Travis Browning: Pump track under construction...

On Friday the 23 of October I took a days leave from work to start building the pump track that I've been so eager to get done for the last 2 months now. Grant Dinkel from Adrenalin cycles has secured us a piece of land next door to the fairways on Main shopping centre in Howick for the next 2 years. We plan on developing the land into a skills track for other bicycle enthusiasts, and kids to have fun on while mom goes grocerie shopping. Our goal is to provide this facility to the public for free, we don't intend on charging any one to ride it, all I want is to see it being put to good use by any one on two wheels. After watching the pump track world champs held in Australia earlier this year I'm super keen to get the same thing started here, I want to hold events and have regular meetings at the track so we can set lap times and break records around this thing! We are very grateful to everyone at Midlands plant hire as they sponsored us the bob cat to make our goals a reality. I met with Greg and Wellington at 8AM on Friday morning and then the digging began! I was well impressed with the skills Wellington had in the bob cat, he knew exactly what I was wanting done and understood where to place the sand and was just super friendly, everything was done with a smile. We worked from 8AM until about 1PM with the bobcat, the layout of the track was completed and I had one heck of a sunburn (still hurting today). There were mounds of sand everywhere, then came the hard work of compacting and shaping rollers and berms. Again Midlands plant hire came to the rescue and dropped off a 650mm wide compacting roller which has helped a huge amount! we still busy shaping and compacting, about 50% of the track needs some serious attention, which I'm hoping to finish off this weekend.

Here's Wellington dropping some sand on the left hand berm. I'm going to make this a wall ride as well to give you some extra momentum for following straight as it's on a bit of an uphill.