Cycling Oklahoma
We will talk about everything cycling in Oklahoma. We cover races, athletes, bike industry, local gossip and everything fun that has to do with 2 wheels.
Cycling Oklahoma
Behind the Trails: OMBA.org
Discover how passionate individuals have transformed the mountain biking landscape in Oklahoma. Join us as Tony Sykes, former Fiat Ferrari mechanic turned OMBA president, and Joe Miller, trail boss for Arcadia, share their inspiring journeys from personal frustration to community trailblazing. Learn how their dedication has not only reshaped the trails but also their lives, bringing to light the transformative power of taking action and the ripple effect it creates within a community.
Explore the behind-the-scenes challenges and triumphs of maintaining and expanding a vibrant trail network with the Oklahoma Mountain Bike Association. We delve into the strategic rebranding efforts from the Oklahoma Earth Bike Fellowship to OMBA, aligning with the International Mountain Biking Association’s goals. Our conversation reveals the critical role of community involvement, partnerships with local groups like Trail Life and the Scouts, and the importance of financial support through membership drives, all aimed at fostering an inclusive and thriving biking community.
Get a glimpse into the heart-pounding excitement of upcoming events like the Dam Zombie Mountain Bike Race, and the creative endeavors to keep Oklahoma’s biking scene fresh and engaging. From enhancing trail features with skill-based challenges to collaborations that bring new life to the trails, our discussion underscores the importance of community support in driving these initiatives forward. We also touch on the ongoing efforts to secure funding for trail development projects that promise to elevate the biking experience for novices and seasoned riders alike. Tune in and become a part of this dynamic journey, where every pedal stroke contributes to a healthier, happier community.
Join OMBA today for just $50 a year and support our trails across Oklahoma. www.omba.org
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What is up Cycling Oklahoma? I will try my hardest to keep this intro as short as possible. We have a ton to cover. This episode's awesome. It's super different.
Speaker 1:We sit down with two of the main people at Oklahoma Mountain Bike Association, ombaorg. They take care of all of our trails locally, most of our trails locally, even some up in Enid, bartlesville, romanos, lake Murray. So these people are going all over our state to give us mountain bike trails, maintain our mountain bike trails, build new trails, make sure that they operate efficiently and correctly with the leases, working with the state and the Corps of Engineers. So this group of people is absolutely insane and they do it on a shoestring budget. So they need our help. So what we're going to do here is we're doing a membership drive. I told them I would do my best to get 20 members. That's. My goal is 20 members. They only have 200 members. I was not a member. I've seen their name forever. I had no clue what they do Once I heard I signed up up. It's $50 a year. It's a donation to a nonprofit. That money goes to buy equipment, maintain trails, gas, like all these things for these people who maintain our mountain bike trails and let us enjoy the sport that we love so much with our friends and our family. So for 50 bucks a year, I mean it's the least we could do to help support this group. So go to ombaorg and sign up fora membership. You can do more if you want, but the minimum is $50. Here's the kicker. We also have free entries to the six hour and three hour damn zombie mountain bike race, the six hour mountain bike race that's at Arcadia in December. So the first 10 people that tag me on Instagram cycling Oklahoma or send me a direct message on Instagram at cycling Oklahoma will be entered into a drawing. Those 10 people, someone will win a free entry. So if you win, basically you get the race for free and you support an amazing cause because the race entry free and you support an amazing cause because the race entry is about the same as the 50 bucks that you would be donating to OMBA. It's a write-off. People, tax season's coming. Go, join, support these people who support all of our trails locally and give us a place to ride and make memories with our friends and family. So I need at least 10 people to go do this, but the first 10 will be entered into a drawing. Okay, you got it.
Speaker 1:The other part of this is we got some really exciting projects coming. Our first video will be coming out. It's either already out or we'll be coming out within days of this podcast coming out. It's phenomenal. Ryan Brantley did some of the shooting, uh, the video, the editing. It's out at Lockridge. It gives you the history of Lockridge, how it's called Lockridge, some of the history in that part of Oklahoma. This is the first of many videos coming, so I can't thank Ryan Brantley enough for taking time out and editing this and putting it together. Uh, but, but this takes a lot of time and money and effort to do this and because of all of our amazing sponsors, we are be able to do this kind of thing. So thank you guys for stepping up, for volunteer and helping out with what we're doing here at cycling Oklahoma. We have a lot of really cool projects coming. This is just all in step.
Speaker 1:Number one that video was sponsored by Ethan Ethan at thriving. Ethan's a fast, fast, fast dude. He just won the cat 2 Tour de Dirt series which, if you know how fast the Cat 2 40 to 49 year old division was on the dirt this year, it was insane and Ethan was the fastest mediocre old guy this year. So great job, ethan. But Ethan works at Thrivent. He's a financial advisor. He is supporting us. He supports so many races. He supported our video and helped fund that. Now he's sponsoring the podcast. So hopefully I'll have Ethan on here to tell his story really, really soon. But the really cool thing with Ethan is he's just such a standup guy. He's putting his money back into our community.
Speaker 1:So if you have money questions, if you just need some advice, you're seeking some financial solutions, reach out to Ethan. They do retirement annuities, just financial guidance. They help with mutual funds, life insurance, all of your investment needs. Ethan can help you and answer those questions and you can reach him at. He lives here in Edmond, he's practicing at Edmond, but he's licensed in multiple states. His phone number is 359-7283. So 405-359-7283. Or you can just reach out to Ethan. The website is Thrivent T-H-R-I-V-E-N-Tcom and you search Ethan's name and he'll pop up there. But he'll take care of you.
Speaker 1:And, of course, this episode is brought to you by more overhead doors. You guessed it. It's winter time. You're going to be getting on the trainer, your garage is going to be 10 degrees when you go out there and you're going to freeze and you're going to be miserable. So upgrade that garage door, get that taken care of, get your pain cave and a better working condition, uh, with your garage door needs. So more overhead door. They take care of us. If you got smoked in the hail storm that came through a couple of weeks ago, reach out to them. Let them take care of you and answer all your needs. They're in more Oklahoma. Four, oh, five, seven, nine, nine, nine, two, one, four, um, just absolutely. Thank you guys so much for supporting it.
Speaker 1:And, guys, we have a full roster of sponsors. Uh, mr Wayne, edgar again has stepped up to sponsor the podcast. Pope and Edgar attorneys at law. Uh, wayne has been a part of the cycling community for a really, really long time. He's done amazing things for us, um, he sponsored the podcast. He puts money back into races, um, and sponsoring races and other events around the cycling community. So if you have any law needs at all, they're licensed in Oklahoma and Texas from anything that happens with, say, we're all at the age now where stuff's happening to our you know, our family members, um, so they do a state and probate law. They do everything from construction, real estate, bankruptcy, business, family law I mean, they do it all. So if you have any law needs, please reach out. Um, they can. They can take care of you, they can answer your questions and he's been Wayne's been such a a big part of the site community for so long, so reach out. They're in Norman, 405-360-7555. 405-360-7555.
Speaker 1:Okay, this has gone on long enough. Please check out cyclingoklahomacom. There's routes there. You can download things. You'll be able to watch the video there. Subscribe to all of our things YouTube channel where the videos will be hosted, the podcast, all the things. Thank you guys so much. I'm sorry this is so long. So many exciting things going on with cycling Oklahoma and in our amazing race community, and love you guys and I appreciate your listen. All right, gentlemen, this is going to be a good one. Sorry, I should have said this I'll probably say it in the intro that my voice sounds like trash, like more annoying than normal. I've been sick for a week, so sorry for everybody listening to this, but I'm excited about this one for a multiple, multiple reasons and I think we'll get into a lot of that. But I'm just going to let let you, gentlemen, introduce yourself and then let's go from there. I don't know who wants to go first. Why?
Speaker 2:don't you go ahead.
Speaker 3:Tony yeah, I'm Tony Sykes. I'm the Oklahoma Mountain Bike Association president, formerly known as OEF. I've been in that position for almost two years now, and before that I was the Arcadia Lake Trails trail boss.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then. So you've been two years, right.
Speaker 3:Is there a term Coming up on two years?
Speaker 1:Yep two-year term. Two-year term Okay, were you the vice president before that? Do you have to like? Roll up the chain.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, volunteers are few and far between.
Speaker 1:So if you're willing to take the job and you're qualified, it's probably going to be yours. All right, got it.
Speaker 2:Go ahead. Yeah, I'm Joe Miller. I am the trail boss for Arcadia part of OMBA. I moved here to Oklahoma about six years ago and got back into mountain biking. I mountain biked when I was a teenager, a bunch and got back into mountain biking. I mountain biked when I was a teenager. A bunch had like an old you know Schwinn hardtail rigid bike and I was on Nash bar and different you know bike catalogs, buying equipment and stuff and was way into it and then had like a 20 plus year hiatus. And then, uh, when I moved out here, um, where'd you move back from? Uh, well, so I, I moved all around, I was in the air force and uh, then I worked for Boeing, moved like five times with Boeing. Uh, but I moved here from Florida and there's not much mountain biking.
Speaker 1:From one mountain bike capital to another.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and uh, I just happened to, you know, by chance, move like literally six minutes from Arcadia, oh wow. And I found the trails there and had like a I don't know, it was like a mongoose, you know mountain bike, just complete junk. But went out and I rode on the trail for probably 30 minutes and was dying and I'm like it just keeps going forever. For you know like, and uh went back and brought my neighbor out and he had his junk bike with and um, you know, before I knew it, now I've, I've, you know, that's my. I'm a professional, amateur mountain biker now.
Speaker 1:I like it. I like it. How did? How did you get started in mountain biking?
Speaker 3:Mine wasn't quite like Joe, where he started early. I rode bikes everywhere as a kid, but then I got into cars.
Speaker 1:I was a.
Speaker 3:Fiat Ferrari mechanic for a while straight out of high school and then went back to college and had no desire. My dad was military and we moved all the time. We ended up in Colorado and that's kind of what I count home when at In Cripple Creek.
Speaker 1:Colorado, and also Idaho Springs and Georgetown and a little bit of time in Littleton as well.
Speaker 3:Terrible areas. You've had to live Terrible and I loved hiking. I did all those things, but you know, I thought I'd grown past the bike. I ended up moving here for a job with Boeing as well, and I got here and my story is kind of funny. I gripe nonstop about Oklahoma. It's always windy, there's nothing to do here, there's no public land. I just hated it. And so one day a guy that I'd worked with for years and years. He came to work. He was going on vacation and he asked me down into the parking garage and when I got there he pulled this mountain bike out of the back of his car and a helmet and he said here's a map of Bluff Creek. You're going to go while I'm gone and ride the bike. And I said no, I don't want to damage your bike. He said you're not going to damage the bike and I said why are you doing this? And he goes because if I can find something you like in Oklahoma, maybe you will shut up.
