[The following is a trip report by Jim Grover, 3rd term president of the Trailblazers and Tom Mathews, past president.  The IMBA Summit was held in Augusta, Ga. May 5 - May 8].

Jim Grover and I departed the Metro-Charlotte region on the morning of May 5th, to attend the 2010 IMBA Summit in August, Ga.  We arrived in Augusta and drove directly to the Forks Area Trail System (FATS) for some pre-Summit riding.  On an extremely hot and humid afternoon we rode three of the four “south” trails in the FATS system, "Deep Step", "Great Wall" and "Skinny", covering 21 miles, failing to ride only the "Brown Wave".  FATS was designed and built by Bill Victor of Long Cane Trails and is a model of sustainability with beautiful flowing lines and plenty of rolling grade dips, invented and popularized by Mike Ritter.  More about Mike later.  Many of you may remember Bill as the contractor that redesigned and rebuilt the Anne Springs Greenway trails 8 years or so back.

I started the ride with a picture of Tom's fat tail hanging off his saddle taped to my handlebars. Initially I wanted motivation to be sure to kick his butt, but I soon realized the photo would be the only view I'd get of Tom in front of me. After the ride we shared our post ride beverages with a foursome of Delaware Trail Spinners, the newest IMBA (not SORBA) Chapter club (see below).   

It is interesting to note that in the first 30 minutes of mixing with the attendees, I was asked to turn around so an IMBA Canada member could photograph our club logo on my shirt.  He said it was just what they we looking for to design a logo of their own.

The Canadian later told me he really wanted a photo of Tom's fat butt, but didn't fully explain what he was gonna do with it. 

I bumped into IMBA’s Joey Klein who informed me he had seen the Trailblazer video in Australia! 

IMBA's Executive Director, Mike Van Abel told me on Friday that he has used our video in several presentations too!

We have a name and a stake in this game folks, we have done many things right over the years and we are known throughout the cycling community.  Congrats to all who have contributed over the years.

Several folks introduced themselves to us, remarking on their knowledge of the Trailblazers and their appreciation for our trails. The guys from one of SORBA's newest chapters - Cape Fear - expressed high praise for Sherman Branch saying they can't wait to get back there.

The Summit opened on Wed evening with a BBQ dinner and all the Fat Tire Ale you would care to drink (this would be a reoccurring theme) at Fat Al’s, a short walk from the hotel.  After reconnecting with several friends, acquaintances and making a few new friends it was off to the official opening ceremonies at the Jessye Norman amphitheater on the Savannah River.  After introductions and acknowledgments and a fun, motivational speech by one of Augusta’s native sons, it was off to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with some of our peers.

Broad Street in downtown Augusta has a wide median with many blocks of old retail storefronts,  containing more than a few drinking establishments. Very conducive to strolling, window shopping, and tasting the local produce. (It's a shame Charlotte destroyed all of its old downtown retail.) Highlights were pitchers of Stella and more Fat Tire, a round of top shelf tequila courtesy of James (of the infamous Atlanta James Dean duo) and lots of laughs.

Following breakfast on Thursday morning, Mike Mercuri of SRAM gave the keynote address, based around the cycling advocacy of the parts manufacturer that has pledged to contributed $10M to cycling advocacy in the next 5 years.  Then it was off to our first session of the Summit.  There were three break-out sessions each day, with four different topics offered per session. 

Jim and I both attended “Funding Trail Projects”, we then split in the afternoon.  I attended sessions on a “FATS Case Study”, and I closed the day with “All-Weather Trails”.  It should be noted that Woody Keen was a featured speaker on All-Weather Trails but was forced to miss the Summit due to reconstructive knee surgery following a biking mishap.  Best wishes to the Woodsman and his recovery. 

My first solo breakout session was a presentation on IMBA's Chapter Programs. Due to the very successful "joining" of IMBA and SORBA, IMBA has made it a priority to duplicate the IMBA-SORBA merge with other individual clubs around the country. Instead of just being a member club, paying a club membership to IMBA, clubs can now "merge" with IMBA sharing members and membership fees and back office services just like IMBA and SORBA have done.  My other session was on the Recreational Trails Program grant funding. 

Jim and I beat feet back to FATS and hit the “north trails” consisting of "Big Rock" and the "Tower". 

