Dale Boyd and Drew Hall are mountain bikers and trail builders living in Mobile, Alabama. They’re part of a group called Ride the Rebellion that posts videos and podcasts about their efforts to build and ride trails in a part of the US that isn’t traditionally known for mountain biking.
In this episode we ask:
- What was the local mountain bike scene like when you first got into the sport?
- How did you come up with the name Ride the Rebellion for your group?
- How many folks are a part of the group? Is there an official membership process?
- What are some ways you’ve found to make flat terrain more fun to ride?
- How did you learn to build trails and trail features?
- How do you come up with names for trails and trail features?
- What is the status of the land where you build trails? How did you get permission to build and ride there?
- What is your agreement like with the landowner in terms of what you can, and can’t, do?
- Can anyone ride the trail whenever they like, or is it a members-only situation?
- What is the role of video and podcasting in building your real-life MTB community?
- Do you travel outside Alabama to mountain bike? What are some of your favorite places to ride outside your local area?
- What have you learned along the way that might be helpful to others in a similar situation?
Find Ride the Rebellion video channel on YouTube and their podcast on Spotify.
A full, automatically-generated transcript of this podcast conversation is available to Singletracks supporters.
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Transcript
Jeff 0:00
Hey everybody. Welcome to the singletracks podcast. My name is Jeff and today my guests are Dale Boyd and drew Hall, Dale and drew are mountain bikers and trail builders living in Mobile, Alabama. They’re part of a group called Ride the rebellion that posts videos and podcasts about their efforts to build and ride trails in a part of the US that isn’t traditionally known for mountain biking. Thanks for joining me, guys.
Dale 0:26
Thanks, Jeff. We appreciate it.
Drew 0:28
Nice to meet you.
Jeff 0:30
So Dale, tell us how you and Drew met.
Dale 0:33
So actually Drew and I met through a couple other friends. But the first time I ever actually met drew in person, I was trained for a race, I think and maybe Drew can elaborate better. He has a different rendition of how we met. I was maybe I was training for a race. And I see this goofy dude with a bunch of bags on his bike. And I was like this. So I just go blow him by him. Well, then, I didn’t really say anything. And I come back a couple days later, and he’s filming everybody in the playground area that I was like, Wait, there’s cameras, like I can. I can probably get in front of these cameras. And I’m not shy in front of cameras. And I have one trick and I’ll do it really well. So I made drew filming all day. And I kind of I kind of sabotaged his little film crew and we had fun with it. So it kind of grew from there. It was like, Hey, I like filming.
Drew 1:25
Well, well, that’s a little bit of reading in the parking lot, I think. I think he was like look at that do try to make his bike look like an E bike. But in all honesty, I had a bunch of I had like a bunch of camera gear. And I was trying to figure out how to carry cameras on a bike. My vision, original mission, when I started riding was like, I love this. It’s super fun, but I gotta be able to bring gear into the woods I wanted to shoot. I’m a filmmaker by trade. So I wanted to shoot mountain biking content, if you will not just trail videos, but like really crazy stuff. Yeah. And so I done that. And Dale was very nice. Like, at one point, what really sold me on him just making that job to be a jab was I think I was at my bike was down and I was like moving a GoPro from one spot on my bike to another getting weird shots. And he’s like, Okay, I mean, he checked on him. He’s like, Do you have water? There’s water. And he was very courteous. So yeah, I talk a lot of trash about him. But at the end of the day, he’s he’s a good trail steward for sure. Yeah.
Jeff 2:19
Yeah, that’s awesome. So yeah, Drew, tell us a little bit about the local mountain bike scene in mobile when you either did you get into the sport in mobile, or were you a mountain biker, before you even get there?
Drew 2:32
So I grew up here. So this will be an interesting split question because Dale and I will have to attack it as a team. So I have a different perspective maybe than Dale does. But I grew up here I rode, like 20 something years ago, I had a pretty nasty fall that on my old Rockhopper hard tail that kind of ruined my I don’t know the fear bug got me and so that fear beat me on that in that. And so mid 20s I walked away and just got busy doing life. And then I had two guys that got him Todd and a guy named Jake, who are we that’s what we call them in the red. But Jake, they just pestered me forever, like, Come ride with me. Come ride with me and find I was like, Fine, I’ll go ride. So I got back on the bike. And so my experience to the scene was very different than like, I mean, similar to Dale’s but different in the same way as like, I didn’t know that there was an organized group. I didn’t. I frankly, knew about Ember, but I didn’t think we had anything organized here. And it turns out, we have a great group called Samba. And so I kind of just fell into it and watched it grow and then thought, Hey, man, it would be cooler if we could get everybody together. And I was more into like the let’s make it a community thing, which is exactly what Dale did is exactly why he and I connected. Maybe even back to your first question is still linked us back. But Dale has a you have a better take on the senior but you’re still a transplant right? You’re a transplant from not flip the script. But Dale Dale is a transplant from yankeetown.
Jeff 3:55
Yeah, well, yeah. Were you a mountain biker before you came to mobile? And like, how was the scene different? If so?
Dale 4:02
No, I wasn’t a mountain biker at all. I rode BMX bikes back in the 90s. And I thought when we moved to Alabama, a couple years ago, three years ago, and I told my wife, I was gonna buy a mountain bike, and I was gonna start riding and I found the local club and I went rode with him, and I got dropped really hard. And I didn’t even know what drop was then I got left in the woods. So I just started riding. Only one day, John, he talked to me and kind of took me under his wing and taught me what a derailleur was and told me I need a one by drive train and all this stuff. So I did all that and kind of we kind of grew our own little thing from that, you know, I started de facto group, I guess called the sweet potato mountain bike crew and we started riding and doing our own thing that grew. The local Embo chapter wasn’t really doing much at the time. No offense to anybody that was doing it. It just wasn’t as active as maybe us. Avid mountain bikers would have liked it to be And so we kind of did our own thing on the side and, and there was a gentleman out of Weatherford that decided to take over leadership roles within the IMBA organization and kind of put together a board that could do that. And he asked me to be a part of it. And I was very, very hesitant at first because I didn’t want to deal with the politics. And I didn’t want to deal with the whole thing of it. But right, we had 40, total chapter member chapter members when we started and now we have 208, of our local member chapter. Wow. So we’ve grown exponentially. I think it’s it’s a combination of community and a combination of Alan’s drive. And maybe it’s not a badge of honor, if you get a message pestered from owl, but it’s kind of it’s been, it’s been awesome to, I had to be the person though, kind of to bridge it because I had to meet everyone myself. I didn’t know anyone. So me having to meet everyone kind of got other people introduced to each other to that’s kind of our kind of our mountain bike background. It has nothing to do with the rib, but it’s kind of the foundation of foundation of the rib, I guess.
