Like a Virgin

New trail--that's something we don't hear much around here. It's usually enough to take care of what we've got anyways, and nothing excites the local managers less than the mention of cutting a new trail. This, despite the NEED to re-route many poorly-designed turn-of-the-century trails, is the unfortunate dilemma we are in here now in New England. Sure, there are some very upbeat land managers that embrace and instigate progress, even to the point of giving carte blanche to us mountainbike types, 'cause they know that we're the ones who will take care and nurture their established trails and thoughtfully design new ones. And there are even more LM's in between, who are just either on the fence about two-wheel use, some who are still realizing how much we can contribute to their park, some who are completely still in the dark ages, some who just don't have the time or resources to pay attention, even others who actually ride a mountainbike......... The list is endless, and I'm sure some psychologist could pare it down to three different types of land managers, but  we all know that the best kind om LM is one who we can work with.....
So, when we see the need for a new connector, go-round, switchback, or other cool new feature, and we ask, AND get the go-ahead, that's EXCEPTIONAL! When we're done doing the Papelbon dance, we get down and dirty with the LM and make a plan. The work has to make sense, and follow guidelines and directives set by the LM. Usually it helps to roundup a crew of hard-working volunteers. A nice sunday morning(church!) session in the spring or fall, with incentives like free lunch/coffee, etc, is a good way to getem out. Of course they(we) would all rather be out on the trail riding, but when there's work to do, ESPECIALLY cutting a new trail, that's a good enough incentive......

Anyways, we did get to cut a new connector on our last trail work day at Wompy.  Not a long one, but still, a NEW trail!

Soft, loamy, pineneedley, hardly defined save for some ribbon and some vague signs of human intervention.......

Now that the work is done, our job now is to ride it!