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Mike Kelsey
By Jeannette Balleza, Fri Dec 9th
With hair slightly unkempt, earnest eyes and a potentiallyroguish grin, Mike Kelsey has an air of unmistakable grit abouthim. An avid cyclist for close to 18 years and a lifetimeoutdoor enthusiast, he is no stranger to the danger of mountainbike racing, the thrill of competing and the triumph of winning.Although now a self-proclaimed "weekend warrior," he still rideswith his BOB trailer of tools in tow, and his unflaggingdevotion to trail building, repair and maintenance in theOuachita Mountains is widely apparent. "I love to build hiking and mountain trails," confessedthe 2003 Arkansas Trail Volunteer of the Year. "It is a good wayto spend some hours in the woods, get some fresh air andexercise while creating something to be enjoyed by all." Kelsey,who spends between 100 and 200 volunteer hours each year ontrails statewide, has worked on the following routes: WombleTrail in Oden, Camp Pioneer Trails in Hatfield, Earthquake RidgeTrail in Mena, Little Missouri Trail, Wolf Pen Gap ATV Trails,Charlton Trail and Attila the Hun Trail. "You just go out and identify problem areas, whether it's aproblem of erosion or just an area that needs maintenance," heremarked. "Whether it be hiking or biking, continued use of atrail sometimes translates into some degradation. It's easy toconstruct a trail from point A to point B, but you have to dealwith creeks, ridges, mountains and gullies as well as all thethings concerned with protecting the trail from erosion. Awell-designed trail, however, can take a lot of traffic withoutdegradation."
In addition to his trail work, Kelsey maintains several websites
Mountain bikers arrive for first guided holidays of the season
After a monster day yesterday, the mountain bikers were still surprisingly up for some more punishment. I thought that by going to the Animal Park and then maybe Nose Breaker it would give him the option of bailing out if they were too battered. A tough road climb later, all with the rather nice view that you see here, and it was lunch. After lunch and a rather fine lesson in Alpine descending he decided they weren't done for the day so off it was to the beast of a fire road to nose breaker. A rather tired Jean-Marc got to the top of the climb and readied himself for the descent. A good job the old boy had some body armour on, he luckily didn't reinforce the name of the trail but after his riding, it could be renamed, 'rolling around in stingers not knowing why you fell off trail', but it doesn't quite roll off the tongue though!
Cake and coke soon revitalised him back at the chalet, that combined with a sauna had him looking forward to the next mountain bike ride on Thursday.
Mountain bike holiday fun in the week of the exploding bike tyres
The start of week two started off with a big bang. Well three in fact, Robins Stans No Tube set up was giving him some problems after the plane journey so he slapped a couple of tubes into his wheels instead. Bang one was before we left the chalet, his tyre exploding, showering him with latex sealant, nice. Fifteen minutes into the ride and it was the turn of bang two, leaving his inner tube in shreads. That fixed ten seconds later and his other tyre blew off the rim, nearly giving one of the local OAPs a heart attack! Deciding to bail at this point, Robin and Leighann went home and contemplate the complex structures of air retaining structures.
Steve, Simon, John and myself continued on the valley ride with the Brevent extension, a cheeky little loop that adds... (Continued on the website).
The big bike trails come out to battle the freeride boys
It was the return of the freeriding boys this week minus the freeride bikes and body armour, so normal mountain bikers then. With only three days of proper riding with work was calling them all back on Thursday it was time to get the big guns out.
The Possette, Miage and Trient were all on the cards as all of the guys wanted to ride some trails that they hadn't before. Half of us went up the front climb of Le Tour and the other far less foolish members went up in the bubble car. Bright red faces and complaints of sickness and dehydration at the top only goes to show that granny ring climbs on loose fire roads in 100 degree heat is not a good thing to inflict upon ones body. Salt sachets consumed and it was off to the Possette. After a brief lunch stop the superb descent was soon lapped up, with Jerry and Carl taking especially impressive trail detours! ... (Continued on the website).
Ryan makes a splash on his mountain bike
A welcome return to the hard riding and hard drinking posse of Liam, Len, Jez, Bo and John with guest star Ryan from the Lakes. A pretty heavy night down at the MBC upon arrival was all that was needed to start the first ride off on Sunday. Heavy heads soon cleared as the top of the Col du Possette made itself known taking the best way to travel, the bubble from Le Tour. A heavy duty first time descent for John and Bo who had not been out before awaited amongst the roots and switchbacks of just about everybodys favourite trail, The Possette.
Suitably impressed with everyones descending prowess it was time to inflict a little Alpine pain into everyones legs with a trip top see the Miage Glacier the following day. Ryan even though he had been training in the hilliest of hilly places, ... (Continued on the website).
Road Bike Tour Du Mont Blanc
I must say I was pretty surprised that myself and a select few were to do the first road bike Tour du Mont Blanc. Mountain biking has always been "The" sport for me, but slowly and surely I had gotten into the whole road bike thang and the prospect of riding the TMB in three rather than five days was all of the encouragement I needed to get it organised. With fresh shaved legs and jersey pockets full of gels, me, Nick, Stevie and Andy set off from Chamonix to the first col of the trip the Montet. An easy few hundred metres of climbing later and the col was in the bag and with Switzerland beckoning and the ridiculously fast descent down to Martigny very much on our minds, we flew up the Col de Forclaz to our first refueling stop.
The descent to Martigny was an absolute blast, braking hard into the bends and then sprinting back out of them was pretty close to the thrill of riding some choice singletrack. I know there will be some people that would disagree but
fast push bikes + two inches of rubber on the ground + mental French and Swiss drivers = a pretty exhilarating ride.
