Month of May-Hemming and Hawing

PMBAR is this weekend, my 22nd PMBAR start in a row.  Nothing else matters until after that.  It's New Year's Eve, Christmas, the 4th of July and my birthday all rolled into one.  I've got a lot of things on my plate and some decisions to make in the coming month and change, but for now, it's just PMBAR.

That said, The Pie and I went to Raleigh last weekend to visit a frand.  Not the best PMBAR-prep riding that can be done, but I had more than one reason to sample the local flavors up there.

Unfortunately, they're going to be losing a staple trail system in the area in very short time.  Crabtree is on the chopping block because of "human progress" and or just plain greed.  It's hard to imagine something better for an area that is so important to the community, but apparently they "need" this land:

You can read more about it here, but I'm 99.9% sure there ain't no saving Crabtree from being turned into "entertainment facilities or hotels."  I have only ridden there once before, so many years ago at a six hour race there... back when I had back issues... so no idea how long ago that was.  There was so much stuff there I'd never seen, a pump track, flow trail, skills areas... hard to imagine losing all this if I lived in the area.

But then there's the trails on the other side of the highway, the 286 inner and outer loops.  A totally different personality from the Crabtree trails... but also under threat?

Jeebus.

The trails closest to my house (Backyard Trails)could some day lose some (most?) of their land because of an inevitable expansion of the poop plant at some point.  Charlotte is expecting explosive growth and all those people are going to take explosive shits that have to go somewhere to be turned into... beer?  Dunno.  We have a brewery on every corner, so where are the raw materials for Saisons coming from?  As long as we keep a few pockets of woods where there can be at least four miles that we can build off of into a pile of spaghetti, I'll probably be fine.  If I lost it all... ack... just devastating.  And we still have close to two hundred miles of other trails in the area, but losing the ones that I chose to live next to? 

Argh.

Sigh.

The good news... PMBAR is this weekend, which means there will be no distractions, just packing and prepping until Friday.  Scheduling decisions to be made and further prep for assisting with putting on The Backyard Experience are on hold until this Sunday when my biological calendar resets to zero.

Then I can focus on where I'm gonna need to tape the course, how much beer can I carry to hand out to party pacers, what time do I need to get my ass out in the woods that morning to halp make great bike race (for others), and how many wardrobe changes will I need to make on the day.  There's only three spots* left in the men's category, the women's is still pretty wide open, and we got close to fifty party pacers ready to make some noise.  Riding, racing, raffling, grilling, beers, etc.  Get signed up!  

Now, back to packing all the things.

* And now, sold out.