okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Sunday, January 12, 2003

M is for making trails

I bumped into a group of mountain bikers making trails at Kill Creek today.

The park is new (opened less than a year ago), and over the winter I've noticed new trails being marked and built. I wasn't sure who was building them or what they were for. So, when I saw the guys working on the trails today, I chatted with them a bit.

They were working on mountian bike trails, but they said there were also trails for horse riding and trail running.

One of the mountain bikers complained that the horse riders didn't always make good trails. The mountain bikers had been to classes to learn how to make trails. It hadn't occurred to me that there would be classes in making trails. It isn't something I'd thought about, but I guess it makes sense.

I poked around at Google and found a page of mountain biking trail making info.

The guys working on the trail told me that the trail running trail might be open to mountain bikers. They'd heard a rumor that if a trail is designated as a pedestrian trail, it has to be wheelchair accessible because of ADA requirements. I'm not an expert in ADA, but that sounds a bit far fetched. The park already has a lot of paved hiking/biking trails that look accesible to me. It doesn't seem likely that every pedestrian trail would have to be accessible.

M could also be for motivation

A Cornell physics prof named Paul Ginsparg talked about motivation and physics (in the latest Cornell alumni magazine):

Workring toward the Nobel Prize -- that's the wrong motivation. It's as wrong as inner-city children playing basketball because they expect to make it into the NBA and strike it rich. The real reason we do science is for the fun of it.

posted by Michael | 6:57 PM

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