The Big Dig

This might be more enjoyable if you have been out to the trails, so bear with me (or skip it). There has been jumps out at Freedom 40 for years now, not quite sure how many, maybe 8 to 10...I'm not a historian. A bunch of people have built out there over those years and while we have all added things from scratch it seems like there has always been a four pack that went straight down the hill. Eric actually gave us the skinny on how it all came about. I guess a guy who owned a septic business nearby would dump the dirt he excavated and over time they formed some jump-like shapes. When Eric moved in, he sculpted them into tabletops and then eventually some doubles. Recently we started calling that line (the bottom line) OJ's, not because we liked orange juice, or the juice, but because they were the original jumps out there. This four pack has gone through a bunch of different versions (most recently the poppy, spiney set into the long cruising set). When Kyle recently started tearing down one part of the jumps it was like cutting into the tree rings of an old redwood; you could see all the layers of dirt that had been piled on as the jumps went through their various incarnations.

Recently, the neighbors' long standing objection to us crossing the driveway finally came to a head and the situation had to be addressed. We figured when life gives you lemons...you build lemonade. We not only tore down the original jumps but we will end up modifying almost everything below the 270/jump-over berm that recently got built. It all leads to a large hip (which is a little ironic since that was one of the other oldest things there). Luckily some rain came in recently to help us get some things done. Here is to improvements.

The way things were.

The last lip in OJ's (now half gone). The pile behind it consists of the last lip in sidepipe plus the old straight jump landing pushed into one big hip.

Mike having some fun on the last landing in sidepipe before it gets torn down.

What very well might be the last rain of the season came with perfect timing.

Tearing down the old second to last lips in sidepipe and OJ's today around 2pm.

Leaving the trails around 6pm today. Both lips torn down, two new lips in slightly different places. One much wider landing that is moved to the riders right a lot, and then both lines filter down into a single super hip. Bigger mellower jumps in the near future.