So last night Hutch and I drove out to Johns house for Pump Track night. Damien also came out and rode it with us. It was a fun night with the four of us riding and taking pictures and laughing.
Since you’ve never seen it. Here’s the track…, it’s hard to really see it’s layout without an aerial view.

You can go around the track clockwise or counter-clockwise, either way is basically the same as far as effort. It’s just a preference of which direction you feel comfortable going around the berm. Which, if you want to make it up-hill and finish the lap, you have to go through at a pace I describe as “very frightened”…in other words, you gotta be Hall n’ Oats through that berm like a fighter pilot wondering if the tires will hold or if your gonna high-side it and shoot out into the yard at speed or just wash out and pile up into it. Here’s a close up…

The berm will hold you at speed…if you trust your tires…and technique. It feels like mach speed going through, but is really only like 15-20 mph tops. The idea is you have to exit the berm with enough momentum to pump up the whoops to the top of the hill. It’s hard. I can go around for a couple-three or four of laps in either direction, without pedaling…but it’s effort. I leave here tired and feel it the next day. It’s like a good day at a skatepark basically. Hutch has a blast and can make it down the hill into the berm either direction and hold his speed through the berm, even goofing off like this…

I got a bunch of good riding shots of Damien while we were there. Some will hopefully make it onto the Clark Custom website…, like this one.

and this one,

where you can see the dirt being thrown up from his front wheel barely holding it’s line through the turn. Ok, he actually shot up and over the berm close to the exit and right after shooting past me for this pic. I still think it’s rad. Damien was kind enough to get a few goof shots of me riding through the berm. Here’s my favourite one, he called it “Game Face”…,

I got as close to the camara as I could without head-butting it out of Damiens hand as I shot through the corner. I made a goofy face as I went by and tried to look directly into the lens. We ended the evening drinking brews up on the porch and ate brownie’s in a muffin cup with a Reese’s p-nut butter cup in the center…DOPE. Here’s the scene we gazed at while talking story and sipping beers. I call it JOHN 7:15 … it’s remenicient of a church pamphlet.

It was a fun time as usual, and hopefully this will inspire you to come out sometime and ride with us…and pick up a shovel of course too. Stay tuned for who will be the second person to make it all the way around the track. I’m proposing taking the chain off a bike to make it legit.
RobQ