CAMBr’s continued conquest of the internet
Has now seriously exploded on Facebook with a really awesome multi-chapter fan site. Join up and check it out!
Winter
I guess it goes without sayin, but winter is here and we can’t do a thing about it. Until something like spring shows itself, we can consider The Garden to be out of commission. Last night myself and most of the crew attended Red Bulls “Reel Life” film tour at The Vic which featured the New World Disorder 10, after seeing that i just had too much stoke running through my veins to sit around the house today. So I grabbed the Husqy and went over to check up on the place and cut up some dead trees. I’m glad to say that all of the carpets are in place, and now frozen in place so they aren’t going anywhere, and everything else checks out just fine. The Garden is as ready for winter as it could be, so lets just cross our fingers and hope come springtime that it won’t take as much work next year to get it running smooth again. Even covered in snow and ice, i still had a fantastic afternoon, we are so fortunate to have a patch of woods in the city, its so nice to escape into the woods and get a couple of hours worth of hard labor. The joy The Garden brings me goes far beyond just boostin lips and railin berms.
Wow!
Yesterday was another fantastic Saturday. I can’t believe we’ve had such great weather in the middle of November! With a mildly messed up elbow i’m on a ‘no jumping!’ cycling plan (but still rippin da singletrack) so I left the bike at home, went over early and got the place 90% cleaned up and leaf blown before anybody showed up, by 2pm people were filtering in and hungry to ride. Most of the locals and a whole van full of guys from out of town showed up and much ripping commenced, seeing the garden looking so gorgeous and seeing the show those guys put on over the big lines makes all the hard work worth while! The only fault is that the place was looking a bit dry, so hopefully that touch of rain last night dampened things and the garden should be prime for some serious Sunday action, while most of the 26” crew swaps out to 29” and heads out to Palos for some singletrack. Go get after it!
Go Ride!
It was such a nice day out today, the trails are in pretty awesome shape and we did a fairly extensive sweep through with the leaf blower. If your looking to get in a good ride before the weather takes a serious turn for the worse, you better get yourself out!
New Insurance
Okay, yeah, this is one of the less than fun aspects of playing in the dirt and building bike trails, but its a hugely important one that we just couldn’t live without. Insurance protects ourselves and our assets, and its a very important tool that we use to show land managers that we are a responsible organization. Recently the insurance carrier that was covering all IMBA (International Mountain Bike Association) chapters (such as CAMBr and pretty much every trailbuilding orginization in the country and beyond) decided that they were no longer interested in covering organizations like ours. Obviously this caused a bit of a stir and a whole lot of panic that we would be left without coverage for our trail building activities; but the IMBA came through for us and not only found us coverage, and did it in time so we never had a coverage gap, but they found a carrier that custom built an insurance coverage package around our needs that fully encompasses not just hand built singletrack, but technical trail features, freeride stunts, dirt jumps and the use of the advanced tools that we use to implement these trail features such as power tools (brush cutters, chainsaw etc.) and machinery (skid steers, bobcats, Cat 973D’s, etc.).
So despite the fact that there was a little bit of drama going on behind the scenes, all of us trailbuilders will be much better served in the long run by a more flexible policy that can better meet the needs of CAMBr and the rest of the IMBA related clubs. Okay… well of course there is a catch… like I said, the policy is flexible; if your club is larger (like ours), uses power tools and machinery (like ours) and builds advanced features like freeride stunts and dirtjumps (like ours), the price is going to go up. A lot. Like 3 times more.
So here’s the sales pitch. If you like riding bikes on dirt, almost every patch of legitimate off-road bike terrain in the greater Chicago area is made ridable by CAMBr volunteers and this insurance policy. So if you like riding bikes on dirt, whether its a 20” BMX at the Plainfield Bike Park or the Garden, or a 29er at the Palos Forest Preserve, or a regular 26” mountain bike at the Saw Wee Kee Park in Oswego, or any bike at a number of other areas we are your organization and we would be thrilled if you’d join us. Your membership dues help pay for this insurance policy and help put tools in the hands of the CAMBr members that love to build trails.
Yes that was long winded, but thank you for reading and please check out the support page or visit cambr.org for more information on what we do and how to join. Its also worth pointing out that we have a ridiculously good time doing this and that you will too!
