Meeting A Celebrity

[GoldenGoose]

So, I’m out at Sope Creek doing the trail day volunteer thing today and I get shuffled away into this group of about 15 other people. It’s our job to "decommission" parts of the trail that are suffering from major erosion while the other groups open up the new trail.

([i:377emxl4]Basically, decomissioning the trail consists of throwing all kinds of sticks, logs, and leaves onto the existing trail to make it unridable and unhikeable after fencing it off. Honestly, it was kind of like being at a funeral at times because I’ve ridden there so much over the years. It’s like burying an old friend. 😢 Thankfully they opened new trail there to realign the old stuff that is left over.[/i:377emxl4])

Enough going off on a tangent though, back to the point…

I noticed that one of the dudes in my group looks REALLY familiar but I just can’t place where I know him from. We were talking about local trails and stuff and the whole time I keep getting that deja vu feeling. Then I get home and check Singletracks and after randomly seeing a picture I figure it out. It was Jeff, AKA trek7k, head honcho of this site. I was in the presence of greatness and didn’t even know it! Wish I had known. I’d have bought him a beer after the work was done. Oh well. Anyways, he seemed like a pretty cool dude and it is always cool to put a name with a face. BTW, trek, I was the guy in the Sandy Springs Fire Rescue shirt.

[Jeff Barber]

Yo GoldenGoose! I saw your comment on the blog and figured you would be there today but when I saw the crowd I figured we wouldn’t hook up. Yeah, was great meeting and working with you, especially when we twisted down that gnarly tree 😀

We should definitely hook up for a social ride sometime, though preferrably not at Sope Creek. I rode up the new stuff real quick after we finished working and it’s basically the same short trail, just reconfigured a bit 😢

One funny note: I talked with the one of the NPS rangers and he mentioned that those burlap mats that were being carried up the trail were supposed to go down BEFORE all the sticks and crap were thrown onto the old trail! The group that was hauling that junk had to move all our sticks and logs, roll out the mat, then REPLACE all the logs and sticks on top. I suppose the whole thing could have a been a little better organized.

[GoldenGoose]

Yeah, me and that other guy Mark carried one up to the top and the park ranger told us that when we got there. I think they were only laying down about 2-3 sections at each end of the trail though so it wasn’t too much of a waste. I’m hoping the new stuff they’ll start in October will be a little more fun to ride. Unfortunately, the traffic they get on that trail will probably prevent them from allowing a trail like that to be put in. We’ll see.

I was encouraged by Tom’s mentions of the new trail areas in the works and it’ll be pretty cool if those other places he mentioned turn out to be viable. The more stuff in town, the better.

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