Following another round of ride-stop and wait for Tom to catch up-and go again, we shared a post ride beverage with Jeff Barber, the developer of the Singletracks website and a presenter for the Connecting With The Bike Media session. This guy was as lean as Tom is round - not one ounce of body fat! 

Dinner followed at Tako-Sushi (excellent-but how can someone's backside get that big when he eats that much fish? Must be the beer) before attending the Mountain Biking Film Festival and a few gallons more of the ever flowing, Fat Tire Ale. Yum-yum - but I avoided imbibing too much to "win" anything in the silent auction. Er, maybe that was more 'cause I never even saw the room with most of the auction items - "Doh!" Sheesh, what a zero!

On Friday morning a People for Bikes speech was followed by a keynote address from Hans Rey.  My break-out sessions included “Bike Parks: Getting Started”, “Bike Patrols” and “Urban Bike Trails”.  [color=#ff0000] I attended "Connecting with the Bike Media", "Working with the Bike Industry" (specifically, grant programs sponsored by Specialized and Trek), and "Insurance and Risk Management for Bike Clubs". Jim attended a 4th session on Friday, the "IMBA Congress", chaired by IMBA director, Mike Van Able.  Following my final session, I accompanied Joanna Atkison and Fred Lewis to the “north” trails before rejoining Jim for dinner at the Mellow Mushroom.  More on Joanna and Fred, later. Neither Joanna nor Fred asked for a picture of Tom's butt - but I missed that ride, hmmmm.....

The IMBA Congress was a special session requested by Mike Van Abel to help address and answer his question: "are we (IMBA and the entire mountain biking community) properly organized/ structured, or do we need a better model, to drive toward success?" He prompted input for and participation in the Congress prior to the Summit on his blog on the IMBA website. In his blog, Mike used a comparison to one of the most successful lobbing organizations in the world, the National Rifle Association. How do we turn a membership of 28,000 IMBA members, the disparate club members (gets us up to 60,000), and other mountain biking industry advocates (100,000 total names in IMBA's database) into something more resembling the 4 million member, lobbying behemoth, NRA?  

IMBA has lobbied for our sport with mixed success for many years and just recently has seen the federal legislatures and regulators start to "get it" and also start to be willing to more readily fund mountain bike trail projects.  I believe Mike perceives (as others among us - notable our own Mr. Archer) that we are on the cusp of being able to make a BIG advance in our movement; we are becoming known for many things that not only make sense and fulfill us individually, but are now particularly politically correct, namely, a healthy lifestyle/activity, a "green" transportation alternative, an obesity mitigant, a good shepherd of natural resources and green spaces, a volunteer force extraordinaire that provides serious amenities for the entire population of our communities at incredibly low cost, etc. We see opportunities to build new trail every week, but we must be properly organized and effective to take advantage of them. This is true both for IMBA at a national level and for the clubs at the local level.

Mike wanted only 50 industry advocates to participate in the Congress, using a structured group feedback model, to address and reply to his question. We broke into smaller groups to identify our primary responses and then compared and ranked the results of each group. While a particular model or plan of reorganization was not clearly identified, there were several prevalent themes: we (IMBA and the entire MB community) are not well organized at the present time; we greatly lack effective communication both vertically (say, nationally from IMBA down to the local level) and horizontally (sharing best practices and strategies among different clubs). I tried to stress that to grow membership, IMBA needs to offer a value proposition for new members; what will they get for their money? Can they vote for the IMBA board or direct policy of the organization? Will their membership help IMBA better support their local club's activities? It is also clear that IMBA has already taken some serious steps on a path to reorganize itself. First, they are replicating the IMBA-SORBA model with the new IMBA Chapter program referred to above. Additionally, they have instituted a Regional Representative program for all sections of the country. (It was also clear that Mike would also really love to have paid IMBA State Representatives for the entire country, if there we funding for such an initiative). They understand that IMBA proper is the effective voice for lobbying at the national and perhaps regional level, but they also perceive a need to better support the grunt work of building clubs and trails at the local level. One other take away was that any organizational model used needs to be flexible; not all clubs need the same type of support. Remarkably, some need little or none at all. But I think most everyone agrees that as a movement, as mountain bikers, we really need to speak with one voice in order to best be heard and to get our piece of the funding pie. There is a relatively untapped ability to affect public policy and there are enormous amounts of funding potentially available if we do it effectively.

