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Ha! Must be a migration pattern…. Came here in ‘94 on a rigid GT Avalanche (couldn’t afford the “team” version) and bought this guide book at a local shop. First trail we hit was Forest Ridge, in toe clips of course. A little different than Memorial Park. 😳 I quickly saved up some money and bought a used elastomer Manitou fork from a guy at work. I thought I was in high cotton. thanks for the memories! A real kick digging out that old book and reading the descriptions. Also a bummer we’ve lost some great trails.

I remember that storm well. Wife calls me on the phone to let me know she sees a tornado. Phone goes dead. I was doing ~100 on Parmer to get home, scared that my house and family got wiped out. I figured cops would cut me slack but I did not get pulled over. We were lucky. 10 blocks away, not so much. I went over there to help. I'm in construction and the cops took it to mean that I could survey buildings and let them know if it was safe to enter. Next thing I know, I have a police escort to Randalls because they thought people were trapped inside. As a part of Texas A&M's Engineering Extension Service, that had guys nicknamed tunnel rats who would worm themselves through rubble looking for people. I had to direct them where to go. Turns out nobody was trapped inside Randalls. What I learned is if you're in a grocery store during a tornado, head to the frozen food section. Those freezers are so stout they can hold up a collapsed roof. In 2001, those same tunnel rats ended up in NYC.

Some history: A developer went bankrupt right as he started developing the land during a real estate bust. It sat for a while with trails on it, and in the early to mid 90s, the city pitched making it park/preserve land through a city bond. They stated that current use cases would continue, and when it became public land, they bulldozed a 20' path around it and erected a chainlink fence then restricted biking altogether and restricted hiking during nesting season to permit only groups of three. They used several endangered species as the argument, but the golden-cheeked warlber became their super hero. They also made an effort to acquire serveal thousand acres of endangered species habitat, whcih including allowing developers to pay a mitigation fee of (IIRC) $2,500 per acre to develop habitat if they also found a substitute parcel to sell to the city. One of the substitute parcels was DK Ranch, which also had trails on it. Really, the thing was about enabling development of endangered species habitat. They claimed the bird species (also the black-capped vireo) were "harmed" under the Endangered Species Act, whcih has a very broad definition of harm to include when a bird is flushed. We, i.e the mountain biking community backed by ARR and Hill Abel, who I think was the president of IMBA at the time, tried to present a study conducted at Ft. Hood of the impact of having mountian bike trails near live and simulated weapons fire that showed no effect on the nesting habots. They representatives of the city, county, etc., would literally withdraw and try to hide their hands when you attempted to give them a copy of the study. I'm sure others here have things to add to this, and I look forward to hearing from them.

that worked. Is your e-bike powering that lamp? 🙂

the rifle range had it's own tech and obstacles......the old man that ran the place was nuttier than a squirrel turd.

I bet it looked like this but with a different bike.