I finally got something written to share with all of you about the IMBA
Trail Summit I attended for GHORBA in Moab, Utah. If you have any
questions or want to look at some of the literature I brought home, let me
know.

Going into the International Mountain Bicycling Association's Trail Summit,
I knew I would come away with more information than I could ever process
and implement at home in Houston. But I could never have imagined I would
meet so many people with such an immense passion toward keeping mountain
biking viable and growing. Many of us spend hours each week promoting and
enjoying cycling, both on and off road. Dedication to this sport at this
level is sometimes not well understood by our fellow citizens. But at the
IMBA Trail Summit in Moab, Utah, spending hours in meetings, negotiating
with land managers, and haggling over which direction water should flow
over a trail is not only understood, but it is a full-time occupation or
after-work hobby for the summit's 200 attendees. IMBA was gracious enough
to invite several of us from Texas to join other mountain bike advocates
from as far away as Australia to spend four days networking and learning
from one another. We each attended forums concerning strategies on keeping
trails open, taking an organization to the next level, obtaining federal
grants and private sponsorship, working with freeriders, getting and
keeping volunteers, etc. Other summit attendees, including the Texas
Bicycle Coalition's own Gayle Cummins who gave a high-powered presentation
on building grassroots political power, shared much of the information and
provided more handouts than a single suitcase could possibly hold. This
format proved to be a very rich learning environment, as every attendee had
real-world experience and more stories than time to share.

Moab was full of so many stories similar to our own in Texas, stories of
success and heartbreak. Mountain bike organizations across the world are
successfully opening beautiful new places to ride while others are fighting
tooth and nail to prevent statewide closures of long-time favorite trails,
such as those in Pennsylvania. Many have unlocked the secret to
maintaining healthy relationships with state and federal land managers ?
others haven't been so lucky and continue to struggle to find common ground
upon which to start talks. There are organizations straining to get beyond
50 members, while organizations like the Southern Off-Road Bicycle
Association (SORBA) and the New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA)
have over 4,000 members and are still growing. Talking with the
representatives of each of these organizations gave me much cause to be
grateful for what we do have in Texas and what we still need to do to make
it better.

IMBA continues to take steps towards bridging between trail user groups and
opening trail systems on federal lands to mountain biking. At the summit,
IMBA signed an agreement with the Sierra Club to search for projects where
the mountain biking community and the Sierra Club can work together to
fight our common foe: urban development of open spaces. It is hoped that
this impresses upon all of us that alliances between seemingly
polar-opposite groups is sometimes necessary to protect what we love. IMBA
also signed an agreement with the National Park Service to work towards
finding national parks that are appropriate for mountain biking?to this
point only national forests are open to mountain biking.

In the end, the four days were most inspiring and a needed shot in the arm
for everyone who attended. In case you were wondering, yes, we did get to
ride the fabled Slick Rock Trail. It's all it's cracked up to be and more,
but 'slick' it isn't. Think of velcro for your tires?unbelievable climbing
in a scene that more closely resembles Mars than Earth.