Speaker 1:It's just hard to listen to you.
Speaker 2:And so it was.
Speaker 3:And so I took this, reluctantly, took this bike I used to ride when one lap Did you walk it you would think, wouldn't you? It was bad, and so I think my best. Before they expanded, it was 19 minutes, so I went from an hour and 40 to 19.
Speaker 3:Like a lot of people, though, once you get into mountain biking in Oklahoma, you realize when spring comes and it rains, then there's long periods of time where you can't ride. So then that branched me into road bikes, okay, and I started road biking and so now I do a little bit of both. I tried some gravel for a while, but I'm really kind of a mountain bike, road bike guy. Following that same theme, I hated the wind. You know, once you start road biking you get grief. The wind never stops in Oklahoma. So, using my newfound method for finding things to do, we bought a sailboat because then we can enjoy the wind. We don't have that anymore, but anyway, it really transformed. How happy I was here in Oklahoma, and it's been interesting to see how all the trails have expanded over the years, and so I rode.
Speaker 3:Eventually I realized I kept griping about the local trails but I wasn't doing anything about it. Sure, I joined OEF at the time is what the name was. I would join OEF and I would pay my membership and they would never remind me that it was due, and it might be two years again before I put some money in and I started riding at Arcadia like Joe and I grabbed nonstop about it and finally somebody from OMBA, slash OEF, says you know, why don't you put your money where your mouth is? We're having a trail day. If you really want to make a difference, come out. Yep, and I did. And long story short, now every year I renew my membership. I eventually became the trail boss, which is what happens when you show up for a lot of work days and you are pretty passionate about it. And I've gotten a lot more involved and, to be honest, one of the things I like to talk about is Oklahoma is 46th in public land. It's 4.6% of Oklahoma's public land.
Speaker 3:We don't have land like you do in Colorado or Mexico Pretty much everything west of here has a lot of public land, and so when you look at our trails, they're on Oklahoma City Water Utilities Trust land, they're on Army Corps of Engineer land, they're on Oklahoma City Parks land Ponca City is a Trust land they're on Army Corps of Engineer land. They're on Oklahoma City Parks land Ponca City is a park land and so all of these are partnerships that have been made with these small plots of land, and so that's why you don't see more mountain biking here and why we really have to hold on to the land that we do have.
Speaker 1:It's super interesting and I do want to get into that a lot of this stuff because, as a person who grew up here and I, the dirt is what I really have fallen in love with. I got into this multi sport but when I found the dirt stuff is like this is my thing, this is what I love, so but I don't know how it works Like and I've been around the cycling scene for gosh at this point almost 20 years and no one has ever explained it to me. I have never asked the right questions, clearly, but I don't know all these histories cause I haven't ever been involved with OEF over the years or any of those groups, or and I will admit that I have not come out and done a trail day, which I definitely need to do that. So next trail day I am committing now that you have one sucker that will be there, okay, um, and I even signed up at whenever we were setting this episode up. I went ahead and got on and signed up cause I knew I paid my membership fees and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:So again, stepping up and I think that's kind of with what cycling Oklahoma is trying to do is, I think we are on the edge of some like really awesome things in our state and our endurance world and especially in the dirt world, and now it's time for people to step up and just do something about it. So that's kind of what we're trying to do. So I'm really excited about this conversation to see where it goes and, um, and to see if we can get some other people to step up and kind of help move the move, the needle forward, cause you guys are doing some cool stuff. Um, joe, how did you get hooked into doing the trail bossing and all that kind of stuff, like before we get into all the trails and all the good stuff, like going from a rider on his junk bike to being where you are now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, before we get into that, I think, tony, you need to explain. You say OEF and you said it a few times. So OEF is Oklahoma Earth Bike Fellowship and that's what the club used to be called for many years years ago. And there's many people that have been part of OEF for years and years and years and they're still paying members and we did name change and some of them had trouble with the name change.
Speaker 1:When did you do the name change this year? Yeah we did this year.
Speaker 2:Because I.
Speaker 1:I, when I was putting all this stuff together and like looking at stuff, I'm like, yeah, I was confused because I wasn't aware of the name change. But then I'm like, is there two groups or? And then I got on there start reading and I read it. But I was like, yeah, I was a little confused too.
Speaker 2:So let let me talk about that for a second Cause. That was an area where I was really passionate about, um when. So I'll back up and answer your original question. So I um started, you know, biking more and more at arcadia and um, uh, like tony wanted to do some trail improvements, went out, did some trail improvements on my own, without knowing oef exists or anything like that. Um, and you know, I didn't get caught or get in trouble or I wasn't making new trail, I was just, you know, like, oh well, you know, I'll just fix this. Or or you know, do some, uh, brush removal, uh, where it was encroaching on the trail, or something like that. Um, but then, uh, as you're out on the trail more and you're getting more involved, you meet people. And I met, like Jim Clark and Marty Hardell and all these other folks that are out there and they're actively helping. Well, they were already connected with OEF and so that was kind of like all right, well, if I want to do this, I've got to do it through the right channels. So that's where I got connected with OEF at that time.
Speaker 2:Um, but kind of going back to the name change when you originally hear like Oklahoma earth bike fellowship. Well, I'm like. Well, what the heck is it? What's up? What's an earth bike? Yeah, I've heard of a road bike and a gravel bike 1996.
Speaker 3:And I don't know how the bike and a gravel bike 1996. 1996. And I don't know how the name was derived. Yeah, okay, and there are people that are passionate about the name because it's been here forever, and I get that, yeah, but what we're finding?
Speaker 3:is and I'll give you to me the shining example of why the name change needed to happen. I got an email literally last week from a guy that had been with EMBA for 15 years International Mountain Biking Association. He said one of his prize pieces of kit is a really old OEF bike jersey and he finally, after all these years, had to know what the name was. So he looked this up and he sent me an email and said what is OEF? I assume it is a Christian-based mountain bike outreach.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean makes sense, Especially in Oklahoma and with fellowship, and that's and that's it and I think he was probably pretty disappointed because I gave him the name and said, oh, it's just a name and we're now Oklahoma mountain bike association, and so the name change was to clarify who we are.
Speaker 3:We are the Oklahoma chapter of the IMBA international mountain bike association. We're the Oklahoma mountain bike association. Some of the limitations we had when we tried to go for grant money. They see fellowship. They wonder if we're religious. I would get questions when we did grant applications. What is this fellowship? Are you Christian, are you not? And the one thing I do like about mountain biking, it's pretty inclusive, very inclusive.
Speaker 3:We don't care what someone's gender is or what their color is. If they've got a bike and they're going to put on a helmet and come out and shred some dirt with us, we're excited to have them there, totally agree. And so, even though I know the old name has nostalgia for people, the new name represents who we are and I hope it shows some of that openness. And you know it's not confusing that it's a Christian group or some sort of cult.
Speaker 1:I've heard cult said before it's a cult, but just different kind, different kind of cult. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think the new name definitely represents exactly what it is and clears up any confusion and explains exactly what the group is. So let's talk about what the group is, now that we've covered. It is a new name, same group, new name. Um, what exactly do you guys go by? Omba is, like you just go by that, an acronym?
Speaker 3:we're oklahoma earth bike. Uh, our oklahoma mountain bike association there we go. I almost did it too, but we really go home. It's just easier, it's not so long, so what exactly is omba?
Speaker 1:like I've seen the name I I know you guys are tied to trails and that's probably what most people know of, unless they're really plugged in. So explain to me what OMBA is and what they do.
Speaker 3:So first off, we're a nonprofit, so we're a registered 501c3. We are the Oklahoma chapter of EMBA. So whenever you sign up for membership, you click our QR code, you click on the link and it takes you to EMBA. So whenever you sign up for membership, you click our QR code, you click on the link and it takes you to EMBA. Emba handles our membership. They provide us guidance. They provide us all kinds of different features mass mailing, things that we can do, like that. They have an amazing trail building guidebook that we use as a reference to to control erosion, to look for fall lines, things like that. And so OMBA in Oklahoma, not only are we a nonprofit and we're a bike club, but we're the owners or the holders of the MOUs, the agreements with the different landowners. So if you look at Draper, like I said, it's Oklahoma Water Utilities Trust and so that MOU was with them.
Speaker 3:Arcadia is really complex and Joe's probably going to go into this later when he talks about Rogue Trail building and things like that. Arcadia is interesting because that land is all Army Corps of Engineers land, but then the city of Edmond has an MOU for part of it. Part of it is a wildlife preserve and actually OMBA has everything from the lake office east of the dam and somewhat south of the dam A lot of hands in that pile. It has everything from the lake office east of the dam and somewhat south of the dam, and so A lot of hands in that pile. You think about what Joe has to go through to just add a trail or have an event. It has to meet federal guidelines with the Army Corps of Engineers, it has to pass muster with the city of Edmond, it's got to meet the requirements of the bike groups, and so this isn't just this, just isn't Arcadia. It's the same way.
Speaker 3:Bluff Creek is Oklahoma city parks. They are partners with us, but each and every trail has its animal. Each, each one has its own MOU and it has its own requirements. Okay, so Arcadia, why don't we go out there with a chainsaw and cut down the tree that's blocking the trail Because we're not allowed to have motorized equipment out there? We can get an exception, like they have to get a permit to use a chainsaw. So each trail has a lot of requirements that we have to meet. So when people go out and they see this cool line and they want to add a jump to it, and they go out and rogue cut it or rogue build it, they're violating that MOU and if we lose that MOU, it's gone. And once again, there's only 4.6% of the state is public land and once again, there's only 4.6% of the state is public land. And if we lose one of these areas, you don't get it back.
Speaker 1:Right, so OMBA is basically the title holder to all of this land to allow people to go out and use the trails. Essentially, it is Okay.
Speaker 3:Now the other big piece that people really need to know is people assume when they go to somewhere like Bluff Creek that the city of Oklahoma City is maintaining that trail, or, if you go to Arcadia, that the city of Edmond is, and they are not. They do help, they brush hog sometimes, but I'm going to say, depending on the trail, 98 to 100 percent of all the trail maintenance is from OMBA, so there's a trail boss at every trail. There are volunteers that come out. We advertise trail days, but really it ends up being a very small group of people that come out. So, compared to the number of riders, the number of people that are keeping these trails up is extremely small. What do you think? 15 or 20 kind of in the core group it's for?
Speaker 2:each trail.
Speaker 3:No total, oh yeah, total, all the trails, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's incredible the amount of work that it takes, because I mean, you know, you go out there and I'm like man, this trail is, like you know, like when you're riding along, especially in the springtime or early summer, after you we get dumped on with rain and then we get all the heat and then like two weeks later, like everything's out of control.
