Grassroots Bikes, Durham’s newest bike shop
Durham’s newest bike shop is a mountain bike boutique (i.e. a mountain bike specific bike shop). Located at 5520 Old Chapel Hill Rd., Grassroots Bikes is the retail and bike service effort run by Trips for Kids, Triangle. Profits go to support TFKT, which makes Grassroots Bikes Durham’s first “socially conscious bike shop.” Who knew there was such a thing?
Starting out small, the shop will keep new Surly, Vassago, Redline, and Soma mountain bikes in stock. “We stayed away from the big name brands in order to not directly compete with any of our friends at the local bike shops,” says Andrea Hundredmark, Durham Public Schools middle school teacher and organizer of Triangle Trips for Kids. You can check up on their inventory at grassrootsbikes.blogspot.com.
Hundredmark, aware of the local popularity of single speed mountain bikes, says that Grassroots Bikes will also support the single speed community through sales of new single speeds as well as carrying in stock single-speed parts.
The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Mountain biking helps Durham youth stay focused
Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
WAKE COUNTY — “This is my first race, and I got third place,” says Edgar, a sixth-grader at Brogden Middle School in Durham. Out of breath, Edgar just raced a mountain bike through lakeside trails of Harris Lake County Park at the TORC Spring Skills Clinic
He wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Andrea Hundredmark.
Hundredmark, a science teacher at Brogden Middle, launched this school year the Triangle’s first chapter of Trips for Kids. Trips for Kids, she says, is a program for disadvantaged youth. Whether you call it drop-out prevention or leadership development TFKT is a way for teachers and volunteers to identify kids who need a little something extra to see school in a positive light, then take them mountain biking.
According to the program’s national website, Trips for Kids is a non-profit that sponsors mountain bike outings and environmental education for kids who would not otherwise be exposed to such activities. With lessons aimed at personal responsibility, achievement and environmental awareness through fun, “the mountain bike is a conduit to a lot of positive interactions,” says Hundredmark.
Aaron, also a sixth-grade student at Brogden Middle, is originally from Chicago. He says he’s ridden bikes his whole life but had never mountain biked before Hundredmark asked him to join Trips for Kids. Aaron says mountain biking is “fun, exciting, and hard work, but the hard work pays off.”
How does it pay off? “Because you get to go mountain biking again,” he says.
Prior to the TORC sponsored race, John Miles and Brian Bergeler, members of Bull City Cycling, shared insider mountain bike racing tips with the Trips for Kids students. Miles and Bergeler also accompanied the students on a seven-mile warm-up ride that included the advanced loop at Harris Lake.
“It’s great to see these guys out here and to see how quickly they’re picking up the skills,” says Miles.
Aaron’s fellow student Ahkeem has been mountain biking a total of three times. In that short period of time, he’s learned good riding posture, how to change gears, how to use the brakes, how to control the bike and share the trail. “Before, I used to just ride around the block,” says Ahkeem, “but Ms. Hundredmark told me about this.”
TFKT joins a network of more than 30 chapters nationwide. With Mountain Bike Hall of Fame inductee Gary Fisher on Trips for Kids’ board of directors and such celebrities as actors Peter Coyote and Robin Williams and musicians Bonnie Rait and Huey Lewis raising awareness for the non-profit, the Durham-based chapter benefits from the national organization’s exposure and experience.
Individual chapters, however, are financially autonomous. This means that while riding mountain bikes is the focus of TFKT’s activities, learning how to sell and repair bikes is the key to the program’s sustainability.
TFKT plans to open a full service bicycle repair shop this summer. Grassroots Bikes will sell and repair bikes, with all proceeds going to support the TFKT mission. Students will volunteer this summer, learning the technical skills of bicycle repair and cycling etiquette. Hundredmark thinks of learning as something more than just what happens in traditional classroom settings and conceptualizes the shop as an ongoing educational experience. “Other successful TFK chapters across the country also have a similar set-up, where the bike shop doubles as an after school program for the TFK kids,” she says.
Steve Levine, owner of Cycling Spoken Here, is helping TFKT get off to a strong start. He recently donated a $2500 BMC Trail Fox to TFKT so that they could raffle off the a full-suspension mountain bike. “I have kids, and [kids] are the future of our sport,” says Levine. “For me, Trips for Kids is about giving anybody the opportunity to go back and enjoy the most simple thing, and that’s the bicycle.”
TFKT raised $3500 from raffle ticket sales.
“I hope I do learn how to build trails and fix bikes too,” says Aaron. Aaron grasps quickly that the essence of mountain biking is about more than fun; it is also about taking responsibility for your ride as well as the trails on which you ride.
