Lets get together shall we? Enough of this working business.  Time to invest in your sanity, throw a leg over a mountain bike, get ready to explore, and come out and ride with us.

The THIRD Sunday of every month, we will be meeting anyone who’d like to come and ride at McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan street.  The rides will be geared toward intermediate riders and up in both skill level and physical fitness.  Most rides will have a ‘Bail Out’ option , but expect them to be strenuous and challenging – lasting about 3-4 hours. We will have a loose itinerary and the destination will be up to those that show and the weather on tap.  SFUR promises good off road adventure, good people, and good fun.  Heavy rain cancels

TIME             DATE

9am                March 21st

9am                April 18th

9am                May 16th

After all, when it’s all said and done, it’s all about riding your bicycle.  We hope to see you out there.

]]> http://sfurbanriders.org/wordpress/feature-articles/ride-with-us/feed/ 0 http://sfurbanriders.org/wordpress/lead-story/think-bike-park/ http://sfurbanriders.org/wordpress/lead-story/think-bike-park/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:35:55 +0000 dcrites http://sfurbanriders.org/wordpress/?p=1502

We’re making progress on the McLaren Bike Park.  We’re gathering support and reviewing proposals to submit to the city.  Thanks to everyone who has already joined our McLaren Bike Park facebook page.  Thanks to everyone who has visited our new MBP page here on this site.  A very special thanks to everyone who signed our support petition and wrote a letter.

We’re also making a separate website just for this project.

Come by and visit us @ www.mclarenbikepark.org.

With enough voices, our momentum towards a bike park and mountain bike trails in McLaren and elsewhere will be unstoppable.  We really need everyone’s help to spread the word.  Tell people on facebook, tweet it out, send some emails, or just talk about it after your next big ride.

Wilderness First Aid Training

16 hour certification course

**Class Size Limited to 24 participants

For those of us that enjoy excursions in the outdoors, knowing what to do in case of emergency is the most valuable tool you can ever have with you.  With that in mind, SFUR has worked with Foster Calm to bring a Wilderness First Aid class to San Francisco this March.  Details below.

REGISTER: via email at info@sfurbanriders.org
COST: $120 per person, check payable to SF Urban Riders
DUE: ASAP – first come first served

This is a four part course:

DATES:
Monday – March 8th   from 6pm – 10pm
Tuesday – March 9th  from 6pm – 10pm
Monday – March 15th  from 6pm – 10pm
Tuesday – March 16th  from 6pm – 10pm

LOCATION: UCSF Parnassus Campus, Millberry Union, 500 Parnassus.
INSTRUCTOR: Foster Calm: www.fostercalm.com

We all love riding in the currently green, often golden hills of Marin, and we now have a chance to show up and improve some multi use trails in Marin.   May the multi use trails prosper and flourish among those beautiful yet prohibited hills.  Come out and lend a hand if you can.

Trail Work and Habitat Restoration near Muir Beach

MCBC and Share the Trail will be partnering with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy on two upcoming trail work projects:

Trail Work and Stone Wall Construction – Saturday, February 20, 9:30 am – 12:30 pm.
Native Planting and Weed Pulling – Saturday, March 20, 9:30 am – 12:30 pm.

On Saturday, February 20th we are looking for volunteers to help do tread work and stonewall construction on the Dias Ridge Trail. This is a great opportunity to get a sneak peek at the new multi-use trail, while helping make sure it’s ready for its official May opening.

On Saturday, March 20th , we’ll be planting natives and pulling weeds along Redwood Creek. The work will help restore a healthy creek ecosystem, one that can better support the coho salmon and steelhead trout that swim up the creek to spawn in the Muir Woods.

We’ll meet for both projects at the Muir Beach parking lot and walk back across Highway 1 to the area in front of the barn at the Golden Gate Dairy Stables. For those who want to ride their bicycles out to Muir Beach, you can lock your bike to the backside of the mailbox row along the highway.

We’ll provide tools, snacks and water. Come dressed in a long sleeve shirt, long pants, boots, and, if the forecast calls for it, rain gear. Heavy rain cancels.

Please contact Tom Boss to RSVP at 415-272-2756 or tom@marinbike.org

Jesse Gray of SFUR Overseeing Quality Assurance at the Old Navy Bike Build.

What a tremendously satisfying event this was!

Special thanks goes out to Playworks, a non-profit that is culturing and educating young people through quality unstructured play.

Playworks Executive Director  Ellen Goodman brought this unique concept to the Old Navy Regional Corporate  meeting held on Wednesday February 10th at the Hilton Union Square Continental Ballroom.

It quickly became a free for all with some surreal moments.

Over 450 Old Navy employees were surprised with a Team Building Challenge, in which each table of people needed to work together to build a bike. They were to employ the team building concept of ‘Step Up’ and ‘Step Back’, which reflect ones natural tendency to step up and take control, or step back and play the subordinate role. The idea was to have each person perform only one task so everyone would need to step up.

