Feeling Creepy, and back in WNC

The Virginia Creeper Trail is quite the experience, it really allowed some insight into what the "average" person enjoys on a bicycle ride, and let me tell you, this experience would be VERY hard to replicate.

We rolled into town on a Thursday afternoon to find a quaint little trail town of Damascus and then made our way up to the campground in a raging thunderstorm. The storm washed away our hopes of riding on the Iron mountain trail the next day so we decided to do a two part Creeper retreat.

Friday morning we dropped back down the mountain to ride from Damascus to the Holston River Trestle, WOW what a cool bridge. The ride was gently rolling and swept through some beautiful farms, with trail side attractions like some rapids and a few cattle right on the trail. We wrapped up our day and then headed back to the mountain to get ready for the next day of the shuttled "upper" portion of the creeper.

17 miles all pretty much downhill at a 1% - 2% grade. That is criteria number one for getting the average American having fun on a bicycle. Beautiful cascading mountain trout stream as your riding companion most of the way, that would be punch number two. Finally, a few amazing bridges and quaint little whistle stops complete the package. All in all there is more thought about this trail than I will be able to put on this blog, so be sure to ask for stories the next time you see us.

We finished the day happy and then I went and fished that same river and managed to catch two beautiful trout before getting back up to camp. Now, we are back in Asheville for a week while getting everything organized to make the great trip South, then West.

Blog posts to come will probably involve lots of riding and general good times. Enjoy the week!

Douthat...is all that !

The last couple days at Douthat was just what the doctor ordered. We have gotten to do some spectacular riding. The photos in this post are from a loop we did with Mountain Side Trail, the MUST RIDE at the park. We spent the week riding and I did quite a bit of fishing to help pass time as well. It hasn't been all fun and games, just mostly. We have been working on getting bids organized and getting ready for some design work in Florida, then a big drive out to Cali to work on the Paradise Royal system for two months....yeah STOKED !!!



Beautiful bench cut by the CCC, those boys must have ridden mountain bikes!

Wrapped....NEXT !

We is be dun y'all. This was a great project. We got to work in a beautiful area of the country while building really fun trail, that was really boring old road bed. We now head South to get things wrapped up in the South East before making the journey to the Lost Coast of Cali to work on a project with IMBA and the BLM, STOKED !! So where are we headed and what all do we need to do? First, is the race here in Harrisonburg for the HooHa, they will be doing the Super D and a really cool looking Short Track today, then XC tomorrow. Next, we head to Douthat and Mount Rogers to do some riding and to work on some proposals and maps, office days with fishing and riding involved...good life. Then, we head down to NC to get the truck dialed and ride in Pisgah a bit, before it gets changed for the "who knows" forever. Then, we head down to Florida to work on a design for a bike park in a new Florida State Recreation area. After that we will probably head over to St. Augustine to go from coast to coast during our drive. Where will we stop on the journey across the country? Don't know yet...have a project you want us to look at and you are within striking distance of a route between FL and CA, hollar at me. Email is on the right up there and phone number is on the Facebook page. Until then, Summer is upon us...get out there and enjoy it !

RT(squared)

A road to trail conversion, unlike a trail to road conversion...like the soon to be Squirrel Gap (YIKES !!!). So here are some photos, finally, of the work we have been doing. Below is a before picture of the old road corridor, then a photo of the serpintine redo of that straight and narrow trail. Below that is another "sexy" trail picture of some flow and below that, well the top of an awesome mountain climb in the beautiful woods near the campsite. Yeah, things are great!

Pictures...

would be nice, but I have the camera in my camelback from all the great rides we did last week and it can't seem to migrate to the truck. So a little update for now, then photos when we get the chance.

We are in Stokesville VA for some work on the Narrowbakc trail system. We are performing two road to trail conversions and had our first production day yesterday. All in all things are good. We will be on this project for about ten days, then headsouth to NC for a couple weeks to wrap up a few loose ends and get the Fall scheduled.

That's it for now, just plugging away, we don't have cell reception ecept at the jobsite and when we are here we really need to be on it, so it may be a while before I can get a good post up, but watch for it, the photos are sure to be great.