Steve and I are currently in Augusta, GA, for the IMBA World Summit. We’ll get to meet cool mtb peeps, educate ourselves on everything mtb-related, and have FUN! I’ll post some pics of the Summit as we work our way through the week.
Since Steve and I left Boulder on January 19, we spent the next 33 days learning everything we would need to know in order to become trailbuilding professionals. We traveled to or through 6 states – Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas – and logged over 2,700 miles on the IMBAru. In a nutshell, and to paraphrase McDonald’s, we’re lovin’ it. The only damper so far had nothing to do with IMBA, but rather, a young man joyriding in a borrowed Cadillac Escalade and effectively totaling our IMBAru, three days into the job. This happened in snowy and icy Prescott, Arizona. The whole situation was a bummer, as it impeded our quality training time, but after a quick jaunt back up to Denver, we were able to pick up right where we left off in Prescott. Although wintry weather (snow, rain, hail, sleet, wind, mud, you name it) did
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We’ve been on the road for three weeks now! It feels an eternity in all the good ways. Here are the wonderful corners of our great nation that we’ve set foot in over the past three weeks: View Larger Map Some of the places we expect to find ourselves over the next few months include (in this order): Bentonville, Arkansas Lake Meredith, Texas Kansas City, Missouri Salida, Colorado Omaha, Nebraska Marseilles, Illinois Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Augusta, Georgia New River Gorge, West Virginia Raystown Lake, Pennsylvnia Indianapolis, Indiana Happy travels to us!
Chris & Leslie Kehmeier, the senior Trail Care Crew, have been fun travel companions and good teachers. They’ve been training us for the past couple of weeks, and we’ll travel to New Mexico and Texas together over the next three weeks. Leslie is a wonderful photographer, and captured some great moments of our first week on the road. The pictures are on the IMBA TCC blog, check back frequently for more stories and pictures. More of Leslie’s pictures are available on her personal website, too. From the IMBA TCC blog: TCC Week 1 in Photos.
Here are pictures of our home sweet home, the IMBAru. Subaru is kind enough to sponsor our education and advocacy work, and supplies the Crews with a brand new Outback wagon. We use every possible nook in there – all 188.2 inches long, 71.7 inches wide and 65.7 inches high!
In Outside Magazine or National Geographic Traveler, do you ever read about dream jobs? Or the “job of a lifetime?” Welcome to my new world. And welcome Steve, too! The International Mountain Bicycling Organization (IMBA) recently hired us as part of a team: we’re the new IMBA Trail Care Crew. Our duties include promoting mountain biking advocacy, training local mountain bike clubs and volunteers on sustainable trail building and design both in the classroom and in the field, educating bikers on how to establish and operate a club, meeting with land managers and other decision makers to discuss and help solve trail management challenges, and in general, improving mountain biking experiences for all users across North America. It’s the perfect time in our lives to be hitting the road for a good cause, and we couldn’t be more excited. We spent two solid weeks packing up our home, moving furniture
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