If kids are the future of mountain biking, Trips for Kids is doing its part to ensure that mountain biking’s future is bright.
From left to right: Steve Levine, Aaron, Marcee Vanore, Ben, Sam, Ahkeem, Andrea Hundredmark, Edgar, Margaret Feilds, Curtis, Tristan Fuierer, Terence O’Neill, Stewart Bryan
THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS: Durham Parks and Rec plans trip for bikers
Durham Parks and Rec is organizing a road trip for cyclists. See details below.
Come spend a leisurely fall day riding the Virginia Creeper Trail with Durham Parks and Rec Adventure Programs staff. Appropriate for participants ages 10 and up (minors must be accompanied by parent/guardian) this wide, smooth reclaimed rail bed trail offers a scenic tour of Southwest Virginia. After the ride, we’ll take our well-earned appetites to one of the affordable, eclectic restaurants in town and get some rest that night, cross-country cyclist style, in an adventure traveler’s hostel. The next morning we’ll cook a hearty breakfast and spend some time exploring one of the many legendary trails that are in walking distance from our hostel. This is a great opportunity to see Blue Ridge fall colors and stay in “Trail City, USA”.
Program Dates: Saturday-Sunday, October 27-28 (depart on Saturday at 8 a.m. and return on Sunday afternoon). Cost: $130.00 and includes the bike rental, tour, lodging and all meals except Saturday dinner.
TRIP HIGHLIGHTS
- Ride the Virginia Creeper Bike Trail
- Stay in an adventure traveler’s hostel
- See the fall colors in a unique way
- No prior mountain biking experience is necessary!
Email: jordan.doctor@durhamnc.gov for information about signing up.
About Durham Parks and Recreation
Durham Parks and Recreation provides opportunities for the Durham community to “Play More.” The department strives to help citizens discover, explore and enjoy life through creative and challenging recreational choices that contribute to their physical, emotional and social health. To learn more about Parks and Recreation, visit http://www.durhamnc.gov/departments/parks.
Fat Tire Festival on June 9th Crabtree Co. Park
Just got this from Camye Womble…
Triangle Off-Road Cycles (TORC) will host its second annual Fat Tire Festival on June 9 at Lake Crabtree County Park. This years agenda includes a Fun race that begins at 9:00 am with registration from 7:30 until 8:30. Categories include Expert, Sport, Beginner, Single Speed, Women, Big Bike (33-35lb+). (classes may be combined race day)
The Race focus will be on fun. Registration for the race is just $5 to cover the cost of insurance, however donations will be gratefully accepted. 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize in each category will be a piece of unique bike related art handmade made by a local artist. Other activities will include a Trials demo and Freeride demo by some local Pro’s (u will not be disappointed) , A TORC guided ride, Local Bike Shops with Demo Bike avail. to Ride… bike related games with prizes and Free raffle of many bike parts. Also Including a KONA frame with Purchase of a $5.00 raffle ticket!!
Please contact cwomble3@nc.rr.com for any ?’s not covered here
Bring the family it’s gonna be fun.
from last year’s…
Stewaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy or more committed volunteer. Congratulations Stewart.
http://www.newsobserver.com/166/story/519942.html
Tar Heel of the Week: Trail advocate isn’t content to coast
Joe Miller, Staff Writer
CHAPEL HILL - Stewart Bryan loves riding his mountain bike.
That’s why he spent two hours on the phone Monday pricing trail-building tools, three hours Tuesday with a tool salesman, and another three at a meeting that night advocating trails for a new Wake County park. Then he spent three more hours in meetings Wednesday night and Thursday, and on Friday spent hours testing a machine that carves single-track trail from the side of a slope.
“Sometimes it’s hard to find time to ride,” says Bryan, 53.
What do the meetings, phone calls and machine tests have to do with mountain biking?
Everything, if you want a place to ride in the Triangle.
Bryan, of Chatham County, is the incoming president of the Triangle Off-Road Cyclists, a year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to giving mountain bikers places to ride.
The all-volunteer club’s advocacy is why eventually there will be 20 miles of mountain bike trail at Forest Ridge Park on the shores of Falls Lake and smaller networks at two future parks: White Deer in Garner and the northern Wake landfill in Raleigh.
The group’s latest success is at the Briar Chapel housing community being built off U.S. 15/501 south of Chapel Hill. Thanks to the nonprofit, and especially to Bryan, Briar Chapel will have at least 25 miles of trail, making it the biggest single-track trail network in the region.