Speaker 1:You know, and then you know you go out there like two weeks later and it's all mowed and cleared as much as possible. Like man, these somebody's been out here working really, really hard and I, as writers we need to like greatly appreciate that. Again, I'm the first to admit that I have not volunteered to come do that, which I absolutely have to do, that I think if you're going to partake in this world, you got to support the world either. Sometimes you can do it financially, sometimes you can do it, you know, with your body. So if you don't have the finances to give to the group to help support new equipment or new, whatever it is, everybody has some time that they can do. So I'm the first one to admit that I need to step up and do that, because I can't fathom how much work it is.
Speaker 2:So if you think about how many trail systems do we have? Tony, like a dozen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what trails does OMBA oversee or take care of or have affiliation with?
Speaker 3:Okay, so Arcadia Lake. Okay, we also have affiliation with. Okay, so Arcadia Lake. Okay, we also have Bartlesville, it's a little bit further east, but Bartlesville is an OMBA trail. Bluff Creek Park Okay, enid, 580. Okay, kelly Farms, which is privately owned. Lake Stanley Draper Uh-huh Ponca City. Uh-huh Romanos, which is State Park. Uh-huh Roman O's, which is State Park. Trosper Park, which is the new one that we have not quite opened.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to hear more stuff on that.
Speaker 3:And then Skip. The other thing I think a lot of people don't know is Joe wanted me to mention TrailBot. So you know Oklahoma, we get rain, the trails are closed. That open and close functionality that's built into our web page and built into that application with an app called TrailBot. That's something else. Omba sponsors and it's not just for OMBA trails. So when you look at Turkey Mountain status, that's TrailBot through OMBA. So we try. Just because it's not an OMBA trail doesn't mean we're not going to support it.
Speaker 1:So you guys kind of try to keep that updated for all of the trails in Oklahoma. Yes, okay.
Speaker 2:So it used to be RainOutline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it used to be right. Yeah, yeah, right Outline. So it's moved over to trail bot. So if you want trail conditions cause I know there's a Facebook group uh, I think it's Oklahoma mountain by trail conditions or something like that that some people check so but trail bot is the one that to go to for the yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, I want to do a shout out for trail bot because, um, I'm originally from Minnesota and I go back every year and visit family and do a lot of mountain biking up there. Now that I've gotten back into it and there's some great mountain biking up there, they're just like almost everywhere else, where they open and close based on trail conditions, and I came across I don't remember how, but I came across that all their trails are maintained through Trailbot up there and we the time were using rain outline still and and painful when I got I got in, I got trail bot downloaded on my phone for free and when I go up there and I'd see all the different trail systems open or close, I'm like, well, this is sweet and it actually is intuitive and it functions great.
Speaker 2:And if I mark a trail and the trail conditions change, it pops up on my phone. And it never worked right on rain outline for me.
Speaker 3:I hated it uh.
Speaker 2:So when I came back, um, we, uh tony had said hey, uh, rain, outline, we pay a fee. They were giving us a discount. Apparently I didn't know we were getting a discount, but they want to raise it to the, uh, original rate, which is like hundreds of dollars. We're a non-profit.
Speaker 3:we don't like hundreds of dollars. We're a nonprofit, we don't have hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 2:And so Tony reached out to Trailbot and he's like oh no, it's completely free, that's awesome, completely free.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, that's great.
Speaker 3:This is a guy that's developed the app. He wants to give back to the community. He wants to grow Trailbot. He's adding features all the time Super cool. He's just been utterly fantastic to work with. The app works great. People seem to like it, now that they're kind of getting converted. The Trail Conditions Facebook page is great. That fed a need that existed. Yep Still a great page. A lot of communication on there. I look at it all the time too. We've asked that people use Trailbot as the official, the official one, because not everybody has Facebook has Facebook, and so we're leaving out a lot of the community.
Speaker 2:Whereas Rain Outline, you can either get it right from RideOMBAorg, which is our site under trail conditions, or you can get it right from Trailbot as a trail boss, and you know this too. But it's annoying when you go update in one spot and then you've got somebody coming and asking you in another hey, you know what are the trail conditions Like. Just go, yeah, to our one spot, yeah please, yeah, just go there you don't. That's the official one.
Speaker 1:If you want to ask somewhere else, ask somewhere else, but this is the official one. Ask somebody else, because we're keeping it up today as much as possible there I would have to update it in the oef at the time.
Speaker 3:Now omba facebook page and then the arcadia lake trails page and then the Oklahoma mountain bike trail conditions page. It's too much. It's too much. It's too much and you know, sometimes you'll close it and it'll be closed for a day. It might even close for four hours and then be able to open back up. We keep pretty close eye on it and doing all of those updates is and trying to maintain the trail. It's too much, it's a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, well, so with the core group of people that are basically kind of taking care of the trails and doing those stuff, do you have a core group that's up in Bartlesville and up in Enid and stuff like that that's outside of the metro that are taking care of those trails? Because I haven't ridden either one of those.
Speaker 3:They are, but it's hard. So, for instance, bartlesville is primarily one guy. He is doing the signage, he's managing fundraising, he's organizing trail days. Now I'm not saying he doesn't get help. He luckily he's got a lot of folks at Conical Phillips up there that come out and help. Same thing Enid 580.
Speaker 3:This is a guy that there was somebody that had it and then I think they moved. And so another guy liked to ride the trails. He lives a long ways away and if you've ridden Enid there's a lot of open areas that aren't in the trees, which mean in Oklahoma you get a lot of vegetation growth. So he's packing up his own brush hog, putting on a trailer, driving it 45 minutes there to brush, hog this thing and keep it open. So a lot of these trails. Romanos, it's on a state park but one guy for the most part maintains that, and then he does have trail days and other volunteers come. But you get down into Oklahoma City you get Draper, really one trail boss, and people do come out and help. Bluff Creek and Arcadia, which are probably our best maintained trails. They have a much larger group of people. What do you have? Six at Arcadia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, six in our core group.
Speaker 3:And to give you an idea.
Speaker 2:That's what I was going to talk about when we said how many trails do we have in our group? So we've got a dozen or so trails and then we've got 200 paying dude members that across our and not all of them come out and help out Right, but we have thousands and thousands of mountain bikers in our community and when we'll go and post like a a trail work day and I've, like I said, I've got my six core people that are hours out there doing stuff, they have autonomy.
Speaker 3:I don't.
Speaker 2:They don't ask me permission. I don't have to give them permission to to do stuff. They've got permits through the park office to go out and you know, bring tools out and do stuff. Um, and it took a lot of work and a long time to get that level of trust built up. But yeah, but when, uh, we go and do a trail day and we get eight people to show up and six of them are part of the core crew, that's disappointing.
Speaker 2:So it's like everybody that's out there, um, you know, and if you're going out and riding more than a couple of times a year and you you come out and do one trail day, um, and there's, you know, maybe six opportunities throughout the year and everybody, just, you know, goes and does one. Now you've got hundreds of people that are showing up at these and it makes six hours of work end up being two hours of work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It takes a lot of the pressure off of that core group. Like you said. You know we've got two of my core group members are retired and you know I'm so thankful for how much support that they put in there during the week. You know like I'll be at work and I'll get a picture sent to me. Hey, you know I was out riding today and this tree was down. So I went home, got my chainsaw, came back out, took care of the tree. Here's a picture. It's gone, cool, you know, no issue. I'm like wow, that's awesome. Yeah, it's awesome to have people in support like that.
Speaker 1:And let's talk about that piece for a second, because we talked about it briefly so far. We touched on it, but the tool bags that are out there and I'll call it what it is, that's the PG version that are making their own trails on our trails, right? So they're like oh, this is too technical here, so I want to make there's an easier if I just go straight through the trees here, instead of taking this corner that catches my trip, my bars every time, or I have those.
Speaker 2:I have those on my trails at Arcadia. I've got um, there's one spot where you've got to hop over a tree that we built the trail with the tree already down and we said we painted x, red x on the street do not remove this tree, we're going to leave it as part of the trail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we built a small trail around it, which is much slower, I know exactly what you're talking about over on main drain, on the outside of more dam trails and for probably six months, every time I would go out there and ride I would stop and have to remove a bunch of logs that somebody stacked up in front of the log you're supposed to bunny hop. I'm like no.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh.
Speaker 2:No, stop doing this, and I'd throw them, as far as I could, into the weeds. I'm like this is not. This is you're supposed to bunny. Hop over it, and if you cannot do that, go around, go around, yeah.
Speaker 1:And at least you gave an outlet. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, and I see it all the time and I think the place that I see it so bad is Thunderbird, because people and I think it's I every time I hear about it, it's usually the same one or two people that are doing it. Every time I hear about it, it's usually the same one or two people that are doing it and it's all for a KOM or something like that, because if I can cut this line, I can carry more speed to get to the next obstacle or whatever. But you know, at Bluff and Draper and stuff, you have so many like tight turns you feel like, well, I just don't want to slow down, or that tree is hard, Well, no shit, it's a mountain bike trail. Yeah, and our trails are very calm, like for the most part, especially you guys have been around long enough and especially when you went to bluff, when you started. I went to bluff when I started and it was I had zero skills and I thought it was like riding off the side of the Rocky mountains, Cause it was so Rudy and it was so well, it was technical, especially for Oklahoma. Technical, Um, it was so well, it was technical especially for Oklahoma technical and now it is smoothed out a lot.
Speaker 1:There's been a lot of things that have changed over the years at Bluff with adding so much trail and you know trees coming and going and just all the things. But there's always so makes you so mad when you go out there and you have a really cool rooted section and then somebody comes in and packs a whole bunch of dirt around a root and now it's just smooth and I'm like man, that was part of the trail, that was part of the obstacle, that's part of the challenge. So what do you? Is there any way that we can combat that? Or what do you guys do? Do you go back out and try to fix it and put it back? How does that work?
Speaker 3:Maybe through education, but I'll let me let me talk about bluff real quick and I'll let Joe talk but the person that we had, somebody that was going out there and cutting the roots we call them the root bandit. Yeah, you know, if you don't like the roots, go somewhere else. It's like you said. It's mountain biking. It's supposed to be hard. You're not supposed to be able to ride it the first time, right. You're supposed to build your skills and build up. If you want something easy, watch TV, right.
Speaker 3:If you want something that doesn't require bike handling skills, go out on the road bike, because it'll kick your rear in a different way. But mountain biking is about going and learning to get over those obstacles. The roots are one port, but the worst one was our old trail boss GT. He would go out there and bury PVC lines in order to get low lying spots where it would drain water and people would just come by back out and rip the PVC pipes out. One time it was so bad he went and replaced all the PVC pipes and then decided he was tired of watching other people ride when he was doing all the work, grabbed his bike out of the car and went back out and the PVC pipes had already been pulled.
Speaker 1:Someone was pulling them right behind him as he was slaying them. Yes, oh my God. So let me give you an idea of scale.
