Marky-Mark Maintenance

Looking a bit more like Winter here these days.

Well, Winter finally stuck around long enough that fat biking makes sense and the wet spots are frozen, making fat bike travel ideal. The level of snow is still on the meager side. We could do with more for good fat biking, but hey! We'll take it. the way things have been going this is almost more than we could hope for.

Wednesday last week N.Y. Roll and I went out on a mission. That mission was to make Marky-Mark somewhat traverse-able. there were about five points where dead falls had made things where you had to dismount to get over them. I had already been there and done a bit of clean-up through a re-route that had been neglected. That happened about a month ago or so.

It was colder, but not crazy cold. 19°F when I started out with no wind to speak of at all. However; it was spitting something. Freezing rain? Freezing fog? Not sure, but whatever it was had coated the street and I knew it was going to be dangerous to ride on the pavement. Car drivers would be getting out of control on this stuff. So, I ducked off onto the nearest straight through alley I could find and the snow was perfect. Packed but it had traction. I noted an accident on one corner as I crossed a street. N.Y. Roll told me later he almost got taken out by a car out of control on his way over to the Green Belt.

The whatever it was falling from the air ended up turning into snow, then it disappeared. I got into the Green Belt, met up with N.Y. Roll, and then I followed him to the first dead fall on the East side. I had brought my "battle hatchet" with me. It is a funny tool that came out of a fire kit on a light aircraft from France. (Long story) Anyway, it has a weird, frightening shape and a red and yellow striped handle. We started hacking away and actually got about 3/4's of the way through this 12'-15" round log. It was hard work. We really should have had an axe. A nice long handled, heavy axe.

CAUTION! Men at work!

Then we came to our senses. N.Y. Roll grabbed a 7-8 foot long branch and tried levering the log. I looked and remembering my 7th grade physics, I motioned that we should find another shorter piece of wood to act as a fulcrum. With this crude, simple machine the two of us levered the 25' long tree trunk off the tread of the trail Success!

The rest of the trail is navigable and passable by skilled riders adept at hopping logs. Probably when Spring comes I'll have to get someone with a bigger saw or axe to chop out about two other dead falls. But beyond this, the old Marky-Mark is doing just fine after 23 years. Can't ask for much more than that.