Friday, August 28, 2009

W.E. Rock in Oroville

Surplus City in Oroville CA certainly knows how to put on a good show with a man made rock crawling course that had no mercy on competitors and their well built rigs that showed up for the W.E. Rock event.

Tons of concrete and crazy sizes of military culvert pipes helped to create a course that challenged the best of the best and will be the talk of the town for quite awhile.

Surprisingly, the blazing triple digit heat didn't dampen the spirit of the spectators who showed up in force to take in the wild ride and rolls that happened in front of their eyes.

Here's some of the action packed shots I was able to snap.

Matt Messer, from Trail Gear getting some air over the top.


Wedged in a tree. Good thing those were there as I had to be quick on my feet!

Another whoops from the same obstacle but this time I decided to play it safe and headed to the uphill side.


You guessed it, same nasty spot. Just about all of them rolled and gave the crowd a thrill.












Sunday, August 16, 2009

NorCal Rock Races

This was my first time to the NorCal Rock Races. I have to say that being right there on the course was pretty darn exciting just because of the horsepower and the "race" factor. Unlike rockcrawling events that I cover this fast paced full on throttle sport is exciting and fast paced. I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to next years line up at Prairie City.




Monday, August 10, 2009

Get out of the heat, go kayaking!






Del and I had a grand time touring Mendocino a couple of weeks ago and we have yet to slow down. We're finally sitting down for some catch up time behind the computer screen!

I would like to thank the special, and not to mention fun, couple at Liquid Fusion www.liquidfusionkayak.com for taking us on our first kayak trip on the Noyo River.

We were treated to a leisurely paddle down to the marina and past some historical logging remains from a bygone day.

Their extensive knowledge of the area and the critters that call the area home was fascinating to hear about and the picture taking was phenominal.

They offer anywhere from mild to wild tours including a sun set bird paddle, cruising the wild, and a wet and wild coastal cruise. They also offer kayaking classes for those of you who get hooked and would like to do more.

Be sure and give the owners, Jeff and Cate a call and check them out when you're enjoying the "coolness" of the coast! 707-962-1623

Success!

Op/Ed, info, from Jim Hennegan, of www.justgoodtrails.com

I had to share this as sometimes we get frustrated and lose sight of what we're doing and why.

##

So, how do we measure success in the off road pro access arena? Want to know something? This was a major bother to me just a short time ago.

It seems we shout, work, volunteer, and move forward with a resolve every day, but do not see much feedback. Our resolve often is met with a few catcalls or negative responses. However we move on. I think that those of us who are moved to keep these trails open for everyone just keep pounding on, it is those on the fringe I think we need to assure. You see success seems to be measured in small ways a lot round here.

Recently I joined Facebook; I soon noticed Del Albright was a member so I hooked up with him as friends. Now I get his daily reports on what is going on in his life. While he recently was on the border to border run and posted a lot of comments. I was at work talking about some friends of the trip and soon a few guys were asking how he could do so much trail without roads. This was soon a discussion about public lands and how we are battling to keep them open. About pro access organizations and how the future was a day to day battle to keep these trails and areas open. That met with a few interesting comments but bottom line is that yesterday I had one of those guys come up and ask what he could do to help.

Success

Over a few comments on Facebook

Because Del Albright tried new technology.

I know, it seems small, but each time we win someone over, each time we plant a seed, each time we get someone to acknowledge our battle we have a success. We could measure it by huge Land Issue successes in court, but those are not the biggest successes we have. Oh they are huge on the horizon, but each of those were possible because we reached someone who had the talent to see that issue through.

We are not all lawyers, we are not all writers, some of us are simple Adopt A Trail workers, some of us just go to public meetings and clap in the background. There is a job for everyone. You know that guy who loves to camp 3 cubicles down, he could be the next guy to start volunteering somewhere and be a leader in that area. But we need a small success first, we need to get him the message in a way he understands. Maybe a weekend on trail with a small talk somewhere about Access rights. Then we need to talk to the guy who fishes those mountain streams, the hunters, the hikers, we are all users of the public lands.

The small successes are those that matter, they set us up for the big ones.

Let us take huge pride in the small ones, and realize these are the ones that we need most, each new member of our community is a number, and we need these numbers to grow. Go out and help build this number one new mind at a time.

thanks for reading

James G Hennegan

James can be contacted email

BajaEdition@Gmail.com

Or by going to

WWW.JustGoodTrails.com

Photo Contest

I won a W.E. Rock competition photo contest (with Del as Runner Up winner), WITH our BlueRibbon Coalition titles used in the announcement. Very cool.
Check out the pics and see my WAY COOL shot of a buggy doing a nose dive.
http://werocklive.com/blog/?p=48

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Letter From The Boss

The Letter from the Boss


Dear employees:

As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barack Obama is our President and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way. To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%. But since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead. This has really been bothering me, since I believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who would have to go.

So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lots and found sixty 'Obama' bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem.. They voted for change, they should get it.

I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

THE BOSS