That is nearly 70 miles of new mountain bike trails in all. Coupled with the 100 or so miles already on the ground, that’s a lot of recreational fun — most of it built by volunteers at no expense to taxpayers.
A hobby blossoms
Bryan’s arc as a mountain biker shows how this phenomenon of cost-free public works came to be.
Twelve years ago, he was looking for a way to connect with his then 12-year-old son, Nathan. Nathan had just started mountain biking with a friend; Bryan decided to give it a try.
“I borrowed an old mountain bike that was too small, and we rode to some local trails,” Bryan recalls. “I looked like a circus bear on a bike.”
Despite his sideshow appearance, Bryan was hooked. He bought a bike better suited to his lean 6-foot frame and started looking for places to ride. That was when the seeds of his volunteerism were sown.
“There wasn’t much else around here,” Bryan says.
The only legal trail at the time was a four-mile network at Lake Crabtree County Park in Morrisville. The trail Bryan had cut his teeth on in Chapel Hill was “bootleg” — a trail cleared by enthusiasts on private land with (or sometimes without) the tacit approval of the landowner.
In the mid-1990s, during mountain biking’s boom nationwide, bootleg trail was pretty much all local mountain bikers had. The old Morrisville network, Capital Boulevard, Regency Park and Dunn Road were all good places to ride but were short-lived — gone when landowners decided to build.
Bryan had never volunteered for anything — “I guess I was never that passionate about anything” — but he realized that if he was going to ride trail, he would have to build it.
Forging a path
He started attending workdays at Lake Crabtree, where the NC FATS Mountain Bike Club had built the trail and was responsible for maintaining it. He later volunteered at Harris Lake County Park, which opened with trails in 1999.
In 2002, he learned that a few other mountain bikers from the western Triangle — Brian Williford and Gaynor Collester — were talking with park planners about building trail at the new Little River Regional Park north of Durham.
A club — the Durham Orange Mountain Biking Organization, better known by its pachydermic acronym DOMBO — was formed for the sole purpose of building the trail. In 2004, after a core group of a half-dozen riders had put in 50 or so Saturdays building trail, the park opened with seven miles of single-track.
“We worked out there for two years,” Bryan says. “It was a long process.”
Bryan could have felt he had paid his dues, that he could retire his chain saw and pulaski ax. Instead, he played a key role in starting TORC, a Triangle-wide club intended to replace smaller local clubs.
The significance of the umbrella group with affiliations to regional and national mountain bike clubs became apparent earlier this year when development company Newland Communities started mulling amenities for Briar Chapel. The community in eastern Chatham County plans 2,389 homes built over seven to 10 years.
“We wanted nature to be one of the cornerstones of the community,” says Ed Timony, project manager for the development.
Out of a two-day “envisioning process,” Timony says, Newland decided it wanted lots of trails. The company hired Greenways Inc. to build hiking trails and walking paths. The Durham firm had no experience with mountain bike trails, so it called the Colorado-based International Mountain Bicycling Association. IMBA’s statewide representative at the time, Carter Worthington, said Bryan is your man.
A ‘why not?’ attitude
“I met with Stewart out on the site with a huge map and showed him the walking trails,” Timony says. The map included what someone at Newland thought might make a nice little mountain bike trail, along a power line easement.
Timony chuckles. “Stewart looked at it, scratched his head and in a polite way said, ‘That’s really not that good of a trail, in a power line corridor.’ “
Bryan recommended a network significantly larger than Newland’s three-mile ride through a clear-cut. Timony, Bryan recalls, looked at it and said, “Sure, why not?”
As Bryan has continued to explore the property and find additional terrain suitable for riding, Timony has continued to say “Sure, why not?” So far, 25 miles of mountain bike trail are planned for Briar Chapel.
Newland is so pleased with the plan that it cut TORC a check for $25,000 to buy a mini-skid steer, a kind of junior bulldozer that expedites the trail-building process. That was three times more money than the largest grant ever awarded a local mountain bike club.
Yet it is still a bargain for Newland. Williford, IMBA’s current representative for the state, says commercial contractors charge about $8,000 per mile to build mountain bike trail.
Briar Chapel, Forest Ridge, White Deer Park, the northern Wake landfill and TORC’s various other projects — from providing skills clinics to leading rides — promise to keep Bryan busy as club president. This week alone, a month before his official induction, Bryan put in nearly 20 hours — in addition to his regular job as a self-employed general contractor.
As Bill Camp said Wednesday night as he presided over his final meeting as TORC president, “I’ve enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to getting my life back.”
