beauty

Ride Time with the Dogg

Valley Green Volume 2

Great ride with Luke in the trails. He rode uphill for about a mile to get to the trail. We then tackled two sections of trail and he wanted to go back for more. Not bad for 5!

Valley Green Times Volume 1

Went on a great hike with Meg. It was nice to spend the one on one time with her. The secret trail was our choice!

Over The Hills and Through The Woods

First let me say that I loved the times I spent with my grandparents as a young child. I have very fond memories! We watched The Price is Right( love it), played in the shed in the backyard, helped in the garden, and explored in the stream at the side of the property. These memories will stick with me forever and I would not change it for the world.

Lets fast forward to the present and talk about Luke and Meghan's Pawpaw and Grammy. The kids get to do all the "normal" grand childern stuff with them. Grammy makes the kids favorite foods and PawPaw takes the kids on tractor rides. Over the past two days they have taken a step towards the Grandparent Hall of Fame. After taking a drive to the Chambersburg pumptrack they said I think we should build our own pumptack on the property. WHAT!? You heard me right! So check out these pictures of the Wellsville Pumptrack built by Daddy, Luke, and most importantly PawPaw.

"You mean we have to build it". This is what the site looked like at the start.

Luke and I started to move some heavy rocks that would help support our berms! The Kabota is one of the tractors used in the build.

PawPaw would get to use the best toy of all! Special thanks to Mert for the use of his skidloader!

Once PawPaw got used to the loader he was moving dirt and I was shaping and tamping! Here we go!

Having a skidloader made the job go alot faster then I thought it would. This photo was taken a few hours after we started moving dirt and the lower half of the track is taking shape.

As we finished the lower portion a TEST PIOLET appeared out of no where! He was a pretty good rider! Notice he has changed out of his work clothes. He was in ride mode now.

Day one of work was in the books and we had 3/4 of the track done and all the rest of the dirt in place to finish in the morning. Pretty lucky kid in that photo!

Early on day two the track was in and the riding had begun. In the above picture Luke is going over a small table top jump/roller. Check out those turns!

Luke taking a short rest in the top section of the track! Yes, that is a burn pile in the middle! Yes, it is on fire! No, he did not ride into it!

Coming out of the biggest turn on the track Luke was practicing his jumping on the table top. Check out the face!! Charlie have you ever gotten that kind of air?

PawPaw thinking I hope he doesn't hit that tree!

Not many grandfathers are trying this! Check out that style, it just goes for miles!
The look on his face says it all! Luke was on cloud nine! Grammy and PawPaw words really cannot express how much it means to me that you would do this for the kids. Know that you have created a place were these kids will return to long after the track itself is gone. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

More Raystown Photos

Raystown

I headed to Raystown on a solo overnight camping trip. My main goal was to ride the "new" Allegrippis trail system. This group of trails was opened in May of this year after much hard work by The Friends of Raystown Lake, IMBA, and many others. I have seen pictures and read the blog posts about how good the system was so I just had to go. The trails were every bit as good as I hoped! If you can imagine 32ish miles of mountain biking roller coaster bliss. That would descibe this place.

I arrived on Monday in the early afternoon. Set up camp and got the bike ready. The plan was to scope out the trails and plan for a BIG ride on Tues. The ride started on a "connector" trail that gets you from the main camping area to the start of the loops. This trail was good, some tech sections and some rolling terrain. From there it was on to the Allegrippis trail and the Ridge trail. These two gems were about seven miles of the most fun an adult can have on a bike. Think a 7 mile long pump track! This is why I ride! I rode some other sections on my way back to the camp site and returned with a big smile on my face.

The riding on day two was amazing! 5 hours of rolling singletrack. I rode every trail in the place! Some favorites are the Eagle Trail, Hydro Loop, Barrel Bay, Ridge Trail, and The Allegrippis. If you ever go to this network of trails ride the Allegrippis and the Ridge together. I did it in both directions several times and just kept wanting to do it again.

In the end I found a new place to ride that is only about 3ish hours away with lots of other thing to do when I go back with the family! At this point I just want to say thank you to all the people that helped make this place a reality. Your hard work has paid off with a great trail system that I hope more people in the country can learn from and create for themselves and future genereations.

Rollin on his 9.0

The Dogg is back on a bike! What a bike it is

Their are to many nice parts to list. Take a look at some!

We rode on the Wissahickon Watershed to mix in some dirt, road, and gravel. Look at him go!

The first ride was not without issue. The Dogg's crank arm fell off! We were able to get him back underway.

What a great ride!

Sometimes

Sometimes the road can feel so smooth!

Game Face

Meg and Luke did their first running race! It was a 1 mile grass course with a hill on every lap. They had to do three laps. They ran with their good friends Sophie and K. Meg seemed to be the most intense of any of the kids. She has this switch. When someone says "go" she takes off! Meg and Luke jog/ran the whole mile! Great job! Happy Birthday AJW!