Well well well, here we are! Where the hell have I been? Haha
good question! I have been all over the place; it has been another crazy
year. Building, working, and traveling.
I went to Germany for a wedding and spent a good amount of my free time out at
the park for the second year in a row!
As you would already know, we won the Bell Built Grant but
that was only a fraction of the craziness this year.
The year started out on a positive note. Everyone was super
jacked, ready to get building because we won the bell grant and we were finally
going to get our dirt jumps! That was the main reason we started the park to
begin with! However we had to do some good faith building to ease the city into
it a little bit. Now they seem to be fully on board !
Spring came about right on time, we started to build out
there in May and then the monsoon season began! Totally messed us up and put us
about a month behind where we wanted to be. We were constantly battling erosion
because the vegetation had not yet grown in. We had to constantly cleanup silt
from the bike path at the bottom of the hill. We had hoped to officially open
the season on June 1st.
However the grand opening wasn’t until June 26th. With a
solid push from al the volunteer help and a couple large build days, one
sponsored by Freewheel bike shop, we made the grand opening day.
We got pretty lucky because we decided to spend a good chunk
of our budget and purchase this awesome new product this year called Dust
Shield by Soil Loc. It is a soil additive that hardens the soil through binding
the particles. It was a great addition. It not only controlled erosion, it
hardened the surface which made the track faster but it also sped up the drying
process so that we could get the park open quicker after rainfalls.
Once July came most of the rain had quit and we were able to
get the park pretty much dialed in and all treated with Dust Shield and sat
back and watched the park grow with popularity. It was super impressive to see
how many people of all walks of life started to come out and enjoy the park and
we only had 2 of the 6 sections of the park open! It was just so cool!
During this time we were in the process of working with IMBA
to organize the build out of the Bell Built Grant. We were going to use the
money to build a world class dirt jump area and man did we ever. We had a
meeting with Alex Harrington and Randy Spangler to discuss our desires and come
up with a general lay out but the real magic started to happen when we found
out we were working with Flow Ride Concepts.
I started talking with Shea about 2 weeks before they showed
up on site and from the minute they showed up on site I knew that it was going
to be a great build! Just super nice, genuinely awesome people! I told them don’t
be shy and build what you would want to ride. The crew told them we wanted
awesome jumps that other areas would envious of and that we like the trail
feel! Boom that is what they gave us!
In less than 2 weeks, with a solid volunteer effort, they
knocked out 3 bad ass lines. The intent was to provide beginner, intermediate and
advanced but we got more of a beginner, advanced and expert but it’s all good
because we still have room to build a 4th line between the beginner
and advanced line. It will make for some super sick transfer lines. I think
that Flow Ride would have been all about building that but we just ran out of
time, money and dirt this year. However for the people looking for progression
we definitely have that. We have beginner level pump tracks to get you flowing,
then beginner level dj’s to get you off the ground, followed by an intermediate
level 4x course that will really get you use to speed and get you airborne !
Then when you feel up to it you can start to learn to fly on our advanced dirt
jump line and send it to the moon on the expert line! This jump line is the
largest set of public dirt jumps in the state that I’m aware of!
It was a killer season over all, it was filled with ups and
downs but over all I’m super stoked to have been part of it! The bike park is
now in a better place thanks to all of our amazing volunteers, Flow Ride
Concepts and the killer support we get from the community, the City of Cottage
Grove and the Minnesota Off-Road Cyclists!
Vimeo video HERE
Please consider supporting this grassroots effort by coming
out and lending a hand, if you don’t have time you can make a tax deductible
donation by clicking the link: http://www.razoo.com/story/Cottagegrovebikepark
