One Person's Junk Is Another Person's Jump

I've taken more than a few rides that included the Concrete Plant Park.  I love that what could have been a remnant--a ruin, really--of the industrial past could be turned into a visually interesting recreational space.

The Concrete Plant Park could have become a dump, or worse. Such a fate has befallen too many other sites of closed factories and schools or abandoned residential and office buildings.  Instead, it's a place where folks like me ride, run or walk, or take their kids just to get them out of their crowded apartments.

Now I've heard of something that's perhaps just as innovative:  Using stuff that's been dumped to make a bike park.  That's what some folks in Colorado have done.  The result, aptly named Junk Yard Bike Park, is set to open on Monday, Memorial Day, thanks to Rocky Mountain Outdoor Center in Colorado Springs, near the entrance to Browns Canyon National Monument.  

The idea for the park came to RMOC owner Brandon Slate not long after he and his business partner, Ryan Coulter, after they inherited the Arkansas River site in 2016.  They started riding their mountain bikes among--and, in some cases, on--the junk when they realized the potential for creating "a bike park that will not only fill a local need but also draw people to RMOC to take advantage of the outpost's other features, such as its microbrewery, food truck and riverside setting."  

The site, they say, will include bike lines for cyclists of various skill levels,  a pump track and access to singletrack with mellow downhill sections and more technical drops.

Oh, and if you really want to have fun, you can drop from an old school bus or jump over a rusted classic car.  You can't do that in Concrete Plant Park, or any other salvaged post-industrial site I know of.

Would You Live On A Street That's A Singletrack?

 Some neighborhoods' and towns' street names have themes.  For example, when I pedal to Point Lookout, after traversing the Atlantic Beach Bridge, I cross a series of streets named for New York State counties.  Other communities have streets named after flowers or trees--or the children of the developers.  Then there are the "gem" streets of "The Hole."

Well, in Colorado there's a town called Fruita.  You might expect the streets to be named after strawberries or blueberries or cherries or other delectables.  But, being near Grand Junction, it's adjacent to some of the most renowned mountain biking in the world.  So, the builders of a new development paid homage--by building their new homes on Singletrack Street, Pivot Street and Yeti Street.  

Photo by Mattias Fredericksson

Executives of Yeti and Pivot bicycles deny that they had anything to do with naming the streets, but are nonetheless delighted.  It's "better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard," said Chris Conroy, the president of Yeti, which is based in nearby Golden.  Chris Cocalis, the CEO of Pivot, called the naming "a complete and awesome surprise."  

The town sounds like a nice place to go if you get tired of city life.  But I have to ask:  If the developers refused to sell their houses to road bikers, would that be a violation of Federal fair housing regulations?