Jeff 6:09
Yeah, yeah. Well, when you first started, like poking around and thinking about forming a group or joining up with a group, like, Were you looking at more of like, the social side of it, or the trail building side? Are we thinking like, the two should be combined? Or are those like kind of separate functions you think?
Dale 6:29
So like, I’ve been an athlete my whole life. So the social side of it was where it was, like, I’ve always known to get better at things, you got to have other people to push you to get better. Like, you could go ride your bike forever by yourself. And you’ll still be I mean, you’ll be as best as you as good as you want to be. But that’s all you’re gonna be, you know, I’m saying so, I think that I think when you get other people around you not only does it make your bank account go down, because you’re gonna want new bikes. When your friends have new bikes, it’s it’s so hard to not, but it’s also going to push you to be better and to be want to, you know, or maybe you just, you look up to certain people, maybe they don’t even know that but I think that the community was kind of the way I wanted to go in the My mindset. I didn’t know anything about trail building. I thought, hey, cool, they built these old dudes built some trails, let’s ride. You know, like, that was it. Maybe when I was a kid, we used to ride BMX bikes. So we’d watch rad on, you know, on a Saturday night, and we’d wake up on Sunday and go build some dirt jumps. What we thought was cool. Yeah, so I don’t I think that the the trail building is something that drew and I we both can relate to this, like we’re learning every time we go in the woods, like, and there’s no way we can google how to build trails on saying I
Drew 7:42
tried it, like I tried out, and there’s, there’s nothing even out there really to you, it doesn’t work very well. It’s impossible.
Dale 7:48
So we’re trying that we’re kind of we’re learning from different people. I mean, there’s people across the coast that are starting to do stuff, and we’re learning from them, too. So pretty awesome. Yeah,
Drew 7:58
it kind of goes hand in hand, though. I think after a while, we started identifying. You know, what I found was, I wanted the community first, I was more into the social side. I enjoy writing and I enjoyed it. But I enjoyed being able to like, again, I started out I enjoyed writing, I was like, Oh, I’m gonna film stuff. Now. I don’t film as much anymore, which is great, because I’ve found that it’s nice to separate my life a little bit, have something that’s actually a hobby. That’s not not an industry stuff. I mean, we still do a lot of content. Don’t get me wrong, but yeah, but they have to go hand in hand because we reached a point, at least in this area. Not to segue your question over but to at least in this area. The problem we run into or this would happen to you have podcast hosts on we all kind of segue off of each other. But is that is that we ran into a spot where the trails were good. They are what they are here. We’re in flatlands of Alabama. We get it. We’re on the Gulf Coast. But we all wanted to do something bigger. And then we started finding a community there was a community that didn’t want to just write XC that didn’t want to, we know we’re not going to do downhill like you do for you guys are up north or Piscotty that stuff. But we had to find something. So we had to create something or build it. And that meant there was only one guy or two guys, we knew that could build trails, and one of them wasn’t around as much. And another guy Jakey poo was. So we would learn a little bit from janky poo. And then when Dale and I got confident off, we just were like the mother like the mother bird kicking the hens out of the chicks out of the nest. We just got kicked out and we started cutting
Jeff 9:28
drills. So yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, I mean, it makes me think about clubs that the mountain bike clubs I’ve been a part of, and, you know, the ones I’m familiar with, and, you know, it seems like they do tend to form around this idea of like trail building or advocacy. And so it attracts people who were like drawn to that mission, but they’re not necessarily like friends or like the same, you know, types of people and so it becomes kind of like work in a way right like, you know, you go to the meetings, the board meetings and, you know, everybody’s got their part. And yeah, a lot of them just don’t feel very social. But you guys seem to have like, approached it from the other direction where it’s like, social first. Like, we’re a bunch of people that like we we like riding together we like you know hanging out. And so once you do that, like the other stuff maybe doesn’t feel like work, which which seems like a really great model.
Drew 10:25
We actually just had our first competition if I could tie it to exactly what you’re saying. Yeah, we just had a private event. We called it the it was originally called the bro duro, but then we wanted to be more inclusive. And so we call it the friend er. And we literally we just finished it last Saturday, we had our first competition it was members only. And I think we all walked away. Did we enjoy the competitive nature of the racing that we did? Because we have a very interesting race program? Yes, it was awesome. Like it came down to the very last race and we were all like biting our nails cheering each other on. But what do we like the most all the tents sitting around? And all the tents eating burritos drinking beer like it was?
Jeff 11:04
Yeah. So Dale, tell us how the name ride the rebellion came about for the group.
Dale 11:10
So the rebellion is actually it’s funny because people are like, Why is it rather rebellion? What do you guys rebelling against? Like? We’re really not we’re rebelling against ourselves to be in some standard. But the rebellion drew came up with it. It is a brilliant name. But it’s we’re kind of rebelling against the norms of like, Hey, you have to be an Ambit chapter you have to do exactly what they say you have to follow every standard procedure to get anything done. And like, Don’t get us wrong, we are apart, we’re still highly and deeply connected to our local mountain bike community. And we do fall in both standards and, and Sorbo standards for a lot of the things that we do with our local public trail systems. But we figured out a way that we could go somewhere without the bureaucracy of politics and the landowners thumbprint on top of us and get what we wanted when we wanted it. And and sometimes the patients, you lose people public, like our public trails, they lose people because the progress isn’t fast enough for them. And then you’re sure, as everyone knows, on every trail system, every single decision you make has to benefit 200 people, not just eight or 10. Right. So luckily for us, we have a system where at the rebellion that we can only we you know, we could benefit 10 people, and it’s pretty, it’s pretty easy. And but what we’re learning is the benefits of those 10 people, it translates, you know, like it goes across. So say that there’s something that would benefit me and I love building all of a sudden drew wants to learn the skill to ride would I want? Does that make sense? Whereas like a lot of times on a public trail system, something that could be an obstacle for some people. They don’t want to learn that skill, like if they’re scared to learn that skill, but other people want that they you know, they want that progression. And so it’s a it’s a balancing act, act publicly, but for us in our private stuff, we can kind of just go with it. And whatever happens happens. And it’s pretty it’s so far, it’s been a great model. And that so back to the original question with the rebellion came from, what’s the intrigue of it, you know, like, the rebellion. Everybody wants to be part of the tribe. Right. So yeah,
Drew 13:26
I mean, it had a bunch of names prior to that. A few. I mean, it was laid do che, which was our funny way of saying it, it was it was a bunch of different stuff. It doesn’t really matter if some of the problems just a bunch of boys being boys, but like, for sure, I mean, when we went through it, I mean, the origin of that name always came back the same thing, most of our local trills. The A line is really the B line. Everywhere else. The a line was the safety route. And the Beeline was where you had to go, you had to cut off trail to make the job. And instead we wanted to make we want to flip that we wanted to be like, in some ways, we wanted to be like everybody else where the A line could be the more competitive ride. And the Beeline was the safety and that way it encourages skill growth. And because we’ve seen such skill growth like we’ve seen rider like this for enduro event, the one that I mentioned earlier, like we’ve had this event, we were watching guys that I didn’t think jump suddenly are sending it. They were jumping well and it was amazing. Like watching the footage, I was like that dude, just he sent it better than anyone like, because it just brought out the best in their writing skills to kind of push things forward. So the name is the name of the location, but it’s for us it’s become we like to think of it almost like a movement at this point.