Speaker 3:One year Joe sent me he logged all the volunteer hours at Arcadia. Granted, that was a year they were building trail. It was over 2,400 volunteer hours before the year was even over. So now think of GT out there rebaring this pipe over and over. Everybody else is riding. He could be riding, but no, he's not.
Speaker 1:He's making the trail better for everybody else and then people are coming right back behind him and destroying it, people tearing out roots and cutting roots, and you see it at bluff so often. It's just, you know, and that's the thing with Oklahoma with, especially right here in the Metro. Okay, um, and I think what they're doing at Turkey is off the charts. What they have coming and that's amazing, um, and I'm super excited about that, um. But I think in Oklahoma city Metro you can ride like everything. Everything you want to get the beat to hell, you go to Bluff because it's rooty and turny and that's what it is.
Speaker 1:If you're brand new or you just want to like hammer and go as fast as possible, go to Skip. It's fast, it's flowy, it's no elevation, just go as fast as you want. You want some sand? Go to, you know, draper or certain parts of arcadia. You know, it's true, um, you want some downhill stuff. You have at arcadia. So we have all of the pieces in oklahoma city metro so you can get what you want. Don't tear up what you don't like, because if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else and get exactly what you want here in oklahoma city. So, yeah, I don't know, I hate when people do that, but laying new trail or cutting through, making cut throughs is not just like stupid, but it's could damage us being able to ride in these areas, like you were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3:I think too, if you, if you don't like the way the trails are or you have some great features, come to come to a trail day. Every one of these trail bosses is going to listen to your suggestion. They might come in and say, I will, I agree with you, I'd love to build this. But our trailbosses is going to listen to your suggestion. They might come in and say I agree with you, I'd love to build this, but our MOU does not allow it. But when people get involved and so there were a lot- of that log that Joe's talking about.
Speaker 2:I call it the asshole log. To be honest with you, I hate that log. Now it's collapsed down a little bit.
Speaker 3:Now I can bunny hop it with vigor. So it's fine, but I didn't move it. I didn't Heck, I was even the trail boss. I didn't chop that log off. People wanted that challenge. They made a bypass. I just learned to do the log, yeah. So I've been riding along since 96 pretty consistently now and I still found that log to be a challenge. Yeah, hit my chain ring on it every time. And I gripe to Joe and Jim about it all the time.
Speaker 2:Maybe it was you putting those, building those logs. That's right, it was not me, I promise you can't prove it, can't prove it Now. Those chain ring marks on that log, those are me, those are you, those are me. But at least I'm clearing it now. That's right.
Speaker 3:Sawing through it. One bike ride at a time, that's right. Get there eventually, did it legally. You either come out and talk to the trail boss and get it moved the right way or, like me, you just learn to ride the damn thing.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think it's super interesting that you brought up and it's something I've never thought about is like I would love for us to build that we can't. Like we technically cannot do that because of our agreement, which I think that's super interesting. I've never heard that and I didn't know that. So that's people like to bitch, but unless you ask or talk, then you don't know the real answer.
Speaker 2:Let me talk a little bit about kind of trail boss life. Yeah, please. So I've been doing this for a while and maybe I swear it's been longer than two years. So I think you did a year without being president as like VP, or I don't remember what the story was, but I've been trail boss for a little bit longer than two years, I think. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:I had it for three or four Chase had it before that.
Speaker 2:So we do have to. You know, let's say, at Arcadia I want to add some trail or make a significant change to a trail, Depending on where it is. Everything from the park office west is all controlled by the city of Edmond. That's their least area, that they're getting from the Army Corps of Engineering and that is considered the park. Everything from the park office to the east or the dam, which I call the dam trails. That's all MOU that we have through the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Army Corps of Engineers states us as the kind of trail stewards or the managers of the trails and we have an excellent relationship with them.
Speaker 2:So if I want to build a new trail, I'm maybe letting a cat out of the bag here, but I've gotten permission to go and scout to add some trails south of the dam. So when you park at the water tower parking lot there's a treed area directly west of there up to the lake. All of that is undeveloped, there's no trails in there and that's an area where I'm going to be able to add some trails. I'm going to be able to add some trails. So the typical process that we have to go through is we first request like hey, we've got this area. It's part of the Army Corps of Engineer land, it's not part of our MOU, but we would like to build some trail there. And then we wait and we get to hear back and yes, we would entertain that. Let's see what your proposal is. So then we have to go and hypothetically draw out on a map, you know, looking at what the elevation might be and what could be a theoretical trail system in that area.
Speaker 1:Um, and then walk the land to do that, or you do it from satellite. Do it from satellite view first.
Speaker 2:First, right To kind of say, hey, here's what we're thinking, cause I don't want to go out and and walk through the woods and drop flags, and drop a GPS trail and spend hours out there, um, without at least getting, uh, uh, somewhat of an approval that they're going to be entertained my my idea, um, and, and we've made so much progress over the years. I mean it used to be to the point where when Tony went out and did trail, he would have to do exactly what I described and then send a GPS file and then they would come back out, walk our proposed trail and then give us the thumbs up to go and cut it. Then we would cut it and then they would come back out and inspect it. We've gotten so far past all of that. Now to where we'll send them the GPS file. We'll have marked it so we know where we're going, because even with flags out there, you can look and you can see flags and you're like well, was I going this way or was I going?
Speaker 2:that way. So we'll send them that and they'll give us the thumbs up and then we'll go and cut it and open it and they may never even come and put eyes on it. But that's been through years of building a trusting relationship and they're also seeing how well we're taking care of the trails and we're putting on races and we're building, you know, kids loops and making sure that it stays open, not just to mountain. You know we get the authority to go and build the trail system and then you know our restrictions are that we cannot use any heavy equipment and heavy equipment is really like anything that you would ride on, essentially.
Speaker 1:So we have to go. That makes for tough work. It does make for tough work.
Speaker 2:And there's a lot of frustration factor from a trail boss perspective because when the city goes and and for example at Arcadia, they're doing a water resource improvement project, they're putting in new pipeline, these 42 inch pipes that I've seen a few heavy pieces of equipment out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they'll come and they'll bulldoze acres of trees and they're like, oh, you can't remove any trees that are bigger than six inches in diameter and you have to use a handsaw. I'm like, okay, but you know, hey, if that's what it takes for us to get, modified by the rules.
Speaker 1:We'll play by the rules.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's tough to get by the rules. We'll play by the rules. Yeah, um, yeah, that's tough. So you know, a funny story is when you go out and you mark trail and you're trudging through the woods and the, the briar, and like it'll feel like you've gone a mile and you've been out there a half an hour and then you look at your gps and you've gone like eight tenths of a mile you kind of still see your car.
Speaker 2:You know, like this um, that that happened at trosper? Yeah, because you've got to cut three miles of trail at trosper and you did like one trail day and like, oh, made great progress, and then you went and walked that portion that was cut.
Speaker 3:And it was an eighth of a mile and we advertise that Trosper Workday. Hey look, we're. And granted, nobody's been out there, Nobody knows. So I'm not busting people, I want to talk, let's just jump into Trosper.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, let's jump into it. Well, first off, before we get into Trosper, everything that you guys have done at Arcadia and completely transformed in the past, like five years, like incredible so, so those that don't know that went from nine miles that was a four and a half mile out and back to 28.4 is what I got last time.
Speaker 3:It's amazing you've got downhill. That joe's really, and that core team have built um.
Speaker 1:There's all kinds of terrain that's what I love about that place is because you can ride pretty much everything oklahoma has to offer in that trail you have the fun downhill runs you have like right when you come off the dam going into the trail you have that little technical, rocky little top shelf area which is legit, technical stuff which is super fun, it's just not long yeah.
Speaker 1:And you've built some really cool little like man-made features, which I would love to see more of that on our other trails, because I think that stuff is so cool. Where you have like I think about it when you go to Bentonville and you're going down a line, it's like, oh, feature, well, if I have the skill to try this feature, I can do it where I can just bypass it and keep going, but it doesn't have to be much. It's just like a little jump or it's a little like wood up and down or something like. That's just something to bring character to the trail. So I love seeing that at arcadia. Let me talk about that. Yeah, please for a second.
Speaker 2:So the um, the wood features have been kind of my thing out there. Um, the first one that I built was sticks and stones. And when you know, when you build trail and you go out and do this for a few years and you get miles of trail and you can kind of see things, you're like, oh, that would be cool, but you know I would need to do this or that and it's like, well, how much am I biting off myself? Yeah, but sticks and stones was the first one. That, um, that we wanted to use this area of the sandstone and we could have just kind of rode in between it, made something technical, but I'm like, no, this has got to be like when you go out and ride and you're going to stop and take a picture of it and like show your friends like wow, this is impressive.
Speaker 2:Uh, so that was the first one that I built and, um, I think it only took like a weekend, you know, and I had a couple of guys came and help, help me build that Um and so I really enjoy those and I don't want to make them too risky, but I want them to still have a level of fun and excitement about them. So sticks and stones would be probably the the highest consequence, highest risk feature that's got some legit risk to it yeah, it does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, so that that's the max, like you're not going to see anything more than that at arcadia because, first off, I don't want to do anything where someone's going to end up getting seriously hurt and then jeopardize our partnership with the whole trail system.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Period. So that that is it. But then I'm like, well, what else can we do? So we've got some projects that we've worked with Trail Life, which is, um, similar to the boy Scouts and everybody's familiar with the Scouts. There's a, a spinoff of uh, that which is called trail life, and, um, they helped. Uh, they didn't help, they did. Uh, I went and worked the permitting and permissions but they built a kid's loop. That's by the water tower. It's just a real simple um loop. It's maybe a little bit much uh, elevation wise in retrospect for little little kids, but I think we'll keep adding to it and put some little wood features on it. That'll make it more and more fun, yeah, and then, uh, I had a scout come and ask me uh for projects through tony, and I said, hey, um, out at bluff, uh, one of the scouts built these like skill park features. You know I was like we can do better than that right, oh yeah, we can, so I'm like, here's what I need you to do.
Speaker 2:I need you to try to, you know, try to raise some money. Whatever you don't raise, we'll pay for the rest. But I want I have this area that gets wet and gets standing water in it that we have to go around. So we were used to go out into the grass, um, to have this out and back, and we had this little sliver of like trees, uh, that we would, you know, go along this wet area and I'm like we're going to build a boardwalk through here. And we measured it out and it was, it was a hundred yards, 300 feet.
Speaker 2:I'm like, okay, we'll just build as much as we can and then we'll build the rest later. But, uh, and that's what we did, but we, um, he raised I don't know a few hundred dollars and then, uh, we did some additional fundraising and I'm always, you know, trying to raise money for arcadia, and so we always have a a little bit of money in our um, in our, in our bank account, uh, so we spent about two thousand dollars in material and built this, what I think is a pretty cool it is cool.
