The tips of my fingers are sore as I type this Blog. My day started when I met a few fellow riders at The Hydrocut to do some trail repair and feature building. My two friends were there to give something back for the pleasure the trails gave them. We loaded up some trail building tools into the wheelbarrow and set off to correct a turn that just wasn't turning right when going left. I would like to point out that I particularly dislike gravity when I am pushing a load of rocks up a hill in a wheelbarrow and that I only like gravity when I'm going downhill on my bike. Our task started with loading a half dozen wheelbarrows loads of "baby head" size rocks and pushing them up a hill to use them as fill. Did I mention how much gravity sucks? I must say that it was convenient that the farmer had piled them nearby where we needed them, albeit at the bottom of the hill. It was probably a hundred years ago or perhaps two hundred that the farmer was clearing his field and piling those stones right there for us, who can say for sure! The ole farmer had no idea way back then, that some crazy mountain biker hooligans would be riding bikes through the forest in 2015 and using his rock pile as trail building material. In his lifetime he would have known hard work to make a living and not for fun; but there we were using his hard work to create fun. We live a privileged life in this century and this country enjoying a culture and a society built by those who went before us. Not to say that we didn't work hard because we did, my aching back bears testimony to that fact.
We corrected that bad turn with his rocks and added a small bump in the trail for those would be air chasers, over grown thrill seeking kids riding bicycles through the forest. The tools were loaded back into the wheelbarrow and moved over to another pile of rocks most graciously piled by our friend the farmer. The trail goes directly over the rock pile as it does in so many places in The Hydrocut; we call that a feature. There were some mud holes near the feature on that section of trail which persistently stayed wet and those holes were very unpopular with riders. We used some of those rocks to fill in the mud holes and for good measure added a more difficult line over the rock pile to match the line that was already there. Many of the rocks we moved for this project were not the size of a baby's head; no they were about the size of an elephant's head. There were some riders who rode past and thanked us for our hard work. A thank you can mean so much when you are giving your time and energy away. I loaded the tools back into the steel clad shed at the trail head and headed home with a heart full of pride and a feeling of satisfaction for a job well done. I wonder if the farmer felt some pride for a job well done when he piled those rocks there for us many years ago? Thank you Mr. Farmer.
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