Jeff 14:40
Yeah. Well and to be clear to, you know, Dale, you kind of mentioned how, you know, you’re kind of like trying to get away from that idea of like bureaucracy and you know, all the things that go into like building trails the traditional way, and to be clear, you guys aren’t like building a legal trails or anything Like, we’re gonna get into that, and how you guys have found creative solutions to that problem, and workarounds and ways to like, yeah, get rid of some of the stuff that maybe isn’t all that necessary when it comes to building trails and writing. So getting back to talking about the group a little more detail, how many folks are part of the group officially? And how do people join or get added to the group?
Dale 15:27
So I think drew probably has the actual number, it’s probably 15 to 20. That are actually people part of the rebellion, the uprising, small beginnings, small, small beginning. Yeah, I think originally, it was just some of us that were hanging out in a parking lot trying to have beverages after rides. And that’s kind of the original founding fathers, if you will. And we’ve slowly, we slowly brought some people in, that we thought would benefit from what we were doing, and don’t get we, I feel bad sometimes when people are like, what am I not cool enough to be part of the rebellion. And it’s like we want Drew and I and everyone else there wants everybody to be a part of it, and we want everybody to do it. But at first, we didn’t have enough trails for everyone to be there, you know, like it would have just been a cluster. And it was, it would have been tough to do it. And it was just kind of buddies hanging out. And it was like, Hey, let’s do this. And so at first, it was just that, and now we want to grow it further. And we’re lower learning ways and trying to think of ways we can bring more people in. So there’s no real like, how do I become a member? It’s kind of like, unfortunately, at this point, it’s just we’ve invited certain people in situations that we thought would fit. And then there’s no offense to anybody that hasn’t been invited. And maybe it just wasn’t the right circumstance at a certain time. But it’s kind of been just like, hey, buddies doing buddy stuff. And I think that, yeah, deer camps have it all over, you know, like, there’s private deer hunting camps everywhere. So yeah, maybe it’s it’s similar to that some of there’s no, no real. I don’t know, there’s no real entry?
Jeff 17:06
Well, you know, it is, it’s tough, because when you’re building community, it’s got to be a two way street, right? Like, if you’re going to join in the people who may be hurt or interested, or you’re thinking like, oh, would this person be a good fit? Or like, are they going to contribute? I think that’s, that’s something that we all have to consider is, you know, are you just there to, like, take from community or like, what can you bring to it? And so yeah, it seems like you guys are still at that point, figuring out sort of like, what you need and what you’re trying to do, and like how people can be productive members of the community.
Drew 17:43
It’s a slow growth thing, too. I’m a big believer, and I was around a business once not saying this is a business, but I was around a business that had accelerated growth. And so the challenge is you lose some of the things that make you unique, and I’m very cautious of you brought it up earlier, we’re very much community centric. And we’re very much friends centric, and keeping that in place. And keeping that intact as a core like that is the core foundation of our entire existence. So making sure that the people that do come out and ride I may not know him, but somebody else is vouched for him. And then we it’s not an audition, but somebody comes out and rides and if they you can tell when somebody gets it, and they see past just, oh, these guys have eight miles of trails, something happens. We got a guy, Barry, came out rode with us. He wrote on a Thursday, he was supposed to go out of town and ride somewhere epic like TCC. Yeah. And he bailed on that to come hang out with us again, because he had so much fun. And then he brought his money and paid like he didn’t even like it connected with him. And he’s a guy that’s written all over Bentonville. He’s done it all. Like he’s done every Whistler all of it. And he was like, the fact is that this is so much fun here because of what you guys have this special. So to your point, it’s not an exclusivity thing. It’s a controlled growth thing. We want to get to a spot where we can open it up or membership do like Jared, but we’ve got to be able to we’ve got to be able to build into it first. So yeah, well,
Jeff 19:05
yeah, I’m gonna jump ahead then to one of my questions to kind of explain what we’re talking about here. Because one of the really unique things that you guys did early on was you decided to lease some land to build trails on and so obviously there’s a cost associated with that and you know, liability considerations and all that kind of thing. So tell us a little bit about that day. Oh, like, Was that the plan from the beginning that you guys were going to build these trails on like private land or like, how did you guys fall into this?
Dale 19:41
So I would love to answer this and I will answer any questions But literally, that is drew the whole entire lane like this whole existence is legality. And
Drew 19:53
that is not fair. You make me sound like I’m the litigious word hello.
Dale 19:58
We both can’t be because then all I was trying to send anything.
Jeff 20:01
Okay, so don’t get hold of all the questions about the fun stuff. Yeah, I guess I’m the old back to business.