Speaker 1:It makes for great pictures, especially when it's raining.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it gets the water in there um, so that that's one thing that also I think is neat about having um omba is then we can partner with these other uh entities like the scouts or like but I would say like, just from a pure rider standpoint, having any like little feature here and there doesn't take much right, it's just like oh, that was so cool, like because, like, when I'm riding with someone who doesn't ride, I can do something to play while they go around it, and it makes it fun for everyone. And it just breaks up like cause, our trails are pretty flowy and simple, so it just breaks it up. It just gives you something to look at, something to do, like a neat, a neat little thing, um, so yeah, anytime you add those, I think it's great, I think it's so, so great and so cool, and it doesn't take much for it to really spice things up. I think that's been. I think that's been, I think that's what's been really fun to see at Arcadia.
Speaker 2:Well, that's and that's one thing that I think a lot of the rogue trail people get into is oh, I want to put a jump here. Yeah, it's not necessarily they want to go and build a whole trail. That's way more work than your average rogue person is going to do. But we've actually, you know, met some of our trail crew doing that. They're coming out and they're fixing a berm or putting in a jump or something. We're like well, that's cool that you're doing that. You shouldn't be, but let's get you tied into the group and we can do this stuff officially through the right way.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's jump into the new trail that everybody wants to hear about and know what's next.
Speaker 3:So that's Trosper, Trosper yeah, so Trosper is interesting. I actually don't know how many presidents have been working Trosper, probably five. Okay, and so this is an area of land. It's a little more impoverished part of Oklahoma City but it's pretty close to the core, so neat location. It's over by the Trosper Golf Course. There's also a Frisbee golf course. That's there, and back in the day there used to be an extremely popular BMX track there, and the remnants of that still live on. But for at least 17 years and I think significantly longer nothing has been done out there, and so OEF, then OMBA, have been negotiating this for at least seven years, if not ten. So we finally got an MOU. But what was really great was we were originally going to get the northeast corner of that area, which isn't a lot of landmass, and since we've been doing so good, partnering with the city of Oklahoma City and shown what we can do at Bluff Creek, going from 4.25 miles to 11 point something miles Incredible.
Speaker 1:Change out there yeah, it's phenomenal. And change out there yeah, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 3:And so that partnership pays dividends, and so they gave us all of the area south of lands, south of Grand Boulevard, so that's 155 acres of old growth oak trees.
Speaker 3:This is not your normal Oklahoma cedars. It's dense. It's actually got more elevation than you would think, which is pretty rare in Oklahoma. We'll see how we use that. So we got that partnership signed. But what we didn't want to do is the BMX community has a pretty good tie in there. Maybe they haven't redeveloped it, but they have fond memories of that.
Speaker 3:So we started off and wanted this to be a project that would affect everybody. So first and foremost is mountain bike single track. Okay, we started that a few weeks ago. We've got about a half a mile of trail built. We'll build an outer ring, kind of like what Joe did at Arcadia, and then you'll have spur rings off of that, so that way you can set your distance based on. You can ride the whole thing, you can ride part of it. We'll get that in, get it established, get people out there riding it. So really, really excited about that I have you can't tell now I was all sliced and diced up from all the briars. It is hard work. It is dense forest. It's really going to be a cool place to ride.
Speaker 3:Uh, next is that old BMX track, and so what can we do that mountain bikers might like? What's something that people don't have Um, and so what we came up with is a dual slalom track. Oh, fun. And so we've been making plans. Luckily for us, it was a very nice KOM LLC that came out and built part of Skip and built the new River Sport jump trail. They volunteered four days of labor. They came out with equipment. They did probably a quarter of that for us.
Speaker 3:So you now drop down off the old BMX launch track and you got a couple of. You got enough speed. You hit the first jump tabletop over, you come down, one side breaks hard right into a bank, the other one breaks hard left into a bank. If you carry enough speed, you come out and you actually jump the next tabletop and then you proceed to go on through the rest of the route. Super cool, A little bit rough, obviously, because it's been there a long time, but it's starting to form. Bmx guys can ride that just like mountain bike guys. So now you've got single track on the south and now you've got this cool dual slalom slash BMX track on the north. We've been talking with the folks over at Capital Co-op about doing a dedicated CX track on some of that land, and so Trosper is exciting to me because you should have 10 to 13 miles of pretty sweet single track in Old Growth Forest.
Speaker 1:So wow, 10 to 13 miles out there. That's the goal. Wow, okay.
Speaker 3:Followed by this dual slalom track, followed by a dedicated CX track, and so I do know Capital Co-op is going to host the first race out there even before the trail system opens I think that's November 24th they're going to do a CX race out there and they're going to incorporate that dual slalom track. So I have a feeling it's going to be a difficult, challenging, really fun route.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so exciting. Is there going to be and I don't have, have a clue and you can tell me it's none of my business or no uh, like how they have a like a skills park, um, and a couple of them around like the bentonville area I think the ones in slaughter pin is the one I'm thinking of that they just put in. Is there thoughts of something like that? Because I know the river trail just put in like their jump line kind of thing and it's not really like a skills park per se, it's more of a bmx kind of thing and it's not really like a skills park per se, it's more of a BMX kind of jump area. Is there anything that's going to be added in like that out there or any thoughts of it?
Speaker 3:We haven't gotten there yet on Trosper because we've got an awful lot of work. As I mentioned the last trail day we advertised for three weeks. It was the OMBA president, the vice president and one of his friends so there was three of us that cut that first half a mile of trail.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, um, we've got to get through the build process right. Let's get some real sweet single track out there, let's see what we can do with this, this uh dual slalom track, and let's let's see what capital co-op can come up with for a cx track, and then we'll go from there and a cx set cx area would be really, really cool.
Speaker 1:It's something that's missing Something different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love that.
Speaker 1:That's the thing with Cycling Oklahoma and with what you guys are doing there and stuff. There's needs that we have in Oklahoma right now, in all of Oklahoma, and I think Turkey's doing a great job with the need that the state has and they're putting money into Turkey and building so many cool features there because we have so many people in oklahoma that do cycling right. The road scene's been around forever but the gravel and mountain biking stuff has really just taken off in the past 10 years really. But I think mountain biking really in the past like five years has exploded but everybody leaves the state to go do cool stuff. But the amount of new trail that you guys have put in in the past I don't know. I would say five years between Arcadia, between bluff. The dog trail has been expanded greatly at Draper and then now with what you guys are doing at Trosper, like there's a lot of really cool things coming to Oklahoma city Metro and Tulsa Metro, which is super exciting and it's not just like the same old boring stuff.
Speaker 3:I think you see, our landowners. Joe could probably elaborate on that some more too, but the landowners have to get used to the bigger and bigger things. So everyone says why aren't you doing more sticks and stones? Why aren't you doing more tabletops and more jumps? And look at what they're doing at Turkey Mountain or at Bentonville. Well, they didn't just do those right away, you have to grow into them. So I'm going to go right out on a limb and say when, when Joe built sticks and stones that 100% pushed the boundary of what the core was.
Speaker 1:When I saw that for the first time, I was like this is new. This is not like anything around here which is awesome.
Speaker 3:And when our landowners saw it they weren't. They weren't real sure they. We wrote it for them some and I think it's proved to be pretty good. But my point is when people ask members or non-members, when they ask, why aren't you doing it bigger and more?
Speaker 2:like this. It takes time and a lot of money. It takes time, it takes money.
Speaker 3:We're struggling just to rebrand, so we renamed the club. Now we're OMBA. We need more kiosks at each trail site. We need trail signage. We need more kiosks at each trail site, we need trail signage. We need wayfinding on the trails. That all requires money, and money either comes from donations or grants, which are very hard to get, or membership dues, and so you know, we commented earlier, there's 7,000 people subscribed to the Oklahoma mountain bike trail conditions site and we've got 200 members. Well, let's talk about the money side.
Speaker 1:Go ahead, yeah, politicians side, and we've got 200 members, let's talk about the money side.
Speaker 2:To go ahead, yeah.
Speaker 2:So so um when you want to get a lot of money to do big things like they're doing at yep In Tulsa, turkey, mountain, you're that's, that's corporate money. We're not going to get that from your average person who's going to kick in a few bucks. Like when I go out and I say, hey, I want to build this boardwalk, can you, can you all donate? And I set up a GoFundMe for that and everybody kicks in 20 bucks. It's like, yeah, we were able to accomplish that.
Speaker 2:But anything more substantial, if you want to hire a license and insured crew to come out with heavy equipment to um, to, you know, help us with cutting a trail, or to do some dirt work or something like that, that's a lot of money and that's got to be at a corporate level. And that's why I think it's so important for everybody that's a mountain bike rider in Oklahoma to become an OMBA member is because then, when we go and ask for these corporate grants, we're not saying, oh well, we're a mountain bike association with 200 members. They're like we're not going to give you $10,000. You're crazy, you got 200 members. It's like, well, we actually have 7,000 people that ride our trails, or more than that. But that's why it's important for people to become members and the reason why we have dues in our membership is because we also have to have insurance. And there's other you know, there's other things that like equipment, storage units, you name it.
Speaker 1:Well, it takes a lot, a lot it takes a lot just to just to weed, eat and and keep stuff cleared throughout the year. It takes a lot. That's right. It's not the building of the new, all right, or putting in new features or building an entire new trail system, um so we had to replace an old bridge that's not glamorous.
Speaker 2:You know there was a bridge that was rotted out and you know we had to get our crew out there to replace the bridge at Arcadia.
Speaker 1:Well, talking about the money side of things and donations and those kinds of things, do what? And we have, we have 200 members right At this point. Is there a number where you're like man, if we had 400 paying members, then we know it would be this, or is it? We're like, you know, we just need more, the more the better, and that's what it is, you know. And to build like a new trail system at trosper, like if we wanted to build this out to be like completely dream land that we don't even can't even really put it together yet, but like, what does that take? Is it $50,000 to build a system like that? Is a hundred thousand, is it 10,000? I have no concept. I mean, you look at Turkey mountain, it's millions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're spending millions and I'll have people say all the time why aren't you going for grant money? Well, let me tell you what, how? What's really changed with with grant money? I think people have probably abused the system and so most of the grants that OMBA can apply for are matching grants. Okay, and so if we get $50,000 for trail signage and wayfinding or cool features or whatever, we have to come up with $25,000 of that to get the other $25,000. Right, and to be honest with you, with 200 members paying dues and some nice people donating, that's just not possible.
Speaker 3:So ages ago, OMBA got, I think, a quarter million dollar grant, but it had matching funds and we had an individual that was willing to put the money out. Actually, I think it was you come up with the money first and they reimburse you. It was one of the reimbursement grant. We lost that person that was willing to put their own money out. They did something else and the reimbursement grant. We lost that, that, that person that was willing to put their own money out. They, they, they did something else and we lost that grant. So we've had some opportunities for some big grants, but we, we just can't touch them anymore. So I think the biggest one we've gotten the last four or five years is $10,000. Okay, $10,000 does not buy you a whole lot of trail features. No In a trail.