Not only did the Old Navy employees build the bikes, but they raised the $10,000 to purchased them as well. In total 120 low income and under served youth were gifted new knobby tired bicycles.

From a bike geeks perspective, this is where things got interesting. SF Urban Riders got a big shout out from  Playworks, introducing us as Quality Assurance, and then the group energizes in mass and storms to the back of the ballroom like it was the Amazing Race.  Lets just say the quality assurance came after the team building challenge was over. That is when the SFUR crew looked over every bike for fork & handlebar alignment, cable routing, tire pressure, and other sometimes comical issues one would expect from a massive group exercise.

The ultimate high came when the kids showed up to claim their  new rides. They were all from Cleveland Elementary in the Excelsior District and coincidentally real close to the proposed McLaren Park Bike Skills Area.

Now SF Urban Riders is working with the principal to follow up with more bike skills mentorship.

That is how it would work all the time in a perfect world.

Mark Your Calendar

Next Bike Build will be on Saturday April 24th and we can always use interested volunteers.:

More Details coming soon.

If you didn’t make it, and have never been there to help, click over to our Volunteer page to get all the details of this monthly event.  Friend us on Facebook, and we will keep you updated, invite you even, to the monthly par-tee that is trail building.

The below is the now dated original post:

For tomorrow,  we might get cancelled as weather people say rain, but they are wrong a lot.   We’ll Tweet and FB a status in the morning.  Remember this is Sutro, it’s not dry ever, really.

Tomorrow specifics – After meeting in Wood’s lot at 9, we’ll be here:

Trail building 2.6.10 - Where the action will be

this is what we are up to:

lets get rid of this

and this

It’s gonna be a great morning of maintaining our trails and making them a little less slippery,

“winterized” as our leader, Dan Schneider, calls it.

Then we are going to kick it, eat some pizza, drink some beer, and scheme up our next bike ride.

Hope to see you,

SF Urban Riders

]]> http://sfurbanriders.org/wordpress/feature-articles/sf-urban-riders-take-on-old-man-winter-you-in/feed/ 0 http://sfurbanriders.org/wordpress/blog/as-requested-a-cookie-recipe-for-the-sf-urban-riders-faithful/ http://sfurbanriders.org/wordpress/blog/as-requested-a-cookie-recipe-for-the-sf-urban-riders-faithful/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:42:22 +0000 Mo http://sfurbanriders.org/wordpress/?p=1234 I been making cookies for Trailbuilding for the last few months, and I have been everything from politely asked to hounded to share the recipe.

This is what I always say the recipe is:

the starting point

It’s the above or it’s the version from Joy of Cooking.

That’s how the cookies were made, that’s how it was done where I grew up, kinda.

But then I realized,

they aren’t in charge of my cookies anymore.  I’m an adult!

I get to make cookies like I like ‘em.

And I like my chocolate-y chunks.  In fact, I like pretty much any sugary-chunk, and I want more, in my cookies.

And since I like oatmeal, a bunch of that goes in, too, and a lot of it.

I think there are others like me, so I make enough to share.   If people don’t like , well, it’s pretty clear what the “win-win” solution is to THAT problem, isn’t it?

But now this isn’t my recipe any more, it’s yours.

you can see the chunk madness, and see inspiration;

you can see the healthy additions and see rationalization;

or you can just freak out at the amount of processed sugar I am putting in them.

My dentist is Dr. Carmine Vicino.  415-563-1070.  totally great guy.  Just for the record.

SF Urban Riders wants to be sure you know all the opportunities out there, whether it is to make/maintain trails or check out the meetings, and help you understand better the big old machine that is the San Francisco planning process.

So much going on, we don’t want you to get overwhelmed, we know you have busy lives, but we want you to know as much as we do about upcoming events, and why we think its important to go participate.

and with that (drum roll please)

We would like you to know about a Public Meeting about a space that is near and dear to our single-track lovin’ hearts -  Mt. Sutro.    The SF Rec & Park is proposing to reopen the section of the Interior Greenbelt that connects Sutro to the Stanyan St. Trailhead.   See the official flyer for a little more information.

Stanyan St. Trailhead -Interior Greenbelt Mtg – Public Notice 2-8-10

Why we think this is important – > This is about opening up an old trail and its entrance at Stanyan.  It is a route that anyone coming over from the Haight and East would be interested in and Rec & Park has said it would be multi-use.  This could be a beautiful new trailhead, with direct connection to our Mt. Sutro trails

And of course, its plain-ole important that we cyclists make a special effort to attend any meeting that is about trails in SF.

Grab a burrito on your way over, and enjoy the civic process.  If you can, think through why this trail is or would be important to you and yours, and speak up.  We always have to work to improve the public perception of who mountain cyclists are, so remember, you are helping represent, and we all appreciate it.

So there you go.  This Monday night, Feb 8, 2010.  from  6 to 8pm at Grattan Elementary.