A year from now, when his reign as the Triangle’s chief mountain biking advocate is over, Bryan, too, can look forward to getting his life back.
Maybe he’ll even have time for a mountain bike ride.
The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Can mountain bikers be green?
Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
DURHAM — Many mountain bikers pick up the sport as another way to spend time in the woods. But not all trails let an environmentally conscious rider enjoy the ride.
Improperly built trails soon develop deep ruts in the ground and can damage sensitive vegetation, especially if those trails are carved through low-lying areas that stay wet. Perhaps worse are the poorly constructed stunt zones where deep holes are dug or wooden structures are built hastily. If built of untreated lumber, these structures quickly rot becoming both neighborhood blight and safety hazards.
Trails like these exist in the Triangle, though they are usually pirated trails with quasi-legal status. If you ride much in the area, you know which ones I’m talking about.
It doesn’t have to be this way; mountain biking and environmental protection go hand in hand. Since the so-called Park City Agreement in 1994 with the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA), the Sierra Club has recognized mountain biking as a positive, worthwhile outdoor activity. Raleigh resident Bill Camp sums it up best — “mountain biking is a good way for families to spend time together participating in a healthy activity together.”
Building environmentally sustainable mountain bike trails is not only possible; through organized education efforts, it’s quickly become preferable. Car-manufacturer Subaru and IMBA co-sponsor two Trail Care Crew teams who annually travel the country preaching the gospel of sustainable trails. Their Trailbuilding Schools have taught more than 150,000 people how to build trails right the first time so that they’ll last forever.
Jill Van Winkle and Chris Bernhardt, IMBA’s east coast Trail Care Crew visited the Triangle in March 2005. The class was packed with volunteers, land managers, and park officials all hungry to learn how to build trails that will withstand the impact of the growing sport. At the end of the weekend, Bernhardt said he was impressed by the local commitment to sustainable trail-building, specifically Durham’s Little River Regional Park’s singletrack.
Well-built trails draw people to them. The more fat tires turn out on trails, more people will be there to protect wooded areas from development. Unsustainable development, here in the Southeast, is the single largest earth-scarring activity. Our fetish for new strip-malls anchored by big-box retail chains has meant the demise of many favorite homegrown trail systems.
The leadership of the Triangle Off Road Cyclists (TORC) is keenly aware that sprawl threatens access to local trials. “That’s one of the reasons TORC was formed,” says Camp, who is president of the advocacy group. Through fun events like last month’s Fat Tire Festival, Camp hopes to “raise awareness of our trails advocacy and volunteer efforts to build and maintain legal singletrack in the Triangle area.”
TORC has its work cut out. Right now, sights are set on new trails – conceived through memoranda of understanding with the landowners and built by volunteers — from northern Wake County down to Chatham County. Thanks to TORC’s lobbying efforts, developers’ masterplans already include singletrack options at the city of Raleigh’s new Forest Ridge park as well as the new park to be developed after the North Wake Landfill closes.
The Briar Chapel subdivision in northern Chatham County is a model for developer/volunteer collaboration. By the time the first houses in the new subdivision go up for sale, the publicly accessible singletrack TORC is building also should be open for business.
In local and regional media outlets, TORC has received flattering media attention for its efforts to preserve established trail systems and grow new ones in a region of North Carolina where sprawl is the norm.
And mountain bikers are generally good stewards of the land. I know of no other sport (organized or otherwise) where the participants take on lobbying for, building, and maintaining their own recreational outlets with the same fervor and tenacity as mountain bikers. Since its inception in 1988, IMBA’s members have registered more than 1 million volunteer hours of trail work. Heck, every land manager I’ve ever met says that mountain bikers out-do all other volunteers when it comes to time spent with a McLeod rake or Pulaski in hand.
Park officials at Beaverdam State Park, Lake Crabtree County Park, and Harris Lake county Park say that on occasion mountain bikers have broken the rules and ridden closed trails but that it hasn’t become a problem. Cyclists respect the trails, says Drew Cade, Park Manager at Lake Crabtree.
Even when a vocal minority of environmentalists try to claim that mountain bikers are harmful to the trails, science is on the side of the cyclists. IMBA has gathered on its website an impressive array of independent scientific studies of the environmental effects of mountain biking, all of which reach the conclusion that mountain biking makes no more of an impact on the natural environment than hiking, horseback riding, or other recreational trail activities.
With the right priorities, including a TORC membership card in your pocket, you can ride local trails knowing that you’re doing it in the greenest way.