Speaker 1:Wow, ok, yeah, yeah, that's that's. That's a big, it's a, it's a doable overcome, but it's a big overcome. It is yeah, and I mean really what it comes down to and it's kind of like, with what I'm trying to build here, I really need our community and people in that, in our people, in our community work for those organizations and or own those organizations. Work for those organizations and or own those organizations and I don't I want to approach it where I'm not and I had this conversation, uh, monday night with a buddy of mine we had dinner where it's like cycling teams you guys are, you know, have been part of cycling teams and cycling clubs over the years and you get in and it's the it's the same names on on the kit, depending on what bike shop you go to and it's the financially successful people that like that bike shop whose names are on the kits. It's really worthless for them to put as far as return on their money to put their name on the kit and to give 500 bucks to a race team or 5,000 bucks to a race team. They're really they're not. It's just they want to support the cause.
Speaker 1:We need those people to support the cause of what we're trying to do here, but it's also we need to give them something in return. And I think if we can give them something in return like hey, an organization or a big company, um comes and says, hey, here's $50,000 for this grant that you got, okay, well, what? We're not just putting your name on a Jersey. Look at the difference you're making in the community, because now you have the I mean just take not only the general public, because the health and wellness in Oklahoma is awful Now you give people a place to go exercise, a place to get outside, a place for the kids clubs to come through the school systems. And it's not just hey, I'm going to give this money because I like to ride mountain bikes. It's like actually, you are giving something to the community that's going to live forever and change our state.
Speaker 2:I think that's a good point too. The one thing that um there's just worth bringing up. I mean, we're, uh, 99% mountain bike cyclists and you're um advocating for dirt cycling, but the trails that we build are multi-use trails. I mean, they really are.
Speaker 2:So when we're out there and I'm seeing you know I'm doing trail work and a husband and wife come jogging by, you know running on the trails, and they're like, hey, you know, thanks, so much. They're so much. They're just as appreciative of the work that we're putting in to create these trails for them to go out and use, as mountain bikers are. So that's just something also not to forget about.
Speaker 1:I think Arcadia is a great example of that. You go to Draper it's mostly riders. You go to Arcadia depending on the day of the week and the time you go to, you might be like one of the only people riding, but the parking lots are packed with people hiking and walking and kids and all that stuff, which is awesome.
Speaker 2:Yesterday at skip I came across a few walkers yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's awesome. And it's nice to see people in Oklahoma, cause we don't, uh, as a population generally get outside a whole lot. So seeing people not only get outside and they want to go walk in their neighborhood transitions yeah, yeah. Watching people like go outside and walk in their neighborhood, that's cool. But seeing them get out and like touch trees kids play in the dirt like get ticks yeah, it sucks.
Speaker 2:But man, that's part of like living life. You know like that's awesome.
Speaker 1:So I love that that is growing in our community, which is great.
Speaker 3:It's. It's difficult to express that to a lot of the city governments and the federal government. Yes, there's this thought that pave paved is better. Yes, and I'll use Arcadia as a great example. They've got a nice paved trail they're putting through there and that's great, but we've got paved trail all over the place. Now, I mentioned earlier I love to road bike. I love the interconnected trails across Oklahoma City. It's just stunning what's happened. So I'm using that and I enjoy it. But I can get that a lot of places we have very, very few areas Think of Arcadia Bluff, those places where you could actually get into nature. You're in the trees. People don't want to do that on a superhighway most of them anyway they want to do it on a dirt trail, whether they're Boy Scouts out for a hiking trip or a family out hiking or somebody trail running or somebody out just shredding it on the mountain.
Speaker 2:This is what's crazy is the example at Arcadia, I think it's a million dollars a mile for the paved trail. Oh my gosh, that's what the you know. And they're getting grants for that. Right, it's not just coming out of taxpayer money. They're getting some grants and I'm sure some of it is out of taxpayer money, but the trails that we're building and providing and maintaining are free and we're the ones that have to fight tooth and nail. And then they can go, and you know put. And then they can go, and you know put.
Speaker 1:To get somebody to donate 500 bucks is like game changer, yeah, and they need a million.
Speaker 3:You'd be amazed how many of these trail bosses put their own money in, and that would include me too. Yeah, when we need something in the club, just can't afford it.
Speaker 1:It's that core group of 20 people putting their own dollars in a lot of times and so, and we could use help. Ok, well, let's, let's get to that then. How can people we'll talk financially first how can people help financially, support the cause?
Speaker 3:Well, probably you should talk about what goes into your membership first.
Speaker 3:So, when, when you click on that link, you go to EMBA, which might be a little confusing, but they are the parent organization and you fill out your stuff and you give your money and what's what's the minimum to join? Is it 50? 50 bucks? 50 bucks, 50 bucks gets you a year Of that $50, a little of it goes to EMBA. That's their overhead cost and it promotes mountain biking and it promotes those books and they do a lot of outreach and they do things. So that's good. The rest of that money gets piled up for a short period of time and then that gets transferred directly into the OMBA account. Okay, that is what pays for insurance that's required to keep these MOUs. That's what goes into. I mean, you wouldn't believe how much we spend on trimmer line a year. You think you spend a lot at home. You should see the trimmer line OMBA goes through, especially in a rainy year like this year. Yeah, Equipment storage you have to pay for a storage unit like everybody else. These big billy goats, they're not cheap. What's a billy?
Speaker 2:goat.
Speaker 3:Billy goat. Billy goat is a walk behind brush hog Okay, and let me tell you if you ever want an upper body workout, come out to an OMA trail day and volunteer to get behind the billy goat and try to cut new trail. It is kind of self-propelled.
Speaker 1:This is a beast you follow up your life, hold on and so that's where your membership dues go.
Speaker 3:It goes for insurance, it goes for overhead, the web page, the domain name registration, the you know all that stuff. Um, accountants that keep the taxes up to make sure we're following all of our things. That's where your dues go. The nice thing about dues is you get an email every year and you get reminded. Something Joe said is it's difficult for me to go in. When I go in and do a grant write, or when we ask for land at Trosper, I really can't honestly go in and say we are so excited we managed to break 200 members this year, because then we seem insignificant. What we have to do is pull things like Strava metrics whenever they do have counts at the trail heads when you look at how many people are posting online. We have to use those metrics to try to get real numbers of how many people?
Speaker 3:are using the trails.
Speaker 2:The coolest thing is if you go Google Strava heat maps and you look at, you zoom way out of the okc area and there's these little red blips and it's thunderbird draper, bluff, arcadia, and so they're getting so much more concentrated strava recordings than all of the other paved systems. Yeah, when you zoom way in it's harder to tell, but when you zoom out, you can really see.
Speaker 3:It is really awesome. Yeah, you notice the same thing with, of course, hefner. You know people are out there riding their West River Trail. All those are pretty hot and red too, but the concentrations were. I think it's the brightest, besides those primary road bike areas. These are all these trails, these OVA trails we're talking about.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. This is where people are going, yeah, for sure. Well, and I think more and more, since people are getting run over by cars I mean, heather was one recently and thank goodness she's on the men's, but like that's why I got to get off the road, as I'm like that's just not worth it. And so I live kind of close to the trail, so I mean to the river trail, so it's two miles for me to get there through kind of city like community streets, so it's not so sketchy. But if I'm not going to go straight to that then I'm on the trainer, unless I can get to the trail because I'm not going to go ride open streets. And I think that's what's happened to a lot of people, which is why they're finding more dirt and more gravel and why the trails are getting more and more popular. Gravel's even scary, it can be for sure, for a variety of other reasons. But yeah, and so it's. It's nice to have these safe places.
Speaker 1:And we're coming up onto winter time. Man, when it's 40 degrees and the wind's blowing like 20, you sure don't want to be on a road bike. But you go hike in the trails, you go, go for a trail run in the winter time when it's 35 degrees outside, you could probably run in a t-shirt you might like it's. It's totally a different game when you get inside the trails through the, through the wintertime and things like that. So there's no reason not to really. There's no reason not to. Um. As far as getting money from grants you talked about that Um well, I have a go back on that.
Speaker 2:So one other thing that, uh, that helps a lot is connections like where we're saying we're going to go and build new trail and somebody is like, oh well, I've got you know, I've got a forestry machine or I've got you know a mini excavator and I'm willing to help. And on our trail systems where we might have approval, like I said, arcadia, we don't, we can't, use heavy equipment, but that's not the case at every trail system that we have um, and so I think what john leach was the one who helped with um, getting kom talking to them, and so he's one of our members and he's very active and, uh, and you know, trying to advance our, which is adding more great trails and improving the trails that we have Um, so that's also a way that people can help too, that's huge If you know somebody that is willing to donate some time.
Speaker 2:That's a great part about being a 501c is we can give them a donation certificate for their you know time and equipment. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:We do have people donate equipment from time to time, which is nice. There is a donation link on the RideOMBAorg webpage.
Speaker 2:We've got an old string trimmer that's been sitting around in your shed and it works. We don't want ones that don't work. We don't have time for that. I'm serious Don't give me one that doesn't work.
Speaker 3:I had a big sprayer that I pulled behind the mower that I hadn't used in years. That was like brand new. I donated that to the club and these guys are up trying to get the sand burrs.
Speaker 1:There's lots of ways people can get involved. There are a lot of ways, a lot of ways. So, financial, if you have a connection to a bigger company or you own a would be great if they could talk to you guys with, have a private one on one conversation and see how they can maximize their dollars, because the matching grants and stuff is always amazing and I know there's a lot of some of the bigger companies that are out there will do those kinds of things where you know they will give not necessarily a grant, but kind of the same thing, will give not necessarily a grant, but kind of the same thing. Um, I know some people have done that in the past with doing fundraising for organizations where their company will say, yeah, I'll give you, I'll match whatever you raise.
Speaker 2:Um, we'll put a sign up at a trail, like if you know if one of the local hospitals or bank or somebody wants to sponsor a trail, like happy to do that, you can name it, you can, we'll put your sign up.
Speaker 3:You know this trail is, yeah, sponsored in part by, I mean and so, yeah, the beast trails that that part of that bench cut was done by the old hockey team. Oh, that used to be here, cool, they came out and did a work day for the community and that's cool, got some pretty beefy guys to come out there and do bench cuts so well and then people can always donate time.
Speaker 1:you know which is something that clearly is needed all the time, and then I know it has to be coordinated.
Speaker 2:though it has to be coordinated, Don't just go out and start doing stuff.