Drew 20:09
So yeah. And also, yeah, it starts with a guy I referenced a good bit. His name’s Jake EP, the same guy that got me into writing this guy’s a psycho, he, he just drives around and looks for great terrain. And he’s like a, he’s a free rider stuck in Mobile, Alabama, like, he just has this he’s written, he’s like, maybe the most experienced rider we have in the area. As far as like, he’s written a lot of the world. And so Jake gets with me one day, like, we have found this piece of property. Next thing, you know, we did a lot of investigating not just like, looking at the land, there was no trails on it, there might have been one like ATV trail. But we started doing that we had to dig it was it was positioned by a holding company. So that got kind of tricky. So there was a lot of reverse engineering, I happened to stumble upon the holding companies website. And again, being an app, I own an ad agency, I could tell who built the website, or I had a hunch. And then I went to LinkedIn. And sure enough, they were friends I reached out turns out, that’s how we found the landowner, or how cool was through this really weird process. And then we were able to negotiate a deal. So what we did, if this helps anybody, I’m open to sharing it, because we want we want to see reds all over the place. But what we did was we negotiated using the hunting lease terminology. And so what we found was that rents, the average hunting lease goes for about $10 an acre. And so we’re able to secure the land for really cheap, so we have 65 acres we pay $650 a year. Wow. It’s really crazy. Yeah, for the land, because we’re not doing anything but enhancing it. Now there is conditions that came with that we have a limited number of trees, we can cut down, obviously, we’re very cautious about it. We were mountain bikers, we don’t want to cut all the trees, the trees are what gives us the sense of speed. Right? Right, right, we’re allowed to improve the land with dirt and other objects, but we’re not allowed to build any structures, which is fine. I mean, if we did, it would be like a hobo lien to anyway, it wouldn’t be legit, trust me. Yeah. Or like, you know, like build a wall or something and things with with screws that we can take down if we had to. Point being is everything had to be built, follow those rules. And then he mandated the landowner mandated that we have insurance. And that was the biggest barrier, because I’d always been told that that’s like the key advantage, I’m not knocking any organization. But that’s the key advantage of like an in the ER sorbara relationship is being able to get access to insurance. Come to find out though, if you have a private group, and this is why we also have to have a private membership. If you have a private group and you structure it the right way, you can actually get insurance for dirt cheap, and we have trail building insurance. So it’s not only do we have liability, we have trail building insurance, and the total cost on that is about $1,800 a year. So we needed about $2,500 with legal fees to make it work. And so we got around 4000, we ended up with 20 paying members total. Is that accurate? Now we have 18 Members, we have 3600. So we had $36,000 of paid membership. So it left us a little bit of 1100. Next year, we’ll make a determination on if we want to keep the same level of insurance if we need to tweak things, so forth and so on the lease could go up. I don’t know, we did it. We did it one year, I think going into it too heavy would have been a cost. That would have been a bad situation. If we came and said, Hey, we want to lock up for five years. Now we want to lock it up forever. But yeah, that’s a whole separate conversation.
Jeff 23:20
Yeah, that got me thinking like, what would you guys do? How devastating would that be Dale vs. had to find a new spot. He was pretty in love with the rib? Well,
Dale 23:31
we actually drew and I had this conversation before. But to us the rebellion isn’t a location. The rebellion is a mindset or a thing. You know, it’s we can take the rebellion wherever we have to that place is fun. That place is amazing. That place is just a place like people that build it, and the energy that’s behind it. And the ideas that we have, are, they’re not tied to that 65 acres. So we have the benefit of we could have 15 rebellions in mobile, you know, like, we could do whatever we want on a larger scale. And Andrew has said this numerous times, like, we’ve proven that it works. So now we can sell that idea to other landowners. And maybe, you know, like, when we got out there, there was bombs out there. There was trash out there. There’s other stuff out there that maybe a landowner doesn’t want on their property. Well, now that we’re hanging out there, those bums aren’t there anymore. If they are they cleaned up after themselves. So maybe we’re the bones now, but that’s been that’s the thing is like, if it was taken away from us, yeah, sure. We would probably cry maybe we’ll go out there and have a little campfire powwow just for reminescent sake. But we could we could just rebuild. You know, we are we are who we are. We can take that other places.
Drew 24:57
Yeah, we’re lucky we’ve seen a I think ain’t the biggest thing that about the rib that’s been fascinating is the development, both as people like we’re all better people. I mean, literally, we’re all better people. I’ve worked harder. I’ve made better friendships and I could have ever asked for I mean, I’ve, we’ve had like deep conversation, like life changing stuff, conversation wise. But that’s because we had the ability to have that. And then even just community wise, as Dale said, there’s also there’s, we call them the caretakers. But Matthew and Erica and their dog, Trevor, they literally are so happy to see all these trails that they get to walk. And they walk really early when most of us aren’t there. And if they do hear us, they look forward, they move out of the way or they tell us to be careful, because they’re worried about, yeah, so it’s turned into you can actually use it as a concept to say, look, we’re going to improve the land. And it look if we improve it for this amount of time, then, so be it, like Dale said, and the movement won’t go away, it’ll just, I’m going to make a on our show, we have a little reference of a Star Trek versus Star Wars thing. Dale never has any idea what I’m talking about. But we’re like good borg in the sense that we’ll just go somewhere else, assimilate whatever it is, and make whatever we need, and then move on. That’s just there’s my nerd reference for the day.
Jeff 26:09
Yeah, Star Trek, right.
Drew 26:11
There you go. See, you’re still in a new idea.
Jeff 26:14
I just, I just knew it wasn’t Star Wars. So yeah, it’s really a process of elimination. But yeah, that’s, that’s when surprises that way. Yeah, I mean, you guys are just reinforcing that it is all about community. And it’s about, you know, a group of folks who enjoy riding together and hanging out. And lots of good stuff comes with that, you know, whether it be like physical trails, or just, you know, putting on races or doing all the things that clubs tend to do. But, yeah, really putting community at the center of it, which is awesome. So, Dale, what are some of the ways that you and other folks have found to make writing flat terrain more fun to ride? Because typically, you know, flat stuff, that’s not the first thing mountain bikers think about when they think about fun trails, but you guys have made made some pretty fun trails there. So so how do you do it? Yeah, so
Dale 27:13
they strategically found the land that has the most elevation in Mobile County, or in the city limits, I guess. So it does have a lot of us elevation. And I always make the joke, like, yeah, we have no mountains. Well, nobody wants to ride up mountains anyways. That’s painful. So what we have is actually, I’ve written 30 miles out there, it’s 100 feet per mile of climbing. So if you ride continuously 100 feet per mile of climbing, so we do have some, we have a three quarter mile long downhill line, that’s pretty fun. We’ve had to add, we had to be creative. So I, I designed a trail that’s so tight that when Drew was walking it when I when I was cutting it, he was like nobody’s writing this dude, we can’t even fit. Cuz that’s what’s fun about it, you know, like, you almost have to track Stan to get through the little tiny pine trees, and then all of a sudden, it opens up and you’re doing 25 miles an hour, and you’re flying down the trail. So yeah, it’s, there’s different things you can do to add techy features, I guess, without adding techie features, like we don’t have rocks. So there’s no rock features, there’s no mean to buy, we’d have to buy rocks to put them there. So if I buy rocks to put on the land, and I don’t buy rocks to put on my wife’s hand, like, I might be homeless, I might be living at the rib, like, for real living at the rib. But, um, so we have done that we’ve also worked with different methods of dirt. So like Jakey, poo has used quick crit and mixed it with the sand to try to form different jumps that last and his jump looks like he built it day one, and it looks like dirt. Like you can’t tell it’s great. So we’ve been doing that. And the great thing is in back to the community aspect, we’re doing this stuff there that we can try on us. We’re the we’re the crash test dummies, we can take this stuff to our local trails that are created with the same in the same type of dirt in the same way. So that way we can, we can try to get the masses excited about like, hey, check out this little roller that they built out a quick crit. And for what five bucks for a bag, a quick crit. So it’s pretty cool. And actually, Alan Weatherford that is president of the Ember organization, he has come out and seen what we’re doing. So he knows about the ribeye hits. That’s what we’ve went Darth Vader on our ship to go back. We’ve let him in. But he sees that he sees the energy and he wants to capitalize on it. And so he takes that energy to the council meetings and things like that. I don’t want to go to that. None of us. None of us but a lot of us don’t want to go to those meetings. Alan is doing that. So this isn’t this is for us. Yeah, we’ll be selfish and I’m sure drew would agree. I’ll selfishly say that. The rebellion is for me. I go there to build Well I want to build when I where I want to build it and I want what I want to ride but it’s also not just for me it’s for my kids in their future and how they’re going to get the ride local trail so they don’t have to drive three hours to ride awesome stuff. And so hopefully what we’re doing with the rebellion just is contagious across the county and, and maybe it gets in front of the right people and the right council members and and they get to see it, but for now, we’ll just keep enjoying the hell out of it and riding with our buddies and throwing up WWF Championship belts. Just throw that out. Yeah, he’s bragging. I’m bragging. I won.
