episode 140 : a little back ground

along time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

a group of kids, tired of plying their developing skill riding around in the same circles all the time, came up with an idea.

How cool would it be to link up all of the trail system's in the Newark area? Can it be done, how long would it take? how much road would be needed, avoided?

4 park year one.
at that time the youngins rode out of the shop that sponsored them: Wooden Wheels in Newark. The idea of the four park was to break the cycle of
riding around the same smaller parks, the same trails and create a bigger ride, something more of a challenge more of an adventure.

The first four park rides would leave from the shop charge down creek road, up through Carpenter park, over to fairhill to wrap around the little egypt loop, and then down 273, to Rittenhouse and finally Ironhill, before going back up iron hill and home. Sometimes when we were really adventurous, we'd ride scottfield, a set of trails behind a small neighborhood that moto's ride on now, but originally was a testing ground for WWII tanks that Chrysler built. Lots of quick up and downs, lots of deep puddles that you don't want to know what is in them. For those counting at home:

park 1: Carpenter park
park 2: fairhill
park 3: Rittenhouse
park 4: Iron Hill
park 5: scottfield (if you were super adventurous)

I still remember the first time we made that loop, we felt like conquerors of the world. Also mind you at this time the fairhill system was about 25% as big as it is now. the concept of riding 3 hours and never hitting the same trail was pretty foreign to us.

4 park the second generation:
Somewhere along the lines, Jay Jay made the great observation that if you can ride 6 hours in a weekend, you can do a 24hr team race. Yup, he was right. At that same time, Ted Logic, Chris Van, Caltuna, and Fitzy were all living over in Newark. These rides where no longer a week night challenge, but a Saturday morning event that many folks got excited for, as we often had large groups of folks heading out to tackle our now growing multi-park epics.

Ted devised this great loop of heading out 273 to fairhill, doing a big loop out there and then slowly working our way back to the house on Elsworth, by weaving our way back through carpenter, white clay: which at this time was a series of double track rolling trails with some long and steep climbs that butted up to Middle run on fox den road, finally we'd cut through middle run, and then ride the judge morris estate, which was formerly UD land, and a series of cool pirated trails formed on the property, with a totally different character than middlerun. Believe it or not, this sections used to have the most challenging climbing, and technical riding in town. again for those counting at home:

park 1: fairhill
park 2: carpenter/white clay
park 3: Middle Run
park 4: the judge

4 park from Fatmarc's
this generation was a product of me moving to fairhill, and wanting 3.5 hours or so on the bike. Often leaving from my house at some ungodly early hour, we would weave our way through fairhill, hit white clay, which was blossoming, through middle run and the judge. The problem is, by the time we have ended up out at the judge we often find ourselves bonking, with pretty much the same territory to follow on the way home. Yikes. Mileage here had uped to about 38-40, and many would sit in for the fairhill section, and drop off along the way. This was about the time we started having out of town guests like Bob, Wes,Trevor, Ricky D, Brian B, Chris Allen, and Elk come down for the ride. Still love to get Kuhn down for a ride.

We usually did these in the spring as base miles, or in the summer with some more intensity planning for a big event. The score card reads:
park 1: fairhill
park 2: carpenter/white clay
park 3: Middle Run
park 4: the judge

The Current Version:
Is a product of the sick minds of Buddy and Matt. The ride will leave from Matt's house, which is strategically located between fairhill and the whiteclay-middle run system (which has become so similar it's hard to call the parks separate anymore as the character of each park is so vanilla now- not a complaint, just an observation). These rides usually take 4.5 hours and are roughly 50 miles. Leaving from Matt's works because you can choose to take on the more difficult fairhill first, or the more gentle middlerun/white clay system. My vote is to get the tougher section out of the way first, for instance last weekend we did 30 miles at fairhill, then moved over through white clay and middle run, to highlight some of the newer trails, before working our way home.

Now this ride may no longer be called a 4 park, especially because we skipped the judge last week but it is by far the boldest and biggest commitment from what we have done on these rides thus far. Very cool.

On the score card:
1. Fairhill
2. white clay
3. middle run
4. the judge

thanks for taking this walk down memory lane with me.

stay in school.

respect.

fm