Takeaways from the sessions were plentiful.  Shoot for the stars on funding projects, it just takes one or two folks w/deep pockets to make a project work.  And the fact that once funding does indeed open up for a project, have your ducks in a row to get the project moving forward ASAP.  This is especially true when dealing with the US forest service, BLM, etc.  Bike Parks (skills areas) are doable once the risk manager is made comfortable.  Softball by far is the No. 1 injury sport, mountain biking in well down the list.  Build and design skills areas properly and to last.  There were plenty of ideas and suggestions on armoring and dealing with low lands.  Rich Edwards, former trail care crew member (he worked with us on the causeway at Springs) is more than willing to be a resource when we have issues.  The Bike Patrol session was very informative and I must admit that I haven’t put much effort into researching the program, but it is an important piece of the local mountain biking scene.  IMBA presents “webinars” on the patrol and it might be a good idea to encourage more to be involved, especially at some of our longer trails such as the USNWC, Lake Norman and Sherman Branch.

Another important takeaway was encouraging everyone to register at peopleforbikes.com.  They are looking for shear numbers, not membership or donations, but are hopeful of attaining 1 million members to speak as one voice for cycling, showing lawmakers just how big the cycling community really is. I learned important facts about what our current insurance may or may not cover, how some of our MOAs could or should be revised, some new industry funding sources for smaller projects and had reinforced a lot of the things we'd like to be better at as a club.

We need to be sure we have an organizational structure and membership support to more easily manage our basic functions, better promote our mission and successes to the community and be prepared to take advantage of the new trail building opportunities that become available.  

Jim and I departed Augusta on Saturday morning (after I, somewhat regrettably, didn't go back to the hotel at a decent hour and caught up with Hans Rey, James Dean, Charles, Victoria and others back on Broad Street!) (he looked like sh*t on Saturday morning!  This is the guy that's leading our club?  Hmmm) and drove to Woodstock, Ga. to ride at "Blankets Creek".  We have heard Ellis Alexander of SORBA Woodstock speak and have been intrigued by their fundraising to complete the "Van Mitchell" trail at BC.  We found the trail to be challenging and we rode some of their “old school” trails that made Renaissance look like a freeway. I was particularly blown away by the scene in the parking lot. It stressed a strong takeaway I had from the IMBA Congress session; Tom Saurett's wife (a MB advocate in her own right) suggested that as we build the appropriate organization to support the needs/desires of mountain bikers, we really need to look ahead to who and what those mountain bikers will be in 5-10 years, not just at today’s historical and current perception of what mountain bikers are. I saw that 5-10 year future in the parking lot at Blankets Creek: certainly hard core bikers in both spandex and baggies with serious bikes, but also lots of families, and kids, of all ages and abilities; one guy on a street bike, and a two and a half year old MOTORING on 2 wheels through the lot (at a stronger pace than Tom put out all week I might add) saying "I'm gonna win a mountain bike race". The diversity was almost stunning. That looked like the real edge of the cusp for the future success of our sport. That is the vision of what we should be building toward. We may have started as renegades operating under the radar, but our sport is becoming truly MAINSTREAM. Those wannabe rebels among us (and our own fantasies) may rue the day, but this development directly supports and is reflective of the success of our mission statement.  

We motored off to Hiawassee, GA and spent Saturday evening with Jim’s in-laws before leaving to meet the aforementioned Joanna and Fred at the Jackrabbit Trails in Hayesville, NC (think the intersection of GA, TN and NC).  Joanna lead the effort to pursue the forest service in acquiring the land and raised the funding for an absolutely beautiful 15 miles of trail, built by mountain bike Hall of Famer, Mike Ritter, inventor of the rolling grade dip.  This is the most scenic parcel of southeastern land that I have ever ridden.  Much like LNSP, the trail flowed and would be fun for a beginner all the way to an advanced rider.  They even have a covered bridge!  The Jackrabbit Trail, while not easily accessible (~4 hours from Metro Charlotte) will be a trail that I will return to. (I just hope he doesn't embarass us again in front of the locals! )

The national mountain bike advocacy movement is a small community and the Trailblazers are an important part of it.  Tom Saurett and SORBA are adamant supporters of our club and are allies, not to be feared.  We need to continue to foster our relationship with SORBA as they have a lot to offer our club.  Tom has invited us to attend an upcoming southeast regional meeting.  We’ll keep you posted… but don't hesitate to ask us any questions.