Bike Park Meeting Update

Stage one
Between the Tumwater and the Olympia meetings we had a good turnout that was very helpful in getting a better ideal of the concerns of some area riders, location ideals, and funding possibilities. I will be continuing to carry the bike park questioners with me just about every place I go to gather more input. The age of riders I have gotten questioners from runs from 13 to 58 now.

Amongst some of the great ideals was one for doing bike demonstration shows at community events to bring greater attention to the needs of off road cyclist. I am working with Olympia Parks, Capitol Theater, Olympic Outfitters, Alpine Experience, The Bike Stand, and local riders to do just that at Spring Arts Walk April 24th & 25th and the Outdoor Life Festival in Marathon Park May 2nd and 3rd. We will if all works out have stunts and ramps for both a BMX and Mountain Bike presentation with a table that will provide stickers of support, information fliers, and a petition for inclusion of mountain, BMX and other recreational bike use in future parks planning.

Common things mentioned in the comments section of the questioner by both BMX and mountain riders were a desire for a park to have separate beginner, intermediate and expert areas, rails, ledges, wallrides, lights, halfpipe or a bowl, a practice jump with foam pit, and water fountains.

Stage Two
Over the next few weeks I will be working with a landscape architect student to do some layouts and drawings that could be inserted into any park setting. This will become part of a comprehensive manual I will be drafting addressing planning, building standards, signage and liability coverage issues for a bike park. I will be borrowing from the Whistler Municipality Trail Building Standards, Evergreen Bicycle Alliance, American Bicycle Association as well as others. My hope is to create a guide book for developing a bike park that could be applied not just to city and county municipalities but maybe to build more challenging trails on state and federal land. As part of this I could use help going out to some of the dirt jump areas to take pictures and measurements to start writing and developing some building standards for today's dirt jumps that the ABA does not cover in there guidelines for BMX track construction. One a draft manual is published I plan to have another series of meetings sometime in late May early June for input so that the manual is edited by rider.