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Tuesday, June 15

The early squirrel gets deez nutz

First a public service announcement (shenanigans later):

Raise your hands if you like to ride Squirrel Gap?

One, two... I can't see all your hands from here, but I think I felt a small breeze from the West. Most of you that have ridden Squirrel Gap know it is one of the bestest, most technicaliest trails in all of Pisgahland. I was trying to get some footage of the trail when I was competing in PMBAR 2010. If you watch the video I made you'll see that a few seconds after I turned onto Squirrel Gap the trail became so awesome it sucked all the power out of my camera.



While I was rolling around in Pennsylvania for a week and then working for four days and then at the beach for a long weekend a lot has been going on in terms of the fate of Squirrel Gap. Mike Brown (the Billy Zane of the Pisgah Area SORBA) contacted me and asked me to get the word out so more people could learn about the very possible changes that are going to take place if we don't speak up. This thread on MTBR has a lot of the relevant info, but the nutshell of it is that "the entire corridor of Squirrel Gap has been assigned for professional "maintenance" work... Importantly, the contract allows for the use of a 30" wide machine."

If you know what Squirrel is about then you know that a big machine will change it into something that isn't quite the Squirrel we love. I'm not gonna paraphrase any more of the thread as there is too much info you NEED to know if you want to be part of a solution (including the email addresses of some folks you should contact). Click over, read it thoroughly, form an opinion, think of something smart to say, and email away... or just let Squirrel Gap get turned into something we can call Squirrel Greenway (I'm being facetious here, but you get the point).

In other news...

It is officially unofficial:

The Bike Rumor Media Cup is on for the Breck Epic. This announcement somewhat makes my quest for "the complete and utter domination of the cycling industry and media types" somewhat something of a thing with the added zeal of pseudo substance. Tyler "Tool Bag" Benedict of Bike Rumor is in, Peter is as well, perhaps Ferrentino will be joining us... we shall see. The race within the race of all those racery types. I get the feeling you 'll be seeing some coverage on cyclingnews.com, perhaps just above the men's open elitist blather you're all sick of reading. There will be more info coming on this at some point, so please don't start calling your bookie to place bets yet as the major details have yet to be revealed.

4 comments:

Luis G. said...

What sucks is the way the FS awarded this project without consulting PAS. Squirrel Gap is the jewel of Pisgah, lots of people (myself included) drive 10+ hours just to ride this... Composing my email right now.

Anonymous said...

You see Fatty linked to your blog yesterday? He's even sporting his very own death march jersey.

dougyfresh said...

Gotta get Colt to sign us up for product reviews while we're out there.

drew said...

squirel is 99% perfect and 1% better would ruin it. funny thing is that i can think of a few places in pisgah where "mechanised professional" maintainance wouldnt be such a bad thing... such as trace "blown out" ridge.
but that is my opinion and i am sure there are a lot who will disagree