throet

Very cool! It's nice to see a true rocker like Tim excelling at MTB and taking advantage of his surrounding landscape in Malibu. Hope to tour and ride across Cali at some point.

Prince rockin' the house on this one! Best demonstration I've seen of his guitar prowess. Truly amazing! Play in entirety if you like.

What would any year be without one ….. or two …… or three?

Nice! That should be on the next FR512 t-shirts.

Sure I'll play …… saw this guy at BB King's in Nashville. Has a rack on stage with around 6-7 guitars of various sorts, including of course the cigar box.

Did you educate him?

Not an issue because no matter how much bike riding is done in wet conditions, it will never match the damage being done by motorcycles. When I was there yesterday, I saw only a few MTBers but probably a dozen or so motocross bikers.

DAMN!!!! Forget any preconceived notions about what a bad-ass guitar player should look like. Wish I had neighbors like this.

I'm not sure that "destroyed right now" is a good description. It's a place that has supported heavy motocross use for decades. When it dries up it will essentially be the same as it's always been - a fun and challenging place to ride. I didn't count the puddles yesterday, but indeed there were plenty. I still hit plenty of corners at > 3mph that didn't have puddles or had small puddles. My summary from riding it yesterday is that you can ride 100% of the descents and 90% of the climbs the same way you would when it's dry. Probably 50% or more of the flat sections are excessively wet but I didn't encounter anything I wasn't willing to ride through. I did come across one ledge on a flat section that was blocked with washed-up debris and I stopped to toss that off the trail. It's far from ideal, but it was certainly more enjoyable than peddling on pavement. Oh and it really helped having a brand-new Magic Mary up front!

Yep a true talent and he's still rockin' hard! Saw him in '76 at the Richfield Coliseum, former home of the Cleveland Cavs.

I just rode it and agree it was incredibly wet. Some areas were like riding through a running creek. However traction really wasn't an issue and I didn't feel like there was any extra element of danger. I had a blast and was really tempted to ride a second lap.

Went for it and it was a blast! She's a good mudder.

Can anybody verify this?

Agree. This is a conversation that needed to happen and it appears to have resulted in a number of people committing to ARR membership. I hope together we can figure out a way to reach the many more who I believe reside outside of this forum but still enjoy our trails. As HB stated earlier, if you are riding free trails in Greater Austin, you should feel a commitment to support this group with a minimum of $39 per year, and more if you can afford.

I'm assuming he means Flat Rock Ranch in Comfort, TX, which is closed during the hunting season but opens in Jan each year. http://flatrockranch.net/

According to Google RPR is open all day tomorrow. Has anyone contacted them to confirm. Supposed to be sunny with high in the low fifties.

I suspect that number is way too low and would guess that there are 20,000+ individuals (including kids) across Greater Austin who regularly mountain bike (meaning they ride multiple times per year and not necessarily multiple times per week). Seems ARR needs to somehow connect with a greater percentage of riders. Instead of creating a grandiose vision of what mountain biking could be in Austin as I suggested earlier, perhaps we could paint a grim picture of what MTB in Austin would be like without ARR. What if signs were posted at trailheads declaring "These trails made possible by Austin Ridge Riders - please see our story at www.austinridgeriders.org." What if local bike shops handed out pamphlets describing the importance of ARR to the community. I'm guessing with the right conversations you might even be able to get the online retailers to include a pamphlet with bikes shipped to designated zip codes. What if we worked with local governments to require ARR memberships for riding the trails at LGT, Walnut Creek, and Brushy Creek? Even though it would be impossible to enforce, there would be enough people joining even under an honor system to bolster membership. These are just my thoughts and maybe they've been tried or they are just crazy. In some ways I think that the Austin MTB community prefers to maintain more of an "underground" presence, but that is not a sustainable model with the level of population growth we're experiencing here. Bottom line is that ARR is doing a great job given its very limited resources, but imagine what they could do if they actually were able to payroll some people to work full-time supporting MTB for the community. With the 16th largest per capita GDP in the country, we as a community should be able to cough up more than $50K annually to support this cause!

Thanks @cxagent for all of the information you shared above - much appreciated. I think part of the problem is that too many of us in the MTB community don't really understand how all of this works. For example, I don't even know if ARR has full-time employees or if it is 100% reliant on volunteer efforts. Looking at the IRS 990 information for the past few years, it appears that ARR takes in less than $50K annually. Based on that I'm assuming that it doesn't actually employ anybody. It seems shameful to me that an organization like ARR in a city like Austin takes in less than $50K per year. Is that all coming from individual donations / memberships? Does anybody have an estimated count of how many committed mountain bikers reside in Austin and surrounding areas? Any corporate sponsors like BSS? Any contributions from Austin, Cedar Park, Travis County, Williamson County? I just checked the websites of both Cedar Park and Williamson County, and there is no mention whatsoever of mountain biking on their recreation pages. On Austin's recreation page there is a link for Disc Golf but nothing for MTB. Are our community leaders embracing MTB or just tolerating it? What is really needed in order to change the attitudes of elected officials and other community leaders? Is more funding the answer or something else? I'm truly asking these questions out of ignorance, and not to challenge the work being done by ARR. While promoting and educating is purposeful to be sure, the kind of vision that I'm looking for would be along the lines of "Create an atmosphere across the region that embraces Mountain Biking in a variety of ways as a life-long recreational outdoor endeavor for its residents while also creating appeal as a destination for those seeking year-around options at every skill level of the sport." Maybe that's not even what everybody wants, but I think in the end that is what it takes to create a truly sustainable environment for MTB into the future. Hopefully through this thread we're all learning more about ARR and how we can do more to promote its efforts. Again though, I'd really be interested to know how many people across our communities are serious about the sport and how we can create a broader community online. There are only a few hundred people on this forum, and it seems that is only a fraction of those representing the sport in the region. Maybe Albert, AB, FR 512, and ARR should join forces to create more of a single online presence, with active links from the city and county sites.

Naw REALLY?

Took a spin along the BCRT and was amazed at the amount of water out there. The bridge coming west from Mulligan was flooded. The creek coming under the bridge by the YMCA was a raging river. Even rode up the jeep road behind the YMCA and it was a swamp up there. The little rocky section leading up there from behind the lake was flowing like a creek. I saw some teens toying around on part of the trail that runs up to Rim from the BCRT and asked them not to ride any of the trails in such wet conditions. Great day to practice manuals along the BCRT though!

I said that ARR is a great resource for new riders or riders new to the area. Hopefully nobody took that as an insult. For those who have spoken up on behalf of ARR, there certainly seems to be a defensive posture. Maybe we need to hear more about ARR's vision, community goals, ongoing achievements, and any needs that aren't being met by those of us benefitting from their services. There is a section specific to ARR on this forum, but in the several months that it has been there, I've only seen a few posts. Not sure what's on FB but I'll never see it because I don't use FB and don't care to. I'd also like to hear ARR's perspective on what, if anything, has changed since moving under IMBA. Has local funding improved or declined under that arrangement? I know that a couple of years ago people were stating publicly that they would be dropping support for ARR due to IMBA's position on opening wilderness areas to MTB (or something like that). Personally I thought it was terribly unfair for locals to punish ARR over IMBA's position, but I never really heard anything about how that played out. As stated previously, I continue to support ARR annually even knowing what little I know about their work. I would be willing to do more if I had greater insight into specific goals, plans, and achievements across the broader MTB community.

I haven't participated in any ARR activities in a couple of years, but I still renew my membership and donate each year, now through IMBA. When I was first getting into MTB, the ARR scheduled rides were a great way to explore local trails and meet other riders. I assume that they still do those rides and I highly recommend them for people who are new to the sport or new to the area. I just prefer to ride on my own or in smaller groups these days. As far as FR512 goes, if I end up joining there it would be for access to Cat Mountain and exposure to more aggressive riding. I wouldn't view it as an alternative to ARR, who I support for their overall advocacy and trail stewardship. As 4fun stated above, joining both is definitely an option that should be considered.

Yep had an Absolute Oval Ring installed at Performance Bikes once and had to adjust it myself to be in proper alignment with the crank arms. Makes a big difference.

Your story reminded me of my ride out here a couple of weeks ago with Michael and Ulisses from Monkey Wrench, both of whom were 3-lap finishers at DragonSlayer. They spotted me at the beginning of Deception going W-E. They had been riding a couple of hours already and were on single speeds. I was fresh, on my 26lb fully 11spd, and on my home court. So I led the way through all of the techy stuff and was killing just about everything. Tried to keep a good pace too, but any distance I put between us coming through the tech was quickly erased, as Ulysses would announce his presence riding my back wheel like a predator on prey. In the end we had a great ride and I believe Ulysses even conquered a feature or two that he hadn't cleared before. Whether that was due to him following my great lines or simply because he didn't want to get shown up by an old geezer I'm not sure.