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We have been working on a new trail across south Austin to form a loop around Austin that includes south Austin. Yesterday, we met with a neighborhood that backs up to Williamson Creek. I am extremely disappointed at what many of the speakers said. Without going into great detail, the reputation of MTBr's was really really bad with this group. If I didn't know better, I would have thought they were talking about an off shoot of the Banditos motorcycle gang. I found out that we "destroy trees and creeks and kill off the wildlife". We "ride thru in huge groups with our music playing so the neighbors have to put up with that thump thump thump all night long". And "if they allow one trail, then many many more trails will pop up including trails cutting thru peoples back yards to get to the street." And "since the police can't get back there, the only way to stop them is to prevent the trail from being built at all." Never mind there is already a trail there. Absolutely nothing would change these peoples' mind. Hard data, recommendations from representative of Austin Parks Foundation, Keep Austin Beautiful, GA/VA and others were just ignored. And such reputable groups had sent representatives to the meeting to show that they DID support us and the trail, not just some yahoo saying those groups supported us and the trail. The KAB representative even handed out her cards and said she would email reports and papers to document what we were saying was true. My point in posting this is that we MTBr's absolutely must improve our reputation with the community. IMHO, every negative interaction with the public gets talked about, spread and multiplied a hundred fold. And every positive interaction only offsets one of those negative interactions with one person. Please try to be a good representative of our sport/community. Right now I'm not sure if it makes sense for me to spend time to try to improve relations with this community or to ignore them as a lost cause. If I ignore them, we may have some gaps in the official trail across south Austin.

He made four more posts in a row? Try putting some of that energy into actually doing something.

Guys, I need some clarification on Spider Mountain pricing in order to set expectations with management. Everybody talks about the lift tix being $50 but from what I can tell from the site, you need a land pass to get in as well. Another $50. From the site: $50 - Our bike park lift ticket includes one full day of unlimited uplift access. $50 - Even if you aren't riding the lift you need to stop by the ticket office and purchase a land access day pass. That sounds like $100 to me. What got me to thinking was the pricing and verbiage around the season pass: $199 - Our bike park season pass is good for unlimited uplift access until 4/30/19. That doesn't sound like any sort of season, at least not around here. Assuming that was posted in, say, January - Jan 1 thru Apr 30? 4 months? That's an odd length of time and an odd time of year to boot. *I* interpreted it as a year pass that gets you park access (land access) AND lift access until Apr 30, then after that you can get in for free (until, say, Jan 1 2020) but you have to buy a lift ticket if you want to ride the lift. I could be wrong. It got me to thinking, though, like I said. It seems to highlight a distinction between getting into the park and getting lift access. Either that or they really are talking about a third of a year, which seems weird to me. So am I looking at this wrong? Does the $50/lift, $50/access thing mean they want to get $50 out of you to step into the park, and if you want to ride the lift then that's OK, or do they really want $100/day for the full experience? -cls

I adjusted the second set of rollers. I can't wait to try them out in June when it stops raining.

But it's still Dallas.

And, in case anyone is wondering, Walnut Creek will probably be closed for the month of February: