Another Great Trail Day in Leominster State Forest

Early in the week my husband Dave exclaimed "we should go to the NEMBA trail maintenance at Leominster on Sunday." I said "okay" without hesitation. After a few days though, memories of rock piles, shovels, lumber, and wheelbarrows haunted me (See Singletracks, vol. 9 no. 4, page 34.) I tried to dissuade him, after all we were going to be in Rhode Island for the weekend. But there was no getting out of it.

Our plan was to come back to Worcester on Saturday night and meet up with the NEMBA crew Sunday morning. Things didn’t work out as planned and we found ourselves up before the sunrise at 5:00 am on Sunday morning in order to get back to Worcester and get our bike gear together for the work party.

It was a gorgeous day and many NEMBA members celebrated the occasion. To my relief the first vehicle I saw in the lot was a Bobcat that was surely going to finish up the rock pile project. Dave and I decided to ride our bikes into the work site this time. We weren’t sure what project we were going to be involved in but as soon as we saw some other volunteers, they put us right to work.

This time instead of hauling the lumber in to the bridge site, we cut some thin trees to make a bridge over a troublesome area. Ned and Dennis worked as a team cutting down trees with a chainsaw, and then into smaller pieces, while Stuart and I carried the pieces over to Thomas and Jason who were nailing the pieces down to form the bridge.

More people showed up later and were eager to help "lug logs" so I went to see how Dave was doing. He and Jon had been making waterbars and trimming the trails with help from several others. Everything was moving along swiftly. I admit that I avoided the heavy rock work and my thanks goes out to the guys who were shoveling rocks and operating the machinery in order to complete the work that was started on the last maintenance day. One nice thing was that it wasn’t ninety degrees out.

As we wrapped up our projects we were eager to ride. We took a few spins over the new bridge and went back to the lot to meet up with everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone could ride, including Ned who was going to prepare for our arrival at the Wachusett Brewing Co. with a half dozen pizzas and plenty of cold beer.

It was a much bigger group this time and I was having trouble keeping up. A few of us broke up into smaller groups and had a great ride over all the trails we worked on on Sunday and the previous maintenance day. We arrived at the parking lot at the same time as the rest of the group and felt great about the work we accomplished and the fun ride we had.