The first official week and a half of the Subaru/BikeTexas Trail Doctors has gone really well. Our first day out was spent in Houston, kind of ironic, considering that's where we just moved from. We met with representatives from the Houston Parks Department, Harris County Flood Control, National Parks Service-Rivers and Trails Conservancy and their hired consultants. The meeting was about an upcoming project south of Houston called The Hill at Simms Bayou. This is an HC Flood Control Property that was to be in Houston's mountain biking facility for their bid for the 2012 Olympics. The site will be a 9-mile mountain bike trail, along with a connection from a new bikeway to a couple of local parks, and an ADA trail. Right now, the group is trying to determine how to plan out the hills and terrain to best suit all users. The area currently is a flat plain that will be dredged to have flood control properties as well as the recreational uses.

Next we headed to Austin for training with the TBC Staff. After introductions around the office we spent the next few days learning paperwork processes, basic functions of TBC, and picked up our brand-new Subaru Baja. We also met with Robin Stallings, one of TBC's many volunteers and Texas' Bike Industry Representative, to visit the State Capital. If you've never visited our great state's Capital - it's well worth the trip. A great time to visit will be during TBC's Bicycle Lobby Day later this Spring.

Just before leaving Austin, we stopped by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Headquarters to meet with Andy Goldbloom, the administrator of TPWD's Recreational Trails Grant Program. TBC is receiving most of the funding for the Subaru/BikeTexas Trail Doctors from two grants from this program. Andy is very enthusiastic about our program. We got a great introduction about how things really work in our park system and the knowledge that Andy fully expects us to ride our bikes! Okay, he wants us to evaluate the trails in each park we visit, but he said we could do it on wheels!

After a stop at our home base in Warda to do some much-needed laundry, we headed straight back down 290 to Houston. Now we're in the middle of our training with the Subaru IMBA Trail Care Crew while they make a Hot Spot stop in Houston. IMBA's Hot Spot Program highlights cities with very little multi-use or mountain bike trails. With only six miles of mountain bike accessible trails in a city of four million people, Houston is severely lacking.

On Friday, January 10, the TBC & IMBA crews met with Greater Houston Off-Road Biking Association (GORBA) representatives at Memorial Park to assess the trail system. Work that day was a walk in the park, literally. We hiked around for eight hours and got a good look at the trails, and an area where trails could potentially be created. Saturday morning the IMBA/Subaru Trail Care Crew taught a trail-building seminar at the West End Community Center. There were over 40 attendants. Several techniques were discussed that would help to improve the condition of the trails in Memorial Park, as well as general guidelines for sustainable trail design that would prevent problems from developing in the first place. That afternoon the entire class went out to the trails to practice new design techniques and determine where work parties should focus their efforts the following day.

Sunday's weather was nasty, but 20+ dedicated volunteers still showed up at Memorial to do trail work in the rain. It was a great opportunity to see where the water stays on the trail, and we did a lot of de-berming and shaping of knicks in the tread to direct water off the trail. Monday we joined the IMBA/Subaru Trail Care Crew for a walk-through at Huntsville State Park to determine areas that need work and to assess the sustainability of some re-routes that had been recently flagged.

As IMBA says, "the tools don't lie", and the clinometer showed that the design of the re-routes were correct, because the slope of the trail tread never exceeded half of the slope of the hillside where it was placed.

Tuesday was a much-needed day off for us and the IMBA/Subaru Trail Care Crew so we could catch up on chores-laundry, re-organizing the car, and a little relaxation. We'll be continuing our training with IMBA in Houston through the 18th, and then we'll be headed home for a short break.

The next big trip will be out to Lajitas to help Mike Long construct some new trails.