Jeff 30:38
He won the one the for Enduro?
Dale 30:40
Yeah. Did he dress? Oh, yes,
Drew 30:42
sir. It comes with a belt. You have to wear a WWE we had a custom belt made that has all the fringed all the local logos on it. And so I thought the rule is going to be had to wear it every time he rode. But I think we all agree that would be disgustingly stinky. And I
Dale 30:57
couldn’t sit down with it on after the race I traveled. I was wearing it. I can’t sit down. It’s it’s big.
Jeff 31:03
Well, you gotta wear it in the next race. So that that way you’re like at a slight disadvantage, and like somebody else can possibly take the title away from you.
Dale 31:12
Yeah, that’s the handicap. And don’t think I’m not showing up with big WTF entry music. Like, I might even buy big speakers on the car. It’s just gonna show up with my brain girls and everything. Yeah.
Jeff 31:26
Well, Drew. So I know, there’s like a bunch of different trail builders working in the area. And it sounds like you guys all have like slightly different styles, and you’re building the trails that you enjoy, and you kind of take ownership of that. Tell me more about that. Like how you come up with names. And you guys even have like, logos for the trails and like backstories and all of that seems like a really creative thing. How did you come up with the idea? Or? Or to do that? Yeah, so
Drew 31:54
we started when so Dale is a fantastic designer. So one of the things we have advantage of is we have somebody that does graphic design, that’s a writer. And so he kind of gets sort of that writing mentality. Right? He gets that brain. So when we started doing trails, we started laughing. A lot of them were inside jokes. I mean, they were literally parking lot inside jokes. One of them’s tuna sub. I mean, it’s just stuff that doesn’t make any sense to anybody else. But us. But as we went through, we started just what we found was is that every every trail builder, I mean, we have a lot of guys that work with each other that help that like principle trail builders all have a kind of style, like I have a little more flow. Dale has a little more tech, a lot of attorney stuff, Jake has a lot of janky POS a lot of straight downhill fives. And so what’s happened is over time, we’ve just, we built those and found the trail to have meaning and we try and we try and put meaning behind the story. And instead of doing videos about, here’s another rider video, or here’s another component video. Instead we do we call them trail tales. And so for us, we tell a little story about this trail, like whoever built it, who came up with it. The entry we have kind of a featured entry, it’s taken a lot of abuse, but like just to sum it up to kind of set it up we have this thing called the bug rug, which is a writer we have his his nickname is bug. We don’t even know where it came from. We refuse to ask we just let it be. But bug has his bug rug. And it’s like the first jump on the way in gotta be lined to it. That’s fun, as I’ll get out too. But we have that line. And so then there’s a sign there that shows it to you. And then one day they were cutting a trail listening to Run DMC. So next thing you know, there’s a Run DMC sign and somebody, I guess it was one of Dale’s kids had a gold dollar sign necklace, and now hangs from it. So it feels like I’d Run DMC reference, which we all love. And then that spawned it’s tricky. And then my kids cut the longest trail with me. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I took my children on one of the longest downhill trails we have and are one of my flower trails. And they I was like, What do you guys want to call it? They’re like birdie, which is my dog’s name. So now all of a sudden, there’s just like a picture of a dog’s head in the middle of the woods. But they all have meaning they all have history. And when you really start talking to somebody about him, you get a story. So it’s like everything they’re so purposely built. It’s not just it’s weird, because there were some lines that we had initially that were just kind of like we call them go trails or whatever. Like we got to dig our way out but we reused those recently on that for enduro that so lines that we didn’t think were worth a damn anymore. Sorry, sorry for causing were suddenly worth everything like they changed it. So guys and gals that came out there and rode we’re like, whoa, what does this I didn’t expect that turn. Because there’s so we use every piece of, of opportunity we have and therefore those all get a story just like I shared there. They all have like some level of history till right now, in 20 years of the rev is still around if that location is still there who knows what the stories will get made up? There’s gonna be these weird signs with like, I mean, there’s one called Mon tucky. There’s a whole series of trails named after a beer that I just happen to love that I can’t get in the state of Alabama called Mon Taki. Shout out monkey. And so there’s a whole trail system name for those eight It’s just that it’s, it’s just about having fun and reinforcing the love that we have for each other and for the trails and for writing and for community. It’s all just constant reinforcement of fun. That’s what we’re after.
Jeff 35:14
Yeah, yeah, you definitely get that vibe from the videos. And then imagine being there in person and seeing the signs and the little trinkets and things. I mean, trail builders have been doing that for a long time, right? Like, finding random objects, like when they’re clear in a trail, and like maybe that inspires the name of the trail, or like, at least hanging in a tree as a piece of art really gives it a lot of personality. That’s right. Dale, you mentioned, trail building techniques, and the things that you guys are doing there. Sounds like a lot of it is sort of learn as you go. But do you have resources or folks that you lean on? Who are like maybe a little more experienced? Or like, how do you? How do you figure out how to build good trails and good trail features, aside from just kind of guessing and checking.