Speaker 1:Do not just walk out and be like, oh I think I'm going to do some trail work today. Contact you guys first before you do anything. Come to a set trail day and a set cleanup or building day. Do it the right way. Don't be a hero and try to do it yourself, because actually you're being a jackass and causing more trouble than it's worth. Um, and then going into that, let's talk. So we talked about partnerships and stuff. Let's kind of kind of wrap things up a little bit with partnerships with. You currently have a ton going on with partnerships with the core of engineers and the cities and the parks and all these kinds of things. Um, do you and I know there's been partnerships in the past Do you currently have any like club partnerships, bike shop partnerships, team partnerships? Um, is there anything like that that's going on, uh in on on your trails or in the communities currently?
Speaker 3:talk about Arcadia. That's a great yeah.
Speaker 2:So so, um, one thing that was really cool um, when Tire Bike Shop opened their Edmund location up, kevin Caldwell was the regional director of all the shops out here and he had come out and done some time trials out there and I was the trail boss at the time and got to know him. And got to know him and he said I am going to adopt Arcadia as the Edmund Fat Tire Bike Shop local trail, right, it's right around the corner. And I don't know if that same thing had been said about the May Fat Tire Bike Shop adopting Bluff. But they are also out there, as you know, every Thursday and doing the party laps and that's kind of their, their trail that they go to Uh, so I think that's a really neat uh partnership and so in that partnership, or do they just do it with hosting events there, or do they do it with they do more than that.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they hosting events, so they'll put on like group rides. Uh, you know, party laps is a big one, yeah that one gets a lot of uh people to come out there um and it brings out everybody, all skill levels, everybody, yeah, you'll have your, your, you know cat one racers out there all the way down to somebody who probably hasn't been on the bike more than a handful of times who's wearing a funny like helmet with ears on it and you never know yeah, yeah, and they're, it's just yeah, that's, you know, your good time bike ride for sure
Speaker 2:um, so they, they are doing more. So, uh, the really cool thing that I've been proactive about that fat tire has helped me with is I've gone and had shirts made for arcadia hats. I'm wearing one right now. You're'm going to see it on a podcast but you can go buy them at the fat tire bike shop. They have them at may and they have them at the Edmund store and they're $30. So it's not cheap for a ball cap, but the cost to us to get these made is 18 bucks. So we're not making a lot of money, but all of that money goes back into the trail. It's just one way that we can do that. So them allowing us to do that at their shop is huge. They're not making anything off of it. So somebody could have been going into the shop and they would have spent the $30 on something at the shop and they chose to walk out with an OMBA hat or shirt. That is technically a loss to them. So they're giving back by allowing us to do that.
Speaker 2:I think that's huge, um, but they also, uh, another partnership is um, they sponsor the tour to dirt race at Arcadia and so I'm the trail boss there and I um help to facilitate the race. So Kevin Caldwell was the director of the first race, the promoter and directordwell was the director of the first race, the promoter and director, and I was the trail boss and kind of helped and we had a partnership going on then when he moved on. Now kevin kopak is taking his spot but isn't as involved in mountain biking as kevin caldwell was and so he's taking on more of the um. You know, making sure bike reg is updated and getting the uh somebody to come up with a design for the uh, the flyer for the race. But then I'm out there coming up with the course and getting the course marked and you know, doing any cut throughs or anything that we need for the race.
Speaker 1:But they're sponsoring that timing fee which is an expensive cost, that that's a big cut, yeah.
Speaker 2:So they're, uh, they're doing that and so, um, they're also sponsoring that for the zombie race. So you know, we'll talk a little bit about the zombie race. So we did the first one last year, um.
Speaker 1:I know you participated in it. Yeah, it was a great time.
Speaker 2:It is. It's so much fun. Um, it was a lot of work, but this year I'm going into it with a lot less stress because I know what to expect now. Yeah, but what it is is it's an endurance race and we've got it set up with a three hour and a six hour and the six hour you can you're a co-ed team or a male team or a female team. So the solo podiums, male and female.
Speaker 1:And for people that don't know what the three and six hour mountain bike events are about, I was so scared when I got into this world and a buddy was like let's go to Dallas to the six hour mountain bike race. I'm like, screw off, I'm going to run my bike for six hours Like I'm not in that kind of shape. And I went and did it and it was like maybe the most, one of the most fun events, because just do whatever you want to do. Like it's almost like a practice race, ish. If you want to go for six hours and ride hard, okay, go do it.
Speaker 1:There are some people that are doing that, yeah, and if you want to ride for a lap and stop and like, eat a sandwich and talk to your friends and then go back out because a buddy's coming through and you want to jump in with it, do it. That's what's so fun about the three and six hour events. You, it is what you make of it. So don't let the time and the name of it scare you. You need to come and just make it a day of hanging out with your friends.
Speaker 3:What does your flyer say? It's a ride.
Speaker 2:It's a party, exactly A hundred percent, and so that also at Arcadio.
Speaker 1:What's the date of that race?
Speaker 2:December 8th.
Speaker 1:December 8th, is it called the damn zombies again, damn zombies.
Speaker 2:So if you just Google damn zombies, it'll be one of the first results it takes you to a bike sign up.
Speaker 1:And I'll put a link in that.
Speaker 2:Thank, you, and so yeah, right now it's $40 to sign up. Anybody that I get to sign up before I believe it's November 6th, I'm putting all of those folks into a drawing for three $50 Fat Tire gift cards Super cool.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to promote the early sign up. I know I'm guilty of this myself. I try to compete in all the tour de dirt races and you don't know what's going to happen between now and next weekend. It could be rain, it could be you break something on your bike, you fall and get hurt, or your family member gets sick. There's so many different dynamics of life that can prevent you from committing to a race that far out. But from a race promoter perspective, it is very stressful when you're, you know, weeks away from a race and a dozen people are signed up?
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe. So I always tell people and one of my buddies always gives me crap about it but I'm like, you vote with your dollars. It's like, really one of the only powers we have on the planet is to vote with your money. If you don't like something, don't give them your money, like don't support it. But if you want to see something grow, if you want to see something succeed, if you want to see more of something you like, then pay your money. So, like g3 is a perfect example, I'm not able to go to the last race. I signed up for the omnium because I want to see more grassroots, really cool, fun gravel races. Yeah, so I paid for it. I'm not going. You know what it's cost of doing business? Yeah, so view it that way. If we're riding mountain bikes, chances are we have an extra 40 in our life to give. Chances are not always, but chances. Sign up, up, support it. If something happens and you don't make it, man, just consider it a donation.
Speaker 2:And that's exactly the thing with the damn zombies is for. The purpose of it is first to have fun. Bring an endurance event to Arcadia. But the second is all proceeds, go back to Arcadia Trails. For me to build more boardwalks and for us to add more features, and just add more trails.
Speaker 3:Support. It's just support Joe's not getting the latest electronic device or something from that, that's all.
Speaker 1:Anything that's left over goes right back into the club he's not rolling up in a new Sprinter van and being like oh man, that race was great this weekend. Thanks, guys. Sorry you didn't come. If you haven't been to that event that that it's fun.
Speaker 3:I used to race tour de dirt. I've been to those events that run well, but that that was the best Oklahoma event this good race event that I've been, so let me get a little flavor dressed up and you want yeah, I want to give a little bit of flavor of the race.
Speaker 2:Um, so, tom and debbie, they own uh oklahoma race company and they do all the timing for tour de dirt. And I talked to them and and I said, hey, you know, if some of your races I've seen you've got the arch, can you bring out the arch? Like I want you to bring out all your stuff, bring out your cool stuff, like this is, you know, let's make this cool. And so I'm like electronic timing. We have to have electronic timing.
Speaker 3:Like there's no way I'm gonna ask you guys to time people for six hours coming through and so that was and then ask people to wait three or four hours after the event okay, maybe I've been celebrating sometimes two or three hours to find out your darn results. Most of the time, yes so it was.
Speaker 2:It was so cool because I didn't know that they had this. But they come out with this like big 50 inch TV screen and you can see live results as people are crossing the line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 2:I'm like man, this is like top notch. So I was super impressed with that. Um, we're going to. You know, last year we had a pizza for the volunteers and we had burgers and chips and stuff for uh, but we're going to do food trucks this year to. You know, you learn each year like what works, what doesn't, and I'm like, well, you know, buy 150 hamburgers and you use 50 of them. Now, what am I going to do with the rest of these hamburgers for you know?
Speaker 2:So we'll do a food truck this year and I want to grow it into a festival. So maybe not this year, but maybe next year we'll do a two day and the first day we maybe do some short time trials or something Super cool. I want people to burn themselves out but have something that makes it more of a weekend thing and get more people to travel in. But we had, I think in total, we had to move the date. The date was originally supposed to coincide with Halloween and that's where the zombie theme came from, and it was the most miserable weekend I think I've ever experienced in my life and I'm like waiting till last minute like something changed and nothing changed, but it was like 33 degrees and raining all day long.
Speaker 2:Couldn't have been worse, could not have been worse conditions and then, uh, we pushed it out to our rain out date and it was the most beautiful weather you could ask for for that type of a race. So now this year, same thing it's going to be on that weekend. I'm going to stick with the zombie theme because I feel like if you're going to go out there and ride your bike for six hours, you're going to end up like a zombie, for sure.
Speaker 2:But I'm not going to push as much for people to wear zombie attire.
Speaker 3:But that's fun it was fun.
Speaker 1:It was fun and that's what's fun about those endurance events because it's a party, it's a good time. You want to dress up, you want to goof off, you want to have a good time, enjoy it. You're just playing bicycles, man. Everybody's just out playing bikes in the trees.
Speaker 3:You're drinking, you're eating. You got people in costumes.
Speaker 1:You got the amazing decorations.
Speaker 3:You're riding on a boardwalk with floating alligators.
Speaker 2:I mean come on, you got hecklers, you got a heckler corner. We're going to have bonfires this year, so, regardless of the weather, we'll have some bonfires going on. So I tried after last year's event was a success, after last year's event was a success, I tried to reach out to some of the other promoters that put on endurance races and said, hey, let's come up with a series. That'd be awesome. And um, surprisingly and um unfortunately, there was not a lot of excitement on that idea. Okay, or the level of interest was like hey, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea, you should do that.
Speaker 1:And you're like I am. That's why I'm calling you yeah.
Speaker 2:So so there's. There's that kind of floating out there and I'll throw it out for anybody listening If you put on an endurance event, there is interest in a series, and Chris Drummond also brought that up. I'm you know, I want to see more OMBA trails and tour de dirt Yep. I want to see more endurance mountain bike races in the off season, when we all should be, riding the base miles anyways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a ton of them in North Texas. There's no reason we can't have them here. Yeah, like no reason. Yeah, and we have a ton of them in North Texas. There's no reason we can't have them here. Yeah, like no reason. Yeah, and we have a lot of great trails to do them on. So because the I mean I know Chris used to do the Una Moss and now Team Warm Up's taking it over, yeah, and that's always a fun event, it's always great, and then it's nice to have another one on the north a lot of really, um, a type racers, and if you gave them nothing more than the bragging rights, they would be all about a series.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. Like I don't need a Jersey, I don't need a fancy trophy, but I'm going to win the series.
