Tag Archives: Marty Larson

Advocacy, Donors

SageGlass, with a little help from Jason Decoux, makes a donation to CROCT

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Jason Decoux

Last summer, Jason Decoux (CROCT member, Founding Supporter, and regular trail worker) submitted a CROCT grant request to his employer, SageGlass (SAGE Electrochromics). The company annually invites employees to nominate local non-profits to receive a monetary donation. Their Community Gift/Giving Committee reviews the submissions and the the company hosts a dinner to honor the recipients and hand out the checks. We were notified a month ago that the request was approved.

Last night, CROCT president Marty Larson and I attended the dinner in the upstairs events room at Alexander’s in Faribault.

Griff Wigley, Marty Larson

Marty briefly updated the audience on the work our volunteers have done on constructing mountain bike trails in Rice County in the past year.  And he was handed at check for $345 which we’ll use to purchase some much-need trail tools.

Marty Larson

Unfortunately, Jason wasn’t able to attend due to an emergency at work.  We drank a beer in his honor.

 

Donors, People

Tom’s Downtown Bicycles donates a chainsaw to CROCT

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Tom Bisel, CROCT member, CVVC founder and president, and owner of Tom’s Downtown Bicycles on Division St in Northfield, donated a brand new Stihl chainsaw to CROCT a couple weeks ago.

That’s Tom and CROCT president Marty Larson at the Sechler skills park in the photos below.  Chainsawing in shorts and a printed polo shirt? No worries. Photos were staged. And we’ve since obtained a full complement of protective gear that our skilled volunteers will be required to use.

See the Downtown Bicycles website, Facebook page, and follow their @DowntownBikesNF Twitter feed.

Thank you, Tom!

Tom Bisel, Tom's Downtown Bicycles, with donated chainsaw

Marty Larson, CROCT president, with chainsaw donated by Tom Bisel, Tom's Downtown Bicycles

Tom Bisel, Tom's Downtown Bicycles

Trail work

Cannon River Tree Care brings logs for Sechler skills park. Skinnies reconfigured.

We began reworking the Sechler skills park beam skinny a couple weeks ago (blog post here). In the past week, our friends Matt and Jon Feldman at Cannon River Tree Care went out of their way to drop some logs at the gate to the skills park. So CROCT Dirt Boss/El Presidente Marty Larson and I used one of them with the available beams to reconfigure an intermediate-to-advanced-level beam/log/beam combination skinny:

Towing logs into the Sechler skills park

Marty Larson, configuring the beam/log skinny in the Sechler skills park

A few days later, CROCT uber-volunteer Bill Nelson put a fresh chain on his chainsaw and flattened the pine log between the beams. The skinny can be ridden either direction but it’s designed to be a progressively harder challenge when riding it south/towards the ball fields:

Bill Nelson flattening a log in the Sechler skills park

Bill Nelson flattening a log in the Sechler skills park

Josh Seifert on the Sechler skills park beam/log skinny

We’ve temporarily rolled the other logs together into a sizable logover. With the addition of a short beam at one end, the pile also provides a difficult skinny challenge:

Josh Seifert riding the Sechler skills park logover skinny

CROCT member Josh Seifert shows how to do it all in this short video:

Group rides, Youth

CROCT leads an overnight youth group mountain bike trip at Cuyuna Lakes

Planning for an overnight youth group trip to the Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Trail System began way back in January when Melissa Bernhard, Recreation Coordinator with the Northfield Public Schools Community Services Division, contacted us via email:

Melissa BernhardI am specifically looking for your group to lead a mountain biking adventure…..anywhere for youth and their families. I received a grant for the Adventure Mania program and would like you to be involved in giving the youth in our community a great experience on a mountain bike. Any ideas? This past summer a group of ours went to Lebanon. Since I have grant money, I’d like to really use it by traveling somewhere special and then later on if there is no grant, I’d plan to be as local as possible.

When I forwarded her email to fellow CROCT Board members, Carl Arnold wrote:

Do you have a location in mind, since they are looking for an adventure trip that doesn’t have to be local? Cuyuna? Less than 3 hr drive. Great campgrounds! Could we get a bus?

Carl’s vision became reality.

On Thursday morning, Aug 13, kids and families met at the NCRC Building where we stuffed bikes, Gear Resource Outfitters camping equipment including lots of binoculars and a rangefinder to view nature, many  bodies into an EcoTrans mini-bus and CROCT President Marty Larson’s trailer:

Melissa and some parents gave us a proper send-off:

Three hours later, we arrived at our group site in the DNR’s Portsmouth Campground in the Cuyuna Country State Recreation Area.  Marty’s wife Lisa Neitge had taken charge of the grocery shopping  and meal preparation so we all got a terrific lunch after setting up camp:

Since the bikes were still in the mini-bus, we hauled them to the bike park/pump track in the little town of Cuyuna, about 3 miles from the Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Trail System which is adjacent to the twin towns of Crosby-Ironton.  For most of the kids and parents, riding the rollers and berms and jumps was a new experience: Continue reading CROCT leads an overnight youth group mountain bike trip at Cuyuna Lakes →

Trail work

The muddy ditch along Sechler Park’s mtb trail now has a bridge

A crew of trail workers (including Marty Larson, Galen Murray, and Todd Amunrud) installed a wooden bridge over the muddy ditch along our Sechler Park MTB trail last night.

The #mtb hashtag: #trailsdontbuildthemselves

L to R: Todd Amunrud, Galen Murray, Marty Larson. Photo by Laura Chihara L to R: Galen Murray, Marty Larson, Todd Amunrud. Photo by Laura Chihara 

The materials were donated by Steve Schmidt of Schmidt Homes, who also happens to be a mountain biker.

Schmidt Homes Steve Schmidt, mountain biker

Land managers, People

DNR’s ‘yurt guy’ Peter Hark rides Sechler and saw that it was good

Peter Hark is a resident of rural Northfield, the DNR’s Field Operations Manager State Parks and Trails, and a Founding Supporter of CROCT.  He joined me and Marty Larson on his first ride on the Sechler Park MTB trail on Wednesday, a day off for him because it was his birthday. He seemed to enjoy the ride and was complementary on what he saw. For a relatively new mountain biker, he’s not half-bad, and if he got a proper mountain bike with better tires he would definitely be more than marginally adequate.

Marty Larson, Peter Hark Marty Larson, Griff Wigley

I first met Peter in March 2013 at the MN Parks and Trails Council of Minnesota’s Day on the Hill. Later that year, he was part of a DNR team that met with local Rice County public officials in Dundas for a Mill Towns Trail update.  And he may have gotten his first real taste of mountain biking at the 2013 PedalMN Bike Summit, held at the DNR’S Cuyuna Lakes MTB Trail system in Crosby/Ironton.

2013 DNR Mill Towns Trail meeting, Dundas Peter Hark, photographer, 2013 PedalMN Bike Summit, Cuyuna Lakes MTB

Peter’s also been the main guy behind the DNR’s installation of 7 yurts in MN state parks this year, including three at Cuyuna.  See the DNR’s yurts page, an October article in the Strib titled Yurts arrive in Minnesota State Parks, and this WCCO-TV video clip titled State Parks Offering New Camping Experience — Yurts that features Peter: Continue reading DNR’s ‘yurt guy’ Peter Hark rides Sechler and saw that it was good →