It ain't sexy but--

IPSWITCH clean up/ trail maintenance: Saturday, Sept 26, 12 NOON. Meet at Rokeby Entrance on corner of Rokeby Ave. and Main St. RSVP to me lizschleeper[at]yahoomail.com. If you can bring a truck, let me know.

Guilt is a big motivator for me. I have said for years that I will start doing trail maintenance with EVMA, yet I have not contributed to the peninsula trails since before Hurricane Floyd. I think I can be more committed if I localize my efforts and focus on Ipswitch (aka Indian River Park) in Chesapeake, College Park section. See my previous commentary on Ipswitch.





Wes and I have the blessing of EVMA president Kirk Moore for this day, so this is an official EVMA maintenance event. The majority of the work will involve hiking with trash bags, and we plan to fill in some holes in the singletrack and mark/ cut some trail.

Ipswitch has the only real singletrack on southside Hampton Roads. It is also filled with BMX jumps. We are working with Chesapeake to have EVMA become the "adopt a park" caretakers, but as Kirk said, we will need to enlist the help of our BMX brothers and sisters for any real progress. It's pretty clear that much of the trash is left there by them since it's concentrated in the areas where they hang out.




However, we can't blame the kids for some of the severe litter. There are cars that have been retired to the middle of the park like this one, and Wes told me there is a refrigerator in the field that connects the trail systems. I have seen countless piles of household trash, including the pile of sh-- that someone had dumped there after picking up after a dog for a couple of weeks.


The place is a singletrack jewel but a disaster in terms of trash. Hope the mountain bikers can help Sept 26, and we can start discussing how to communicate with the BMXers, the community AND the darn city about maintaining it better. Gotta start somewhere.