Now, if only we could grow our greenway and bike-lane infrastructure at the same pace, we could ride to trail-head and leave the car behind. But that’s another story.
Fat Tire Festival
TORC’s first ever mountain bike festival was an awesome success. Camye Womble, the event organizer, did an incredible job gathering CAMPO, Durham’s BPAC, SORBA, Subaru, NBC 17, and just about every local bike shop in the Triangle area.
Held at Lake Crabtree County Park, the field near the lake served as the landing area for the crowd of nearly 200 people. With space to practice log-hops and skinnies, riders kept themselves entertained between organized events.
The local chapter of the Mountain Bike Patrol (of which yours truly is a member) lead four group rides (two beginner, two intermediate) for more than 80 people. Most of the folks on the intermediate rides were experienced mountain bikers but wanted a chance to ride with others for perhaps the first time.
Folks I rode with and talked with came to the Festival from Cary, Raleigh, Durham, Greenville, Fayetteville, and even a couple from Charlotte.
The centerpiece of the day was a demonstration of aerial elegance. As Farris, Nic, Craig, and Alex dropped off the 12ft high structure as though it was a curb, most of the folks around me whispered disbelief.
For more pics, check out the TORC Fat Tire Festival picture thread over at trianglemtb.com.
superman
The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Saturday good time to learn about mountain biking
Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
June 8th, 2006
MORRISVILLE — Do you have a mountain bike that just sits around while you say to yourself, “I really should go ride sometime?” Have you been looking for an event that will introduce you to the local mountain bike community? Or maybe you’re already tapped in and want to show off your skills to a local audience.
This Saturday, June 10th, says Camye Womble, is your day to ride.
The Triangle Off-Road Cyclists (TORC) are sponsoring their first ever Fat Tire Festival ? a day-long ode to the mountain bike.
From 9:30am until 2:00pm at Lake Crabtree County Park, TORC’s members and volunteers will host a series of events for every kind of local mountain biker.
The slate of events is a veritable cornucopia of two-wheeled fun. From your standard events, like group rides for all skill levels and helmet fittings and safety checks, to games a little more unusual, the day is packed with opportunities for everyone.
“It is definitely plannedto be a very kid and family friendly event,” says Bill Camp, president of TORC. Kids’ events include races, a bike toss, and demonstrations on how to ride the teeter-totters and skinnies of Crabtree’s skills zone. Later in the day will be an exhibition of balance and concentration as experienced “trials” riders demonstrate the gravity defying skills their sport requires.
Who should come to the Fat Tire Festival? “Folks who want to learn to climb hills, or make stronger turns; folks who want to learn how to ride in groups or meet new riding partners; folks who want to learn how to cross a log or ride a skinny; folks who want to see the bikes that the local bike shops are bringing as demos,” says Womble.
Advocacy and education are the two main reasons TORC’s putting on the festival. Mountain biking is just about the most fun anyone is allowed to have in the woods, but trails don’t build themselves.
Around the Triangle, singletrack doesn’t last forever either. “Hopefully,” says Womble, “the Fat Tire Festival will make folks aware of how often we lose Triangle trails to development. But what we really want is to tell them that we [TORC] are here to build more.” Though TORC is barely a year old, its efforts to work with land managers and build sustainable trails are already a model of success. They’re establishing trail systems backed by good relationships with park officials and municipal governments.
Helmets are required for everyone, and children under 12 need to be accompanied by their parents.
To play is free, but you may want to bring some money. There will be a swap-meet, a sort of garage sale of bike parts, as well as some wraps, cookies, and drinks for sale.
Mountain bike tour of Oaxaca, Mexico offered this fall
Andy Bohlmann over at Sand Creek Sports (based in Colorado Springs, CO) is organizing a guided mountain bike tour of Oaxaca, Mexico this September. The state of Oaxaca extends from Mexico’s southern-most Pacifc coastline (where Puerto Escondido is known as the Mexican Pipeline, drawing surfers from around the world) to the peaks of the Sierra Madres. The elevation changes make for some incredible mountain biking, and a 15 day tour of the state is sure to hit some of Mexico’s best singletrack.
The Sand Creek Sports tour will be led by Pedro Martinez, former cycling world champion and member of the Mexican national mountain bike team, who lives in Oaxaca. I was lucky enough to visit Oaxaca this past summer, and while I was there, I rented a bike from Sr. Martinez — an extremely nice guy with a shop full of quality mountain bikes.
For more information about the tours, check out the Sand Creek Sports website or contact Andy Bohlmann.
CHANGE
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