail from Deerfield Beach, Florida, where they created ClubMud, an IMBA-affiliated "trail maintenance, advocacy and merrymaking" organization. They helped lead the charge to gain approval for freeride trails and technical trail features in Broward County parks, oversaw the construction of two freeride areas, and helped organize a bevy of cycling events. Prior to joining the Trail Care Crew, Kristin was a successful and multi-patented software engineer at an international telecommunications company. Ryan has earned a Masters in Urban Planning, has a passion for trail advocacy, and is fascinated by Elvis impersonators. He spent the last 5 years working in GIS, municipal land planning, and his buddy's bike shop.

The agenda is still to be determined. This will be the same weekend as the MBOSC 10th anniversary bash at Seabright Brewery so it should be a great weekend.

Rain is forecast for the week of May 1-4, 2008

2007-05-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

... because they just announced that these are the date for the Sea Otter in 2008. I remember that they moved the festival from March to April because rain and crappy weather was pretty much guaranteed in March. An April Otter didn't fair too well either.

I thought that it would be dry this year because the general lack of rain this season made the chances of rain unlikely. As most of us know it rained really hard on Sea Otter Saturday.

If we really want to address the pending drought then we could just hold a Sea Otter every month.

Carrot Fest was really "transformative" this year

2007-05-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday mountain bikers equestrians participated in Carrot Fest at Wilder Ranch. The goal of Carrot Fest is to desensitize horses to mountain bikes and increase communication and understanding between mountain bikers and equestrians.

It was a small and intimate gathering up on the horse camp marine terrace but one which was extremely valuable. Geoff Smith did a stellar job working with Soleil - a skittish Arab Mare. At the beginning of the clinic, Soleil was really afraid of bikes. Towards the end of the clinic she was feeling much more comfortable around a moving bike. Watching that horse undergo that level of transformation in a few hours demonstrates how valuable this event is to the safety of trail users.

I would like to thank Sebastien Praly (MBOSC) and Rebeckah Crill (SCCHA) for organizing this event, Supervising Ranger Joseph Connors taking care of the event logistics, Geoff Smith for having the expertise and patience in working with Soleil. I think you made a new friend. Finally, I would like to thank all the bikers and equestrians who participated in the event. You all have made a difference in renewing the co-operation between our two user groups.

I really treasure the great relationship that exists between mountain bikers and equestrians in Santa Cruz county. There is a still a lot of work that could be done at the State and Federal level to facilitate communication between these two user groups. Equestrians and mountain bikers can look at what we have done in Santa Cruz county as an example of how to get along and share the trails. We have a lot of common ground and we are trail users who have a passion to enjoy the open space with our favorite steeds.

Soleil makes progress at Carrot Fest 2007

2007-05-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

It was a wonderful day to enjoy Wilder Ranch State Park with our Equestrian and equine friends. We were high up on the Horse Camp marine terrace with great views of the ocean and the back country. It was sunny, warm and clear. Perfect spring weather on the central coast.

Rebeckah from SCCHA and Sebastien from MBOSC discussed the basics of horse-bike interaction on the trails and hosted an open discussion of experiences and lessons learned when encountering the other user group on the trail. Then we broke into a clinic to help desensitize horses to mountain bikes.

We started the clinic by having the bikers ride in large circles and let the horses follow them. The objective is to make the horse feel like the predator rather than the prey animal so that the horses could get used to the sounds and sights of a mountain bike. Then we placed ourselves in the position of coming up from behind and passing the horse. I was really impressed with the control and confidence of Claudia's bay mare Silhouette around bikes. I was pedaling right beside her so closely that I would turn my head and glance into the horse's eye.

The most transformational moment was with an Arab mare Soleil and Geoff Smith (a mountain biker). Soleil is a 12 year old horse who was never frightened of mountain bikes when Claudia first got her at 7. Claudia didn't think that Soliel had a specific negative experience with a mountain bike but something recently made her fear the mechanical steeds that we choose to ride. She said it was analogous to a young child who suddenly gains a realization of his own mortality. But she says that it's a mystery and demonstrates that horses have personality which may change over time.

We were experimenting and trying to find the boundaries of Soleil's fear of bikes. She wasn't afraid of the cyclists (we could walk up to Soleil with no problems). She wasn't afraid of bikes, since a bike lying on the ground wouldn't spook her. However, if the bike was moving she would tense up. Geoffrey spent most of his time working with Soleil to get her comfortable around bikes.

Geoff would pet, talk to and feed Soleil without his bike to make Soleil feel comfortable with him. Then Geoff picked up his bike - Soleil would immediately tense - but he would hold the bike behind him and go over the same exercises. Then Geoff would move his bike back and forth - again Soleil would tense up - but after a while she would get comfortable with the moving bike. Then Geoff would put the bike between himself and Soleil so that she would have to lean across the bike to get the carrot. Soleil still wasn't completely comfortable with bikes at this stage. She would stay as far from the bike as possible and crane her neck in order to get at the carrot. Geoff would continue working with Soleil on these exercises and after a while Soleil would accept that bikes are not a threat.

After the clinic all the riders headed into the Wilder back country to enjoy the rest of the day on the trails. Bikers Geoff, Sebastien and I rode with equestrians Kristin, Katelyn and Rebeckah up the fence line dump trail towards Enchanted Loop. The bikers had a bit of a lead on the moderate slope up the trail but when it got steep the horses passed us quite easily. At Enchanted Loop the two user groups split up and the bikers rode clockwise while the equestrians rode counter-clockwise. We met up at the bottom of Enchanted to practice bike/horse interaction.

Silhouette, Soleil and their riders showed up a bit later on Enchanted Loop while we were at the bottom, she had improved considerably. Soleil's rider mentioned that a bike had passed her from behind but she stayed still. Previously, Soleil would attempt to run away. Soleil was not fully comfortable with bikes but she had made incredible progress in the clinic. That alone was a great justification for this event. Geoff has a new friend.

I treasure the great relationship that exists between mountain bikers and equestrians in Santa Cruz county. Many of the carrot fest participants will take the knowledge that was learned about the other user group and spread it out among the people they ride with. There is a still a lot of work that could be done at the State and Federal level to facilitate communication between user groups. Equestrians and mountain bikers can look at what we have done in Santa Cruz county as an example of how to get along and share the trails. We have a lot of common ground and we are trail users who have a passion to enjoy the open space with our favorite steeds.

More words and pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lick.the.toad/CarrotFest2007