Trials & Tribulations of the Trail

Before I dive into my post subject, HUGE CONGRATS to Renee for coming in second in her division at her first triathlon. WOO HOO!!! You rock, girlie! I'm expecting we'll see a post from her sometime today, letting us know all the cool "deets". Apparently Hashi, our "favorite?" Pakistani, is stealing my verbiage.

So...we've had some good hard rains over the past couple weeks. Since most of you know I'm all about the MTB...I don't own a road bike...it means that I'm often kept off the trails when they're wet. But hard rains also cause trail damage and drop debris. Good MTBers that we are (Beth too), we opted to do some trail work this weekend to clean up East Macon.

Two main things happen at East Macon after a rain. Overhang drops with the weight and sometimes makes it impossible to see the trail ahead of you, as well as makes it hard to ride without constant ducking and the possiblility of being swept off the bike. Secondly, trees fall out there. A lot. Beth and I dealt with both.

We were met with a small tree blocking the trail immediately. It was blocking the trail entrance. Unfortunately it was this tree that held the small red arrow showing this was the trail entrance. Beth had forgotten her gloves, so while she ran back to get them, I figured I could move the tree, as it was small. Luckily, it snapped in half when I lifted it (as it was heavier than I'd imagined) and I was able to prop the half with the arrow up so that it still marked the trail entrance.

We went in about 1/3 mile and found a massive bunch of tree and vine that was completely blocking the trail. It was more than we could handle so we noted the spot, planning to let someone with a chainsaw handle it. We continued for another mile or so, doing lots of overhead trimming and debris removal. The overhead was really bad in spots and sometimes we bit off more than we could chew (vines kept dropping the more we trimmed).

We came to an intersection and saw, to our dismay, a huge mass of trees and limbs across the exit of one portion of the trail. For a moment we felt overwhelmed, but then we decided to just slowly wade in and see if we could at least get enough cleared that folks could circumnavigate the rest. With only a hand saw, some loppers and our muscles we started cutting and dragging away limbs. It was dirty, sweaty and painful work (Beth and I both got some nasty scratches), but as we kept going we saw we were making real progress. Every once in a while we came across a limb that, when dragged off, cleared out 1/4 to 1/3 of what remained. After a few such instances we saw that we could not only clear a path, we could clear the entire trail. Sure, a chain saw could have done it in about 5 minutes and it took us about twnty-five. But we DID IT!

We decide to call it a day. Beth wanted to ride a bit and I'm still taking it slow after my anemia diagnosis. We got back to the car and I immediately spotted a tick (YUCK!!!) on my leg. We did the "friend check" (each of us checking under the other's hairline for nasty beasties) and I headed for home. There I spent the next two days finding tiny baby ticks on my person. I did a fill check immediately after I got home, but these things were so tiny they managed to impersonate freckles. YUCK and more YUCK!!!

What's the purpose of this post? Besides giving filler reading until Renee's able to post on her triathlon adventure, it's two-fold: (1) everyone who rides or runs trails can and should make a difference by doing regular trail work) and (2) start and keep wearing the bug repellant every time you go out in the woods...the beasties are out!!!