7 Beards for 7 Hunters?
Andy Thompson
April 29, 2008 11:42 AM
This isn’t quite the cow with two heads Virginia had a couple of years back, but a turkey with 7 beards is certainly wacky.
Read and see here...
Events at Pocahontas SP
Andy Thompson
April 29, 2008 6:25 AM
Last weekend it was the mountain bike festival put on to celebrate 10 years of singletrack at the state park; this Sunday it’s Montrail’s “Run Like a Girl” trail race to raise money for cancer research; the weekend following it’s the Primal Quest Sprint Series adventure race. Bottom line: Pocahontas State Park is a busy place these days.
Rumours…
Andy Thompson
April 25, 2008 7:51 AM
No, not the Fleetwood Mac album.
I got a call from Mike McCormick of the Sports Backers yesterday. He said there was a rumor going around at the recent Twisted Tire spring mountain bike race at Poor Farm Park that the Urban Assault MTB race (part of the Capital One Adventure Games) in June has been cancelled. Not sure how that got started, but it’s untrue. The race will be handled by the Sports Backers themselves (last year Laurie Mehler of Richmond Multisports ran it) and will go on as scheduled. For more info go to the Sports Backers’ Website.
Sturgeon or Nessie?
Andy Thompson
April 24, 2008 7:00 AM
Times-Dispatch environment reporter Rex Springston and his wife, Kathy, were walking beside the marshy area at Henricus Park Tuesday (4/22) afternoon when they saw a strange creature swimming amid the pickerel weeds about 50 yards away. The animal was slowly moving forward, but also up and down in the water, showing what appeared to be part of a forked tail and possibly its back. ¶
Almost immediately, Springston thought it might be an Atlantic sturgeon, a rare fish that can top 9 feet in length. This creature was hard to judge, because of the distance, but appeared to be perhaps 3 to 4 feet long. Springston was familiar with sturgeons because he has written several stories about experts’ efforts to help them make a comeback in the James River. ¶
“This was an exciting thing to see, but it seemed like an awfully strange place for a sturgeon,” he said.
The Henricus marsh lies near the James, and he figured a fish could get in during high water—perhaps during the recent rains. Springston snapped a Loch Ness monster-style photo that appears to show part of the tail and the head of the creature. He also thought the animal could be a snapping turtle, but he had never seen a snapper swim with its tail protruding from the water. Kathy Springston said the animal appeared fish-like, with an extended body, not round-backed like a turtle. ¶
Springston e-mailed his picture to fish experts Greg Garman of Virginia Commonwealth University and Bob Greenlee of the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. They said the animal, indeed, was probably an Atlantic sturgeon.
Research on mountain biking and its impact on landscape
Andy Thompson
April 23, 2008 11:06 AM
Here’s a link to more links on the research done on MTBing trails and the areas they cut through. You’ll notice this one conclusion from the second study down:
The findings from this study reinforce results from previous research
that certain impacts to mountain bike trails, especially width, are comparable
or less than hiking or multiple-use trails, and significantly less than
impacts to equestrian or off-highway vehicle trails.
Mountain biking causes perfectly healthy trees to fall down…apparently
Andy Thompson
April 23, 2008 7:55 AM
Yesterday I wrote about a sign I saw in Richmond’s Forest Hill Park. Scroll down two posts to read what it said. Now we find out who’s behind it (kind of) and why they put it (and others like it) up.
A.J. Lagoe of 8 News filed a report yesterday on a tree that fell on a house on 32nd Street in Woodland Heights. The occupants and at least the one neighbor who spoke on camera seem to think that erosion caused by mountain bike trails caused a tree to fall from Forest Hill Park across the street into another tree, which then fell on the house. Click here for Lagoe’s story. It’s one of the “8 News Featured Videos.” Click here for a video a mountain biker made of riding through Forest Hill Park.
Look, I’m sympathetic to someone who’s had their house damaged like that. And I understand the tendency to try to blame someone or something for what happened. But whoever thinks that trail use caused this is just wrong. And I’d bet dollars to donuts says this person has a problem with MTBers in the park in general and is using them as a scapegoat.
Let’s look at what these people are suggesting. These trails have been in the park for years, and this perfectly healthy oak tree was never the worse for wear. Then we get almost six inches of rain in two days and the trees falls, coming up at the roots. It seems likely to me that the huge amount of rain we got is what actually caused the tree to fall. It’s not like it was the only tree that fell in the region in the past two days. Many others have fallen in places where no trails exist. The neighbors would say the trail weakened the tree. Let’s look at that.
If the trail wasn’t there, you’d have maybe some ivy or other ground cover growing there. These people are suggesting that ivy would have held up this oak. It’s preposterous. If you’ve been to Forest Hill Park you know that the trails, which are used by a more varied group of people than just MTBers, are at most 2-3 feet wide. And it’s not like they’re cut deep into the ground. They’re trails! They are areas where brush and vegetation has been cleared. Think about an oak tree—and this was a big, healthy one. The percentage of its root structure that was exposed couldn’t have been more than 5 percent. And that assumes that exposing a root structure causes weakening of a tree. Those roots go deep into the ground underneath and around the trail in question.
And if all that isn’t enough, the tree is 17 feet from a trail!
The fact is we had a huge amount of rain, the tree fell on a house and now people want to blame someone. Mountain bikers are a convenient choice for people who don’t like them using the park anyway. The problem is that they have no facts to back up their assertions with.
There’s no place like home
Andy Thompson
April 22, 2008 12:01 PM
You hear stories about dogs journeying long distances home after running away or getting lost, but this is mind-boggling. How do dogs know how to do this?
Read here...
This post is also a good excuse to add a pic of my dog, Ruby (above).
It’s Earth Day…except for mountain bikers
Andy Thompson
April 22, 2008 8:38 AM
As my wife and I were walking our dogs in Richmond’s Forest Hill Park yesterday, we came across a sign attached to a tree with string. It reads exactly as follows.
HAPPY EARTH DAY 2008
Riding on these trails adds
to already bad erosion
problems, please stick to legal,
funded, state run James River
Park System
Aside from the grammar errors, a couple of things jump out at me: 1) The JRPS is not state run; it’s operated by the city of Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities. 2) The JRPS is not funded all that generously. That’s why groups like JROC, Richmond MORE and others are constantly engaged with the people at the JRPS on volunteer projects that supplement what the city can afford to do. 3) Properly built trails are designed to minimize erosion. Richmond MORE hasn’t been in Forest Hill Park in close to a year to work on the trails, some of which are eroding, because the city parks and rec hasn’t signed a “memorandum of understanding” that would give them the right to do so. This stems from a disagreement with a group called the Friends of Forest Hill Park who don’t want MTBers to have access to the park. 4) Who would have put up this sign? 5) Does whoever put up this sign know the state the park was in before the trails, mostly built by MTB enthusiasts, brought runners, dog walkers and MTBers to all corners of the park?
Beach-access settlement
Andy Thompson
April 16, 2008 8:26 PM
Here it is, at long last, a beach-access settlement for the disputed portions of the Outer Banks. Scroll to the bottom of the article by Irene Nolan to see maps of the affected areas as well as the entire consent decree.
Lead in donated deer meat?
Andy Thompson
April 14, 2008 11:01 AM
I thought that venison burger tasted a little metallic…
See the Bismarck Tribune for this tidbit:
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