FROM THE BEGINNING

by Randy Faul

Many of us attended the first HS of the season back on Sept 18/19, but a few of the SADRA members couldn’t help but think about the Oct 30/31 event that was coming up fast. Those members had a huge task to fill as we were given the news that our Skeleton Scramble location was being moved to the Cox road Clear Springs Ranch location. The deal was our Homeland location was being mined again which would take all of our south end property and the parking area. The timing couldn’t be determined as to when this would start, but sometime at the end of October. Along with the fact that Bill and I had already found and marked some really nice Sunday thick woods sections the weekend before, the bad news came that week just as we were gearing up to start the following weekend with the entire club coming out to cut a new trail.

The decision brought some worries as that meant we had to move all our equipment, trailers, supplies and regroup. The only thing going for us at the time was we knew the Cox road property pretty well and it had good parking, but that also meant that we were using a section of land that

has been shared by many other organizations.

After we accepted the fact that this was our home for the next month or so, work began with mapping all the new fence lines and gates which turned into a real challenge, more on that later. The basics of positioning the start and scoring came first, and then the outgoing and return trails were added. Our starting grid took a completely different approach this time with our size increasing to 300x150 and it headed south over the ridge. We had some concerns at first but with our ace equipment operator, the end result was a success.

As everyone knows, this is old mining land and is very unique being that we could have sand and loose dirt in one section and hard pack terrain in the next section. That first 1.5 miles required a mowing, skid steer work, a dozer and a cultivator behind a huge tractor to get it even ride-able, and this is just a small example of how much work this property takes to lay out a trail. As the numbers turned out, the only trail used by both the Saturday and Sunday riders was the first 1.5 miles and the last 1.5 miles as it gave the Sunday riders a full 9 plus miles of virgin course.

Lots of weekends from Friday to Sunday night went into this event along with some of us arriving Tuesday and Wednesday of race week to finish preparing for the weekend event. The weather was perfect with rain on Thursday and Friday giving the dust a rest from prior weekends. This event took a tremendous amount of work, dedication, sacrifice and planning. We have some excellent passionate members of SADRA that worked their tails off, but also members of the Sunrunners club who stepped up and helped us out as they have before. I hope the membership can appreciate the amount of work that goes into these events and every club’s efforts to provide a safe, fun riding/ racing course for you and your family as these events just don’t happen overnight.

I used our event as an example of just a taste of the work that goes into these weekends. The other end of it requires securing the land, equipment rental, insurance, port a johns, dumpsters, supplies, fuel, equipment repairs, trophies, commitments from membersw, gate person-

nel, security, food vendors, trash control and a host of other items I probably forgot that just comes natural to handle. The simplest things like having trash cans available can have such an impact on the weekend results along with having an organized sign up.

As our events continue to grow and our membership reaches new heights, being a responsible member and showing appreciation for the opportunity to come out for the weekend means a lot to the hosting clubs. Things like not roaming around outside the camping/pit area on your vehicles, cleaning up after yourselves and maintaining a safe camp area makes our club’s job so much easier. This is just a small part of the process of putting on a quality event. Oh, and those fence lines and gates, they all had to be manned as this is a working cattle ranch and the separation of the cattle is part of their process. With 8 gates having to be watched, that was a task all in itself as we needed them manned all day Sunday. All in all, it was a great weekend and we appreciate all that came and especially showing the respect of being a responsible member.

THANK YOU

Thanks for listening,

Randy Faul

THANK YOU ROCKY MOUNTAIN ATV M/C FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT OF FLORIDA TRAIL RIDERS

OVER $150,000 IN RACE GAS GIFT CARDS EACH YEAR!