Monday, June 20, 2011

BIG Celebration Weekend!

Jorbafest



Summer is here, and what better way to celebrate summer than to share your summertime passion to ride a bike with others. This past weekend was jam packed with sharing at the 2011 Jorbafest. Hundreds of volunteers came out to help pull off this wonderful day at Allamuchy. The weather was perfect and mountain bikers of all ages came out to do their thing with others.



6/16/11 : My weekend started early with a Thursday morning ride with my friend Patty at Stephens State Park . This was not just “a ride” but a premier tour of this park I rarely get to ride, and my first major ride on a 29er. Yes, pixy has BIG wheels in a BIG way. What a great ride we had, as I instantly fell in love with the ride of the big wheels and steel frame on the flowing single-track. Stoked from my ride, I jumped right out into the woods again later that afternoon and worked four hours up at Ringwood during Jorba’s Dirty Thursday work session. We worked on the Ringwood/Ramapo re-route. That trail is coming along nicely, and may be open in a few more Thursdays.





6/18/11 : Alarm at the White house had us up at 5:00 and on the road before 6:30. First on the agenda was to build “Pump the magic dragon”, the portable pump track that Art had built that week. The pieces were nested together nicely in the truck with a few bikes and cooler, but would need to be unloaded and put together. All that went well and by 9:00 both Art and I were gathering to lead or sweep a ride.



I was on schedule to lead an advanced women’s ride, and this in itself is amazing that there are enough qualified women to even have this ride. We actually gave the guys a head start, so that we would have the first trail more to ourselves, but we caught up to the guys anyway. My group had a few DH chicks that expressed interest in more technical, and here I was on this strange BIG wheeled hardtail. I was feeling a bit unsure of myself on a new bike, but the BIG wheels kept rolling like a charm. We had an awesome 17 mile ride of about 3 hours, including Lumpy Bumpy and a section of the Highlands Trail. I am proud to say that New Jersey terrain has created some very skilled female riders.



an afternoon of fun....



...for the whole family.


And if Jorbafest was not enough fun, Dar, Tara, Art and I were off to NEMBA festival at Huntington State Park in Ct where Team Campmor was teaching a women's clinic on Sunday. This was Dar's home turf and she has been a BIG supporter of Jorba and we all wanted to help her give back to her home state parks.

Wherever your home trails may be, invest BIG in them and reap BIG smiles of riding down the trail.

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