Dale 36:02
So I actually I went to the SORBA summit in Tallahassee, and I got to sit in on some Ember solutions. Steve, from Ember solutions, I got to sit down with him. And I learned some stuff from him. I actually had told drew, I was like, you know, maybe our trails aren’t great, based on how we built them, because we didn’t know we’re doing and to be honest, like, we’re not building them for super high traffic areas, like Steve is, you know, so we don’t have to worry so much about erosion and how what’s it going to be like, in 10 years, because we only care about today, you know, like we said, the other day, we were riding, we build a jump out of San, because that’s what we have, we build a jump and everybody’s like, well, let’s just jump it, who cares? It might not be here tomorrow, you know, like, so. I’m from the north, and we snowboard in the north. And it’s kind of that whole aspect, like ride the snow while you can because you never know what it’s gonna be like the next time you come out. And Drew always preaches this, like, hey, go check the trail out before you just send it because every time you go out there, there could be something different that you’re not used to, or somebody could have come out and built something that you didn’t know was going to be built there. So the techniques and skill sets though, we have just developed, Drew and I drew mostly, but we have, we build every trail with no power tools, like we don’t use anything we use. hatchets has machetes, axes. And that’s an earache, basically. So we’ve we’ve learned that because our ground is so soft, you can go down a trail, and there’s those little tiny trees in the way or whatever, you could just hit around them, cut them at the stump, cut the stump off, hit around them, and they come right out. So we don’t have to worry about the stump being in the ground, we have a nice smooth trail, we leave the big pines and oaks and things like that. So everything else we we have built mostly all these eight miles, we have eight ish miles of trails, without any power tools. So which has been pretty awesome. And in, not because we don’t want to, but because it’s just more fun. It’s cathartic. It’s, it’s nice to just go out, Joe, we always just throw Joe Rogan on our headphones and go to town, you know, like, just start building in for you never know how far you’ll get in one day.
Jeff 38:11
Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s really interesting. And again, yeah, it’s like, it’s like the trail building is not the point, right? The point is the community. And so yeah, you’re not necessarily in a rush, like, like your professional trail builder. Like, we got to get this done. So we can move on to the next project. It’s like, the experience is part of it. And I love that comparison to like, building snow jumps to like, yeah, never really thought about that. But yeah, I mean, if you’re building a terrain park, in a ski resort, like, that’s temporary, that thing’s not going to exist. And not only that, you gotta like maintain it. And you know, every day is going to be a little different, depending on conditions. And so yeah, that’s a, that’s a really good perspective on trail building, and what you guys are doing?
Dale 38:55
Well, and we have, you know, because of where we’re at, everybody watches YouTube videos, and they watch all these other things of, you know, all these places, doing awesome stuff with these great jumps and these great rock features, and these great drops and things like that. And so our local info chapter gets bombarded with like, hey, why don’t we have features? And where’s the features? And why can’t we do this? And why can’t we do that, and what we’re learning more than anything is to like, piggyback off of what Emma already does, like, it’s hard. Like, it’s not easy to build features, like, you know, in our local trail systems don’t have a lot of feature bull areas, you know, it’s not, we just don’t have that, that type of riding here. And it’s unfortunate like we would love it and the SORBA mo chapter Samba, they are trying to get it to be a destination like they want awesome trails like that. And it’s just a it’s a really difficult area to build in and we’re learning that and I try to translate it to people like hey, we can’t just go out there and build huge clay Jones like there’s just no clay to do it. and right, it’s, it’s just, it’s awesome. It’s
Drew 40:02
also a time thing as much as it is like a lot of times people just bring up cost. And I think that there is a cost, there’s always a cost. But it’s not just money. Like, we can’t just throw money at this. And I think that’s the one thing that we’ve all walked away from the rib from, from, if we’re looking at a trail org standpoint, it’s a lot of time, it’s a lot. And it’s in, it’s not just time spent building, there’s time, like maintaining and checking and keeping it. There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t think people, we’ve learned now that if we cut it and brush a trail with the soil type that we have, we’re better off not writing it. Immediately, we can some, but you’re better off to let it dry out. Because it’s so moist underneath there. So if you let it dry out, suddenly, it holds the dirt and better. And it’s like riding on carpet. It’s insane. And it’s fast and flowy and super fun. And there’s no roots, because we cut all this out. But like it doesn’t erode as fast. So it’s little things like that, that have taken time for us to develop. And it’s the same thing. And I think it’s real trail builders understand, but you got knuckle turds, like me and Dale out there, and we’re just learning as we go. I mean, there’s other legit Jakey Bucha legit legit builder. But like Dale and I just figure it out like we I scalped a bunch is what we call it where we cut out all this, this moss and it’s fast. It’s the fastest ride you’ll ever have. But it It’s dirt. So it’s dusty. And it’s there’s other little problems that kick up from it. So
Jeff 41:27
yeah, yeah, you bring up a good point about a lot of us as writers, like we don’t know what we don’t know about trail building. And yet, especially these groups like Amba and SORBA. To us as an outside perspective, it’s like, oh, well, it’s a simple solution. But it rarely is. And there’s a lot of knowledge that needs to be gained just to just to figure out what the problems are, in a lot of cases. And sounds like you guys are figuring that out with your with your project. So Drew, let’s talk a little more about the role of video and podcasting with ride the rebellion. Is that was that something that was there from the beginning? Or was this like you guys started doing stuff? And were like, Hey, this is kind of cool, like maybe other people would be into this? Is? Is that how it came about?
Drew 42:17
Yeah, to a degree I think, you know, obviously, my again, being a filmmaker career. That’s what I do. I think that existed. The podcast was always something I wanted to talk about. I enjoy podcasts, obviously, this fun, be on the show, I listen to your show. So I mean, it’s it this is super honor. But for us, it became an issue of like, we started realizing that, that we can’t invite everybody out to the property. We want them to be part of the community. And so if a way to do that was to show videos, and to show the podcast, somebody mentioned to me once that we were just humble bragging, I was like, that’s not exactly we didn’t mean it to be that way. We literally want it to be like, hey, look what we did. And you can do it too. That’s the biggest takeaway is that if Dale and I, I mean, Jake up was a freak exception. But Dale and I can get out here and pull this off, then there’s no reason why anybody anywhere, kids in Kansas where it’s as flat as it could possibly be, you can do it too, like there’s a way to do it. And so the idea was, you know, this piece of land has inspired us to go and push a community in to push themselves to get as best the best versions of themselves possible. And so that’s what we chase. And so the content does so with the videos, like we said, we don’t want to feed your riders. I mean, we’re all in it. But it’s not about us. It’s not about those things. It’s not trying to pretend like we’re our bikes, or as we say, we don’t pretend that our bikes are pink and we live in Squamish. The reality for us is We live where we live, and we love what we love, and we ride what we can ride on the daily. And then it makes us better riders when we go up to your neck of the woods. Like I’m a way better rider when I go up there now I send stuff and have way much more fun because I’m used to it. So the goal was to like say, here’s the trail tails, here’s a story of a trail, focus on the trail look at someone someone made and appreciate the trail know appreciate the bike on it, or the the newest, you know, Gizmo or whatever it might be focused on the trail and appreciate someone’s hard work. And then the podcast is just a celebration of all the people that we come across like we interview, we don’t care who you interview, we want to interview everybody, like we want to have conversations with anybody and anything and the podcast becomes this interesting dynamic where you have Dale who’s very much a real athlete, and then you have me who’s very much a fat leet. And so you have this combination of two different that’s our job, but I mean, I’m a big nerd and I have my sort of vibe of things and Dale has his but we have this combination of like playing off of each other that works really well because we represent we’re trying to be representative of as many voices we can, we will have carry on soon and we can’t wait to have carry on and that’s another voice for us. And she has a whole different perspective because she’s a coach and so we have so it’s just constantly trying to add she’s Annika coach we’re trying to constantly add voices to it. Like you were trying to constantly mix it up and make it different and still be fun and just constantly remind everybody, it’s, it’s always going to be about fun at the bottom line. That is, that’s the currency we deal in is fun and time everybody deals in time, but we get to deal with a little bit more fun. So yeah, it’s kind of where it comes from.
