First Annual Trail Festival Recap

Last weekend we held the Trail Festival, an event designed not only to complement our upcoming Good Dirt Ride, it's also a part of the Southern California calendar with SDMBA as well as the CAMTB ride series. And we think it went pretty well!

Friday afternoon our campers started arriving, we took over the entire Sycamore Group area at OC Park's O'Neill right at the base of the Trabuco Canyon. Families checked in, set up their tents, broke out the bikes and started doing what we love. We even had a contingent that rode to the Luge for a beautiful sunset lap.

On Saturday morning the campers were served Wahoo's burritos by none other than Wing Lam himself. And our awesome sponsors got set up too, MTB supporters like Delium Tire, Formula 100, The Path Bike Shop and Fix MFG we all on site and Fox MTB and SDG components made great donations as well. Then the rest of the crew started arriving because they were there for the restart of the Poker Ride of our Share roots!

Our resident jester Good Dirt Kurt sent the riders on their way, looking to build the best hand while enjoying the awesome trails from the arroyo to Vista point. Everyone chose their route and our friends from thinkMTB met them with a deck of cards and a smile. And the younger riders were treated to a fun set of skills development from our own Todd and Donny at RideRx. At 11:30 riders we all returned to the campsite, draws complete and appetites earned. And In n Out burger was there and ready to serve.

Everyone grabbed the meal of their choice and then we gathered in a shady corner of our campground for the afternoon festivities. The next hour or so was marked with prizes for the kids from Donny mixed with a generous raffle from our sponsors and anchored by the awarding of the Poker Ride awards by none other than Steve Larson, former President of Share. We also enjoy a presentation from Darshan at Warriors of Santa Anas regarding the work they and other Association members are doing to resume trail access in this awesome backcountry.

By now our MTB family was starting to see not only were we there for camaradarie, riding and general fun...they had noticed the words "Protect and Expand" on our Trail Festival logo. We enjoy the outdoors, we want the government agencies that impact them to understand it. We chatted a bit about our Protect Your Trails agenda and everyone did a comment card about why they loved the outdoors. Why? because we had a very special keynote, our US Congresswoman Young Kim joined us to share how committed she was to preventing land sell-offs and protecting the Federal resources that take care of the lands we love. THANK YOU!

That's a tough act to follow, nonetheless we had more in store for the evening. Back to the kids courses, chilling at camp or taking advantage of the unplanned water works due to a main breaking out on Live Oak! Then it was time for us to break bread together again, Chuy's came in with an awesome taco dinner and later that evening the camp fire was lit and the requisite S'mores were made while stories of the days adventures, the passion we have for biking and the new ways we learned earlier that we could be part of the trail movement.

See here's the thing, we are a family - it's our strength, it's our motivation, it's what makes the riders of Orange County special. The Trail Festival was about that, riding together, sharing meals, swapping tales and making plans for the next steps in protecting and expanding. It was an honor to be among all of you, to watch the amazing work of our volunteers who wanted so much to give you a great experience and to see that next generation of our ridership having a blast right along side the rest of us!

That's it, that's why and that's how you know we're going to do this again next year and it'll be even more fun!