Monday, April 26, 2010

Help save something!

It seems that every year a trail spot survives, it is a gift to the riders that pour their lives into that patch of forest. Behind shopping malls or neighborhoods, young people get together and form fantastic creations of dirt. Using intuition, team work, and elbow grease, they turn what was a forgotten plot of earth into a place of fun and magnificent physical performance. “Trails” offer fun without rules passed down by a coach or teacher; fun without a manual to read.
Every year, months of preparation are spent for a brief period of summer, when the fruits of this intense labor can be enjoyed. Months in the snow, stacking up frozen clumps. Months in the mud, giving some semblance of shape to those thawed clumps. Months in the warm glow of the forest, shaping these forms into precise vehicles of flight. These people work hard outside of the woods so that they can come into the woods and pour their lives into these jumps.
What an outsider may see as juvenile activity creates a community of people that learn to work together and learn to work for themselves. Fifteen-year-olds and Thirty-year-olds stand side by side and create what becomes a healthy community.
Behind a neighborhood in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, lies such a place known to the locals as PTT, or more recently, Lovewood. The trails are threatened. They are worse than threatened. They are slotted for the chop block. Old Papa Bull Dozer is going to come marching down the line and push over a decade of hard work. (Think of Fern Gulley PEOPLE!) These trails are the Keystone to an entire community of bike riders, and if it is destroyed, the lives of several people will be greatly punctured by the thorn of loss. A unique and exciting possibility exists. The possibility of buying this land and preserving the trails has come to light. By clicking here, you can donate money directly to help preserve the life of this amazing place and the lives of these young people, who are building something out of nothing. Please help if you can! Anything will help!
You can check out more at http://www.lovewoodbmx.com/