Dale 45:18
To add just in case anybody was mistaken. We are the only zero drop podcast on the planet for universe. Like, that’s always been our thing. Like, we don’t discriminate and bike skill level speed, where you ride nothing. We are zero drop podcast.
Jeff 45:34
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. And I think I think so many mountain bikers can identify with that, you know, I mean, myself included, I don’t, I don’t live in Squam. much either. And very few people do, right, that’s like a small, little area. But mountain biking is much, much bigger than that. And there’s a lot of diverse terrain and people and experience levels and all that stuff. And yeah, that’s really awesome that you guys have found a way to connect with that and to share that with other people. Because I think what you’re doing is is unique and it’s inspiring, and, yeah, definitely seems like something that should catch on to a lot of people. So, Dale, where else do you like to ride mountain bikes when you’re not in mobile? Have you had a chance to ride other places around the state or the country?
Dale 46:23
Yeah, so I’ve gotten I’ve signed myself up for dumbly signed myself up for long endurance races. So I’ve gotten a race up there. I raced in Tijuana, I did fool’s gold. Up in North Georgia. I did that last year, those trails a bow and Jake mountain. That was awesome. I really liked that. I also did the Skyway epic here in Alabama. I did that the beginning of April, and it was a 67 mile. mountain bike race was 6500 feet of climbing. So wow, that that was fun. So I got to ride that but mostly, some of my favorite places to ride are coastal. You know, like I love going to Oak mountain and to Laughlin stuff, but I’m learning like I love UW F and Pensacola is so awesome trail system, and it’s really fun and challenging. And maybe it’s because I’m conditioned to the sand. Most people complain about the sand, but I love it. And then Bogue Chitto and in Louisiana is starting to rise on my list. Maybe it’s the environment or the atmosphere that’s thrown down over there, but it’s really, really fun to ride and flew motion. Toby or Preston York, and Toby Cortez are the ones that put it together and I love it over there. So I think I would get I mean, I guess I just like ride my bike, man. You put me on the sidewalk, and I’d probably just like it. So I think I like Yeah, I mean, I haven’t got to travel much out of Alabama. So I’m hoping I did write in Ohio a little bit when I was back home. So there’s some cool trails up there as well. Yeah, I just see those rocks, man. Whenever I see those rocks. My really nice shiny fork gets really scared. I don’t want all those scratches on my deal. The rocks. I’m out of here.
Jeff 48:04
All right on. We got you drew. Have you enjoyed writing other places outside of mobile?
Drew 48:09
Yeah, you know what’s funny is I’ve written more outside of Alabama than I have in iMobile. So I’ve written Wyoming I’ve written Wyoming was partly rode bike, which was I wrote up to Devil’s Tower. And then just pedal as fast as I can possibly down listening to like the most death metal song I could possibly find was one of the favorite memories of my life was super fun. But so I’ve done that kind of stuff. And I did a little bit trail riding and a little gravel. And then I really love Chattanooga. Chattanooga is is my favorite place to ride that I’ve written so far. And I haven’t been much North Carolina though my company even has an office there. Just I’ve never been. We just opened in fairness. But Chattanooga is my jam. In fact, I took the entire as an excuse. I told her my sales team or basically my entire crew. I said, Look, if you guys hit a certain number this year, I’ll take us on the trip. And they’re like, oh, yeah, and they hit the number. They did it. They did it early too. So we planned a trip where Chattanooga why because the boss wants to go ride his mountain bike. So it was an excuse for me to get back up there. But I love Chattanooga area I look forward to there’s a bunch of stuff in and around Atlanta that looks like a lot of fun, which is your neck of the woods and I’m so now I’m trying to find places where it’s you know, Dale and I both have kids where it’s nice for like, our wives and the kids can go do stuff if we’re gonna go ride for a few hours. And then when we’re done, we can all get together and go do something family friendly fun, usually with beverages and wolves, but like we can find something fun to go do. So that’s kind of the majority of it. But in all honesty, if you told me pick one trail, you can ride it for the rest of your life. Or one one trail network. I’m a big fan of five points. Five Points in in Georgia there. Yeah, I just I really liked that trail system a lot. I feel like it has everything. So yeah,
Jeff 49:57
yeah. Do you take that like as inspiration for this? stuff that you try and do. I mean, obviously wonder, do all the same things. But yeah,
Drew 50:05
yeah, 100% Like that’s the best part about writing all over I love both Chitto to budget is super unique. And so when we were getting ready to think about the rib, I somehow taught my wife and let me go like every two weekends, because she’s off every other weekend, we were gone, we would go ride, we would go ride somewhere. And we would just be like, I’d make I literally had a little notepad I carried in my fanny pack back when I was a fanny pack rider. And I kept getting stuck under the wheel, because I’m a terrible writer. Anyway. So I would make notes. And it would be like this idea, this idea of something that feels I try and write down things of how something felt, not just how it rode, but how it felt like this, I got this emotion from this or this anxiety, I want to I want to recreate it. So it became like a, again, I’m a director. So I approach things that way. But it became like that kind of thing. Like how do I attach an emotion to this very moment and go from
Jeff 50:56
that. Interesting, that’s a really deep way to think about trail building is to start with the emotion and then figure out how you can recreate it with perhaps different materials or terrain or whatever.
