Darryl and I loaded up the bikes and camping gear early Friday morning and headed down to South Carolina for the first of the 2 planned Board of Directors meetings this year. IMBA is starting to implement a Regional Level design to try to get other areas of the nation coming together, working together, sharing ideas, resources, etc… They are modeling this off of the SORBA model, so this Board of Directors meeting is really the Southeast’s RLC meeting and already ahead of the game. Chapter board members from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, and North Carlina were present.

Being my first ever foray into a business style meeting for SORBA, it was with dragged feet and a feeling of “this is going to be a waste of time” that I agreed to attend. I couldn’t have been more wrong in my early assessment. The meeting was kept in order and marching along while still allowing concerns and questions to be heard from the chapters present. The intellectually stimulating discussion was both engaging and educational.

My favorite presentation from the day came from Dave Senecal and Scott Martin from SORBA Paulding. Their presentation was about how to build trail in a weekend using the inspirational and incredible story of Sara Babb Park. Essentially a precursor to IMBA-SORBA’s Gateway Trail concept, Sara Babb Park is a city park where they’ve been able to build three 1-mile loop trails connected by connector trails giving the trail design a shamrock shape around ball fields, soccer fields, and playgrounds. This concept is something I personally would love to see more of in the greater Nashville area. Neighborhood parks including small trails and skills parks for kids and families to enjoy riding as well as dirt paths off of (or paralleling) the greenways, allowing people to enjoy more nature in the city.

Aside from the trails being built, the story of how their community came together to help build the trail was the inspirational part. They had 175 volunteers show up. Volunteers who weren’t mountain bikers or cyclists at all, but members of the community working together to build community. Amazing. Many lessons and ideas can be drawn upon from this incredible success story.

A group ride at the famed FATS trail system was planned, but the torrential multi-day rain washed up those plans. While Darryl had to sit through a short executive committee meeting following the board of directors meeting, I took advantage of the break in the weather and suited up to get a spin around the lake on the service roads. On the recommendation and urging by one of the local SORBA chapter members, I ended up riding the Bartram trail that strings 8 miles of trail from the visitor’s center to the Petersburg campground where we were staying.

Not wanting to damage trail or ride in mud, I was assured the trail would be great, and amazingly it was. The soil is similar to Sewanee’s Perimeter trail: rocky, sandy hardpacked soil. While there were areas of standing water, it was like riding on a rocky creak bed vs plodding through muddy soup. On the trail I met up with 3 other SORBA members and I was lucky enough to enjoy 18 miles of trail before meeting back up with Darryl and starting the long drive home.

We arrived Friday night to cold temps and rain, lots of rain. It rained most of Saturday but cleared off by 2:30 when I was able to sneak out for the ride in shorts and a jersey enjoying 70 degree temps. Just as I finished my ride the rain dumped again and temps dropped to the low 60′s. We enjoyed clear weather through Atlanta then were met with rain, then sleet, then snow in Tennessee, the temperature dropping from 45 on the Southeast side of Monteagle to 30 degrees on the Northwest side. Pretty typical weather for a SORBA BOD meeting, or so I’m told.