Posted 5/8/05

Bad News for Santa Cruz Freeriders

Yesterday's ride in Santa Cruz was depressing. First this local guy went trail Nazi on us, and threatened to call 5-0, simply because we were driving on "his road." No more shuttles on UCSC? It looks like that may be the situation.

I then took my Camcorder out to do some filming and received a very unpleasant surprise. Something is wrong with my camera, and it may be broken. Great. It worked fine at the Sea Otter, and now all it films is a yellow blur with blue streaks. This sucked a lot as well. I have to call Sony Customer Service tomorrow and figure out what I'm going to do. Nice. Our luck continued it's downward spiral, as Ian and Max both had mechanicals that ended what was left of our day.

We then had one more final blow, which is leaving us all smarting. The hit Max built on Dead Campers was destroyed. This one hit Max the hardest, as he has put a lot of work in to building not-so-secret down hill trails. We ran into some other riders that knew a little more about the situation than we did. Apparently, they ran into a Ranger that was responsible for the stunt's destruction. They were informed that a $300 ticket would be issued to any of us Freeriding on the trails. I don't know the exact details, but the trails are illegal, and it appears that the local P0-PO are going to begin enforcing it.

Not a great day. To summarize: 1 broken camera, 1 broken chain, 1 broken spoke. No more shuttling, and no more riding. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Hopefully things look up soon, because we may have just lost our best riding spot.