Dale 51:11
We always say this is that we are literally drug addicts, and our drug is the trail, right? There’s no feeling that you get you can’t replicate that first ride feeling. So we’re constantly chasing that first ride on any trail that you’ve ever gone on. And if you mountain bike, you you get this, like, you know that first ride like that first trail copy, right? It’s like, oh, my gosh, this trail is so awesome. I can’t wait to ride it again. The second time you ride it, it just doesn’t hit as hard, right, like, so we’re trying to, we’re trying to keep that excitement every time we write. And at the rebellion, we are literally doing that, like every I am now at this point. I feel that when I go ride each trail, but I enjoy bringing people out there that have never written and showing them because I get the enjoyment out of their excitement. And so like, it’s that new trail feeling that they’re experiencing, but I’m experiencing it with them, even though it’s my 50th time on it. So like that smile when they get done. And they’re out of breath going downhill. And they’re just like, their knuckles are still white. And I’m laughing because it’s the first time they’ve written a downhill trail in their life, you know, so that feeling is what we chase. And I think it’s like, we’re heroin junkies to the trail, I guess, you know, so
Jeff 52:22
yeah, I’m the same way. And now you got me wondering if, if all mountain bikers are that way, I don’t think that they are. But yeah, and you also bring up a good point about how riding a trail that maybe you are familiar with, but you’re riding with someone who it is their first time, you do kind of get that same feeling. And again, comes back to that idea of community of like wanting to include others and, and who you ride with changes the ride as well, like every time so yeah, really cool perspective. So all right, final question for both of you. And I’ll start with you drew, what have you learned along the way that could be helpful to other mountain bikers? Like in a similar situation that they’re somewhere where there aren’t a lot of trails or where they want to build community? Like what’s what’s kind of your biggest learning so far? You’ve got to
Drew 53:15
Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway for me has always been an it’s happened to me, I’ve made mistakes, even during the, you know, the rub is, as a property is nine months old. We were just talking about that we’ve done so much in nine months. But I’ve made mistakes, I was mouthy. I was a little cocky at times, I made some some maybe bad decisions, not rude anyone but I probably started a pot I shouldn’t have started a couple times. So it’s really being humble to exactly what we talked about is you got to humble yourself to the trail, you got to humble yourself to the community and realize that it’s not just that there’s different voices that I’m always been good with that. But you got to realize that like everybody interprets that first ride different. And so that first encounter with you is that first ride and it’s doing that. So it’s one is that the other piece I would say is like something I wish we would have learned early on, which is build yourself some perimeter trails My God, man, don’t go to know the mountain. And just because then you’re just you’re miserable getting there every time. If you build a perimeter Trail, which we finally did, that perimeter trail goes a very long way to making it a lot more fun. And it’s a lot of work because it’s boring. I’m talking about a very boring trail. It just needs to be that access trail. But do that first. And then the third piece is finding land. Look, it’s gotta be as easy as not being afraid to ask or or find somebody in your group. That’s like me that doesn’t. I’m used to asking. I mean, again, I’m a salesperson, I’m used to asking for permission to film on property when I did movies for a living, like, you just have to find somebody that doesn’t mind stepping out of the comfort zone or it doesn’t bother them to go ask those kind of questions. Make sure they don’t necessarily look like with like crazy, but like, I’d love to get you in the door. And I wasn’t gonna say but I did. And so It’s one of those things of those three steps, I build that, like, make sure you engage everyone treat every encounter like a first ride, build an access trail, and then find somebody who’s not afraid to go ask the question. That’s what I would say.
Jeff 55:11
Okay, yeah, that’s awesome. Those are great tips about your deal. What’s, what’s your biggest takeaways?
Dale 55:17
Well, I so because I’m involved in I’m on the board still of the local Ember chapter, I’m going to relate it to the community, like we’ve been talking about the whole time. But what, in our podcast, we discussed this as well. So we’ll just double it up. What I figured out is that to get work done, you have to develop the community, right? Like once they become friends, and once like, you have a connection more than just, hey, I went rode that trail today, once your friends are involved, now, you don’t want to let them down. Right? So So everything I do with the rebellion, I don’t do for me, I do it for them. You know, like I do it? Selfishly, for me and them, okay. So now that now you can translate that to, if you if you think about it like this, like we need those friendships to get your work done. We don’t need the money, we don’t need the other stuff, you need the friendships to get done. Because it’s all volunteer stuff, nobody’s getting paid for any of it. So to get volunteer stuff done, you have to have some reason why they need to be there, right. And to give them a reason other than, so you have nice trails close to home, that don’t let your friends down as one. So that’s, that’s one thing I’ve learned. And the other thing is like, just be patient, be patient with people, be patient with things, be patient with time, all around, just be patient and things don’t happen overnight. And then those trails as big trails that some YouTube personality gets built in a year, just they don’t happen that quick. Like, things don’t happen quick. And we’ve been told numerous times, like, Oh, you guys are reading 12 trails that are 25 years old, my buddy built those, like, why do you want to change them now? And it’s like, we’re different. We’re on different bikes. Like, it’s just you have to, but you have to understand where they’re coming from, to you know, like it was their passion at one time. So they’re passionate about it, just like we’re passionate about it. And really, and we we want the same things everybody else does. We just have, we have gotten to the point where we get we were impatient. to Now we’re trying to we’re trying to push push our agenda quicker. And I guess it works across the board and everyone benefits in some way. So I think there’s so but there’s so much to be learned. And I’m learning every day I learned from drew a lot. Because there’s things I don’t know. And then there’s, there’s also things that I don’t want to learn that drew knows, you know, so there’s things that you just have to understand your role, I guess. And that’s part of it, too. It’s just an organization. I mean, we’re all 40 year old dudes on bicycles with shovels. That’s what it all boils down to. And always, like, we’re just trying to extend our childhood as long as we possibly can. And that’s literally all it is. And if it’s with a shovel in the woods, that’s cool.
Jeff 57:58
Yeah, well, what you guys are doing is obviously really different and unique. And it seems to be working well. And it’s really cool to see and to follow along and your journey. And that’s awesome, too, that you guys have a podcast and you have this YouTube channel. So we can all see how this experiment turns out. But yeah, definitely seems like one that others can gain from. So thank you both for taking the time to chat and telling us more about this. Yeah, we’re definitely going to be keeping up with the project and seeing how it goes. And we
Dale 58:33
really appreciate it Jeff, and we’re happy to oblige your invitation invitations anytime he wants to. We’d like to talk as you can tell.
Drew 58:41
And also you’re always welcome to come down and ride. First rights free. Friday.
Jeff 58:48
Yeah, you guys really do sound like drug pushers are
Drew 58:53
trying to try to find these these trails here, man. It’s yeah, we got merch now to help fund the trails, whatever we gotta do. We’re gonna figure it out.
Jeff 59:01
You guys. Awesome. Yeah, such a cool, cool model. Well, you can find ride the rebellion on YouTube and also their podcasts on Spotify. And we’ll have links to both of those in the show notes. So we’ve got this week. We’ll talk to you again next week.
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