Next up it was the steep... (Continued on the website).
relating to cycling tours, mountain bike and road racesand trail opportunities. The Bike Arkansas Directory(www.bikearkansas.com) serves mainly as a collection ofresources, including bike shops, teams, clubs or events in TheNatural State. He also updates the web site for the ArkansasMountain Bike Championship Series (www.ambcs.com), keeping anactive calendar, presenting race results, tracking seriesresults and posting team challenge results. Other related websites include the following: ? Ouachita Mountain Bike Adventures (www.ouachitaadventures.com)? Cycling Arkansas (www.cyclingarkansas.com) ? Ozark Off-RoadCyclists (www.ozarkoffroadcyclists.com) ? International MountainBicycling Association (www.imba.com) Furthermore, Kelsey is a supporter of the Arkansas Pay DirtProgram, which links mountain bike racing to trail advocacy. Toparticipate in Pay Dirt, racers commit themselves to a certainnumber of hours of trail maintenance. In turn, racers receivepoints to apply to this year's racing totals. For example, if aracer puts in 8 hours on an official Pay Dirt work trip, then heor she is granted the equivalent of a first-place win. With approximately 600 miles of trails, the Ouachitas have thelargest ratio of trails to local users than in probably anystate. "There are very few people to work, so it takes some verydedicated individuals," Kelsey declared. "It's important toencourage members of the racing community to become stewards ofthe trail." About the author:Copywriter/editor Jeannette Balleza owns Scribe Marketing, Inc.(http://www.scribemarketing.com), which offers contentdevelopment and refinement. You may contact her for creativeconcept development, copywriting, editing and research atjeannette@scribemarketing.com.
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Mountain bikers arrive for first guided holidays of the season
After a monster day yesterday, the mountain bikers were still surprisingly up for some more punishment. I thought that by going to the Animal Park and then maybe Nose Breaker it would give him the option of bailing out if they were too battered. A tough road climb later, all with the rather nice view that you see here, and it was lunch. After lunch and a rather fine lesson in Alpine descending he decided they weren't done for the day so off it was to the beast of a fire road to nose breaker. A rather tired Jean-Marc got to the top of the climb and readied himself for the descent. A good job the old boy had some body armour on, he luckily didn't reinforce the name of the trail but after his riding, it could be renamed, 'rolling around in stingers not knowing why you fell off trail', but it doesn't quite roll off the tongue though!
Cake and coke soon revitalised him back at the chalet, that combined with a sauna had him looking forward to the next mountain bike ride on Thursday.
Mountain bike holiday fun in the week of the exploding bike tyres
The start of week two started off with a big bang. Well three in fact, Robins Stans No Tube set up was giving him some problems after the plane journey so he slapped a couple of tubes into his wheels instead. Bang one was before we left the chalet, his tyre exploding, showering him with latex sealant, nice. Fifteen minutes into the ride and it was the turn of bang two, leaving his inner tube in shreads. That fixed ten seconds later and his other tyre blew off the rim, nearly giving one of the local OAPs a heart attack! Deciding to bail at this point, Robin and Leighann went home and contemplate the complex structures of air retaining structures.
Steve, Simon, John and myself continued on the valley ride with the Brevent extension, a cheeky little loop that adds... (Continued on the website).
The big bike trails come out to battle the freeride boys
It was the return of the freeriding boys this week minus the freeride bikes and body armour, so normal mountain bikers then. With only three days of proper riding with work was calling them all back on Thursday it was time to get the big guns out.
The Possette, Miage and Trient were all on the cards as all of the guys wanted to ride some trails that they hadn't before. Half of us went up the front climb of Le Tour and the other far less foolish members went up in the bubble car. Bright red faces and complaints of sickness and dehydration at the top only goes to show that granny ring climbs on loose fire roads in 100 degree heat is not a good thing to inflict upon ones body. Salt sachets consumed and it was off to the Possette. After a brief lunch stop the superb descent was soon lapped up, with Jerry and Carl taking especially impressive trail detours! ... (Continued on the website).
Ryan makes a splash on his mountain bike
A welcome return to the hard riding and hard drinking posse of Liam, Len, Jez, Bo and John with guest star Ryan from the Lakes. A pretty heavy night down at the MBC upon arrival was all that was needed to start the first ride off on Sunday. Heavy heads soon cleared as the top of the Col du Possette made itself known taking the best way to travel, the bubble from Le Tour. A heavy duty first time descent for John and Bo who had not been out before awaited amongst the roots and switchbacks of just about everybodys favourite trail, The Possette.
Suitably impressed with everyones descending prowess it was time to inflict a little Alpine pain into everyones legs with a trip top see the Miage Glacier the following day. Ryan even though he had been training in the hilliest of hilly places, ... (Continued on the website).
Road Bike Tour Du Mont Blanc
I must say I was pretty surprised that myself and a select few were to do the first road bike Tour du Mont Blanc. Mountain biking has always been "The" sport for me, but slowly and surely I had gotten into the whole road bike thang and the prospect of riding the TMB in three rather than five days was all of the encouragement I needed to get it organised. With fresh shaved legs and jersey pockets full of gels, me, Nick, Stevie and Andy set off from Chamonix to the first col of the trip the Montet. An easy few hundred metres of climbing later and the col was in the bag and with Switzerland beckoning and the ridiculously fast descent down to Martigny very much on our minds, we flew up the Col de Forclaz to our first refueling stop.
The descent to Martigny was an absolute blast, braking hard into the bends and then sprinting back out of them was pretty close to the thrill of riding some choice singletrack. I know there will be some people that would disagree but
fast push bikes + two inches of rubber on the ground + mental French and Swiss drivers = a pretty exhilarating ride.
Next up it was the steep... (Continued on the website).
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