Speaker 1:It would be. It would be really cool to see one. It really if you, if you saw one like three different parts of the state you had one in the Norman, you had one in Edmond, you had one in Tulsa. It was a little series or something like that man, that would be super fun, Super cool. Yeah, All right, Whoever's listening to you promoters, let's all the promoters team up and kind of promote each other together and make it happen. It's not like you're competing. Yours is in December, Theirs is usually in January. If we could get a Tulsa one sometime in that area too.
Speaker 3:They, yeah, you. Just you can just wrap them up. This is, this is the endurant series. Yeah, that's a great, make it fun, make it, make it super.
Speaker 1:That's what's great about mountain biking. Should just be fun. It's just like be the first time you get on a mountain bike and I I don't think I've ever talked about it on here and she's probably going to kill me because she listens to these. But lindsey, my girlfriend, I have more fun riding with her and I tell her every time I because I I laugh the entire time because she's usually behind me and she's like you go first, and the whole time it's like riding with a kid, because she's having a blast, she's laughing, she's giggling, she's like, and then you hear it and it's like laughing and chuckling or she almost like wrecks and then you hear like and just like crack up because she saved it and I'm like that is the joy of a mountain bike, that like listening to her and watching her ride, because she doesn't do it a ton and she's kind of getting new into the mountain biking scene. But like, riding with her you get to go back to the experience of like when you first started riding the mountain bike, of all the joy of just riding, playing bicycles in the trees you are, it's like really brings out your inner childhood. So, without you guys doing all this work on the trails, those experiences would not happen, and so for that I want to say thank you, because if you guys didn't take care of these trails, I wouldn't have those experiences with her, which and with all my other buddies that I have all these great experiences with, and I wouldn't have been able to go do the you know, the race I did earlier this year, because we have great trails here so I had a great place to train. So without those trails, none of that exists. So thank you for that and for partnerships on that.
Speaker 1:I know you guys want to get the promoters together. We're call to action for our bike shops. Like we got some bike shops stepping up Sounds like we're going to hold capital. Chad's probably going to hate me for saying that, but you know they want to do some really cool new, different stuff with the CX course. You know, with Drummond back in town, he's really trying to get the CX in Oklahoma City fired back up and that's awesome. That Capital wants to step up and that be their trail that they adopt as far as like the CX course. So hopefully some of the other bike shop owners can step up and help just help. If they don't want to have the ability or the manpower to fully adopt, totally fine, but just get plugged into the system because that system is what pays their bills. So it's really great to see them putting their, their money and their time back into the community in a different way, outside of just their business. So, um, we have a super cool and exciting partnership between yeah, yeah, but before you know that one okay.
Speaker 2:So, uh, december 8th zombie race, 40 bucks. Sign up now, before November 6th, you get a chance to uh for a $50 gift card. There's going to be three of them, Uh, but also, if you go on, ride own budorg and sign up now, between now and December 15th, is it? I think it is, we are giving away a mountain bike, donated by. Fat Tire Holy cow yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'll put that link in there too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Fat.
Speaker 1:Tire is really coming through and supporting OMBA.
Speaker 2:You said it was RideOMBA, yeah, rideombaorg.
Speaker 3:Down at the bottom, it's got a join now, okay. Yep, down at the bottom, it's got a join. Join now, okay. Qr code Click it.
Speaker 2:And so anybody who joins now, if you're already a member, you can donate $50 to get your entry, and we're only going to take one entry per person. I think Right. So, um, yeah, and chance to win a Trek mountain bike.
Speaker 1:That uh trek mountain bike. That's awesome. What a cool. It's pretty cool, that's really cool, like yeah, yeah, see, if you're gonna join, now's the perfect time because you might get lucky. Yeah, so if there's ever a question, and when are you guys giving that away?
Speaker 1:december 15th is when just in time for a christmas present, yeah, so exactly perfect timing. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a really really cool little incentive. So, yeah, go check that out. Well, and I'll put these links in our show notes so people don't have to go search for them or in case you forget what they are.
Speaker 2:Now the punchline. Okay, now the punchline, before we get to see if there's anything else you guys want to cover.
Speaker 1:The punchline is and you guys came up with this, which I'm so excited about, because the whole mission and goal for me with doing cycling Oklahoma and trying to grow it is bringing the dirt scene together. So how can we get more people riding dirt, because that's what I love so, and I know a lot of people do so how can we make it safe? How can we grow the sport? How can we get more eyes on the sport and get people out there with the CX, with the gravel, with the mountain biking, uh, and you guys came up with the idea for us partner together, um, and so you guys are going to be a sponsor of the podcast for the next year, which, man, I cannot say thank you enough for that. That's going to be super cool.
Speaker 1:So we're going to figure out how we can take that money that you guys are donating, um, and put it back into the cycling community, back into the mountain biking community, um, I don't know if it'll be through an event, if it'll be something maybe we sponsor at Damn Zombies.
Speaker 1:I have an idea and we'll talk about it off the air. We'll figure out something, but there will be a special prize for someone at that race that Cycling Oklahoma gives that money back to, because that's the whole point is any money that comes in. How can we filter that out and grow our community? So I am greatly appreciative of you guys sponsoring the podcast for the next year and hopefully this will be the first step of us like roundtabling all of the different organizations that are out there that are working separately and it's really hard because we're all working separately trying to get money to grow what we're doing. But if we work together, maybe we can go to some of these organizations and these corporations and say, look, this is what we're doing, this is where the money's going, this is how we're helping our entire state and our entire community and maybe there's a little bit more power in those numbers. So that's, this is the first step of things. I think that hopefully we can continue to grow and have a long-term vision of growing our state.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for what you're doing to grow everything we're yeah, yeah, I'm excited about that takes people yeah, it takes people, and you guys have been doing it in the shadows for a long time, so it's nice to put you guys out there and tell people what they can do to actually help yeah well, so not everybody knows about ride on budorg, not everybody knows about your podcast for sure and we can connect the two online and, um, one thing that we had talked about was having a, you know a hub or a one-stop shop that you can go to with your website, where you can go and see, like, hey, what are all of the events that are scheduled out there from a race promoter standpoint?
Speaker 2:you go and you lock in a date and then, uh, somebody else goes and locks in the same date and it's basically like, like I want to go out and say, like my race hasn't happened this year. I want to go and say when my races are next year, right now, because I want to claim that you know claim that date.
Speaker 1:I'm going through that right now, trying to put on this gravel race because I don't want to step on toes, yep and could you imagine?
Speaker 2:if you had a calendar where you could go to and, like you control it. It's like hey, Ryan, please plug in my zombie race on this date so that somebody else doesn't come and step on my date.
Speaker 3:That would be awesome People say well, why is it a big deal? Just do it the next weekend. Well, we'll use Joe as an example. Depending on where the race course is, he's got to get a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. That takes weeks and he's got to get it approved. But they don't want to approve it until the city of Edmond approves it and they don't want to approve it until the Army Corps of Engineers. So they always have that balancing act. So you've got to get multiple permits and you've got to line your time up and you've got to get insurance. I mean, it takes two or three weeks just to get the insurance policy through policy, through the insurance policy is for a specific date.
Speaker 3:It's not just like any time. Yeah, you know so if you change something, you've got to change the date. This is why the race promoters get really nervous, and anyone that's done it knows it. You've got a lot invested and a lot of times Joe is putting. Use Joe as an example. He's putting his own money in for these things, hoping he's going to get it back when the race comes.
Speaker 1:Race promoters are not getting rich people, no not at all, and it's hundreds of hours yes, hundreds and it takes a lot. So, yeah, we're going to. I think, with all of us bringing our heads together, maybe we can come up with some really good resources and good things for our race promoters and our races, but also for the community at large, and I think everybody here at this table is open to any suggestions and ideas that the world has for us, because maybe we can use them and do them, and maybe we can't, but maybe it'll help spark an idea of something else. So, um, yeah, I would love for people to chime in and either get feedback for the podcast or get ahold of you guys for mountain biking and for trail ideas and thoughts, or, um, yeah, I mean, any of that's going to help. And, um, is there anything you guys want to cover as we wrap up and are done with this thing? Is there anything we didn't touch? Yeah, I gotta do it.
Speaker 3:I gotta do a thank you and a sorry.
Speaker 3:So, thank you for the people that are are members and the people that come out and do trail work, whether whether or not you're an OMBA member or not. But the sorry part's the thing I've got to do. It's kind of a chicken and egg problem, and so there are so many people that go out and they go to Bluff and they think the city is maintaining that trail and they don't realize OMBA is doing it. So why would they join and why are they going to put their money into their membership and why are they going to volunteer if the city is doing that? Here's the chicken and the egg part. We've got to do a better job of branding ourselves, both online and at the trailhead, but to do that you've got to have membership and money, and without the membership and money we can't do the trailhead signs and the things like that, and so the apology is there's an awful lot of people.
Speaker 3:We've sat on here and we've talked about membership over and over again through this whole podcast, but yet I know there are a lot of people that are probably for the first time finding out who we are and what we do. We're trying to fix that, but it is not easy. Yeah, if you're really great at social media, if you're really great at things like that, come help us. We could we could always use getting some help on that. Right, we are. Yeah, so Vanessa Drummond's talking about helping us, which would be a huge, huge boon. Yeah, so we're, we're making progress there, but we know that's weak and we know we're not doing a good job of telling you what we're doing, and that's part of the reason we're on here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's great.
Speaker 3:So thank you and sorry at the same time. No.
Speaker 1:I think that's a I don't know how to wrap it up any better than I think that's beautiful and uh, uh, let's do a little bit of a membership drive for the end of 2024 and see if we can. Uh, I don't know how many new members we can score, but we'll see if we can at least drive, Like, if we can do, 10% growth as 20 new members. It's not very much, it isn't, but that'd be great.
Speaker 3:We'll take it All right.
Speaker 1:That's my goal. I told you we sometimes we put stuff out here. We kind of put whole people's feet to the fire. I've completely thrown myself under the bus today, unfortunately. So now I have to volunteer for a trail day and I'm doing my best to be a trail day and I'm doing my best to be to help drive 20 new members by the end of 2024. Okay, see if we can see if we can pull that off. Thank you, I'll figure out how we're going to track that. So, all right, thank you guys so much for your time and for seriously everything you do. I mean I, my life would not be what it is without a group of people like you doing what you guys do, and it's seriously a thankless job like every single day. But I want to say for me and my buddies that I ride with all the time, huge thank you and uh, it's, it's a life-changing thing that you guys do for me and my friends. So I know there's thousands of other people that can say the same thing, so thank you guys.
Speaker 3:Thank you for hosting us. Yeah, appreciate it, thank you.